SECRET
INTERNATIONAL TRADE POLICY DIVISION 1
DEPARTMENT OF TRADE
9/8
Warwick Morris Esq
1 VICTORIA STREET
LONDON SW1H OET
10
COPY NO OF 9 COPIES
Telephone Direct Line
+IKK040/3
RECEIVED IN NEGISTRY
Hong Kong and General Department Foreign & Commonwealth Office King Charles Street London SW1A 2AH
1984
Switchboard
August 1982
6/2
Deallands
01-215 01-215 7877
Dear Moris
HONG KONG STUDY
Richard Wells
At Alan Donald's meeting yesterday evening I promised to record in a letter some of what I said about the position of Hong Kong and China in relation to the GATT, and to provide some draft passages for the Trade Annex, of which an outline was circulated.
The current position of Hong Kong in the GATT is simple. It is a territory for which the UK has international responsibility (GATT Article XXVI.5(a) language), and the UK has accepted the GATT on behalf of HK. If HK desires to accept GATT instruments, such as the Tokyo Round NTB agreements or MFA protocols, the UK does so "on behalf of HK".
In
The current position of China in the GATT is not so simple. (We did not research all the following overnight from original files. It is largely from a 1980 US paper which in turn was largely based on GATT Secretariat researches. ECD(E) has a copy). China signed the Protocol of Provisional Application of the GATT (on which basis it is in force) on 5 May 1948. The Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) withdrew, effective 5 May 1950. The withdrawal has generally been accepted as valid. the fifties GATT protocols requiring unanimous acceptance came into force without Chinese acceptance. Several countries withdrew tariff concessions originally negotiated with China (including the UK in January 1958), which would only have been possible without demur had it been accepted that China had ceased to be a Contracting Party (CP) for the purposes of Article XXVII. And this year the PRC applied to attend the GATT Ministerial Meeting in November as an observer, and the GATT Council agreed on 21 July. According to the latest (1981) information, there is no immediate prospect of the PRC applying to join the GATT, though their attitude may be becoming more positive. In spite of what has happened, there must be a lingering doubt that if they did apply they might seek to claim the original "China seat" by disowning the ROC withdrawal, in view of the advantage that would give them in resisting the special GATT regimes that have been imposed on other STCS in accession negotiations.
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