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Reference
CODE 18-77
SS 8/78
Mr Thomson
Mr Elliott
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02012
In domin
Pas 4155
HONG KONG
CHINA/FALKLANDS:
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1. I have suggested in a separate minute that Chinese commentspility! and reflections on the Falklands crisis are probably more concerned with Taiwan than Hong Kong implications. Although even in the case of Hong Kong China could not renounce an ultimate right to use force if necessary to regain her sovereignty, here the issue is academic because:
and
(a) China acquiesces in the current arrangements, which make for a prosperous Hong Kong serving China's economic interests;
(b) If China ceased to acquiesce and wanted the territory back, she knows that she could achieve this very easily without any use of military force.
2. The key question in my view is the impact of the Falklands on the developing Chinese ideas for Hong Kong's medium or long-term future. A full assessment will have to wait on developments in the South Atlantic, but at present it seems as though the impact may be damaging to our interests. We have invited the Chinese rather urgently to focus on and discuss with us what should happen in Hong Kong after 1997. Our objective is to secure their agreement now to a further period of British administration starting then. I think our chances of success are likely to be affected by the highly publicised 'national humiliation' we have just undergone. There are two main aspects to this:
(a) Chinese National Pride: 'Face'
There are certainly differences between the two cases but some of them can be argued against our position, for example:
Argentine
(i) The Falklands are separated from the mainland by hundreds of miles; Kowloon and the New Territories are actually part of the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong is separated from it by hundreds of yards.
(ii) The Falklands are populated by people of English stock, language and customs. 95% of the Hong Kong population are Chinese in all these respects.
(iii) The Falklands were ruled from Buenos Aires only for a few years before the period of uninterrupted British rule began; Hong Kong was ruled from Peking for centuries before the 3 Unequal Treaties of 1842, 1858/60 and 1898.
Patriotic Chinese may well ask if Argentina can regain the Falklands by force in 1982 why China cannot even aspire to recover Hong Kong by peaceful settlement in 1997. More than half a century after the Japanese were thrown out of China, must part of the motherland still be ruled by a declining third-rate power which even now a tin-pot › Latin American dictatorship is able to trounce by force of arms? How in such circumstances can the Chinese hold their heads in the world?
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/(b) *