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I spoke to day to Anthony Dicks of Oswald Cheung's chambers,
a specialist in private international law but formerly an academic research lawyer interested in general international law.
2.
I enquired about the present Macau. constitution because I knew
he studied the Macau situation in 1967. He says that it probably hangs on a protocol of 30 January 1967 published in Tai Kung Po
at the same time. Dicks is looking out a translation he made
then to give me. (I was interested in how Macau could be part of China and under Portuguese administration and make legal laws). 3. This led to Dicks saying that HongKong could be brought under
the Foreign Jurisdiction Act (1890ish). This act was used to
legalise actions related to British territorial initiatives in
that era which fell short of annexation. An order in Council
on these lines could legalise a Macau type situation in Hong Kong.
The difficulty of this approach is for China, he said, to
accept the idea of extra-territoriality, on the other hand
extra-territoriality is not necessarily imposed in one direction.
(The Turks insisted on extra-territorial arrangements for foreign merchants to avoid conflict of laws and the Hanseatic Merchants
in Britain enjoyed extra-territoriality until Henry VII did away with it. This I am told is all made plain in a book by C.H.
Alexandrovitch).
4.
5. This theme will be developed by Dicks in an article (6,000- 8,000 words) in China quarterly in May. This whole issue will
be devoted to Hong Kong. Dicks believes that there are more fruitful approaches than standing on the treaties and probably
this will be stated in his article.
-
6. I gather, also from Dicks, that a Chinese legal specialist
a specialist with the Chinese Government gave a recent lecture at
SOAS in which he stated that the negotiations would take three
to four years.
The economic ministries in China were most unhappy about this but he said the decision process could not be shortened
and would certainly take that long.
y
(K.W. Topley)
Secretary for Education
1.2.83
G. F. 82
CONFIDENTIAL