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Ps/Lord Belstead
Mr. Douald
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M8418.
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From the
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
CONFIDENTIAL
The Lord Belstead Home Office
50 Queen Anne's Gate London
SW1H 9AT
HKK
18411
See (34
int
Pas 918
37
29 July 1982
Dear John,
copied to HK PLD 11/28
See 130 Зо
I think you will be interested to see the attached record of the discussion I had with Sir Edward Youde about air services between Hong Kong and points in China. The conclusion is no different from that which you and I reached on 12 July, that is to say that no further action should be taken before the Prime Minister's visit, that the briefing for that visit should set out both points of view, and that the options should be further considered in the light of any developments concerning future relations between China and Hong Kong which may occur as a result of the Prime Minister's visit.
However, I think I should tell you that I came away from my meeting with the Governor, and from the other conversations I had on this subject in Hong Kong, more convinced than ever that we ought to take a firm line with the Chinese on air services. The modest share of services to Shanghai and Peking which we want to safeguard by negotiating a new CMU is consistent with the underlying premises of the 1979 agreements and with the sort of relationship I believe we want to see confirmed between Hong Kong and China. I fully appreciate that a dispute over air services must not be allowed to prejudice the much more important negotiations about the future of Hong Kong as a whole, but it seems to me that if we fail to defend our interests in this area firmly but fairly our restraint could all too easily be misinterpreted as weakness and do more harm than good in the wider context.
We shall have to look at all this again in the light of the Prime Minister's visit.
Yours ever,
Yours
ли
IAIN SPROAT