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6
The Prime Minister said that her view was that now and for a long time in the future the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong would depend on confidence that the present administration
would continue. Perhaps this would not be for all time, since
things changed everywhere and would change in China. But British administration would certainly be needed for a long time beyond 1997. She was proposing that the two Governments should set out to consult and agree on how to achieve that: if they were successful, and she could commend the outcome to Parliament,
then the British Government would consider the question of
sovereignty. She was convinced that there was not so much difference between herself and Premier Zhao Ziyang as might appear from their
opening statements, or, to put it another way, there was much in
common between them.
Continuing, the Prime Minister said that she had noted that in the record of the conversation between Mr. Edward Heath and Vice
Chairman Deng Xiaoping, Deng Xiaoping had referred to the Nine
Point Proposals when referring to Taiwan. If the British and Chinese Governments could reach a satisfactory agreement on Hong Kong, this might act as an example for others in dealing with other problems which China had.
The Prime Minister said that the Chinese Government had a
principle about sovereignty: the British Government also had a principle, which ran strongly throughout the British character, about duty to those who for 140 years had put their faith, their future and their investment in Hong Kong under British administration. The British Government owed it to the people of Hong Kong
to reach agreement through discussion and consultation with the Chinese Government. Nor was it only a question of Chinese and British investors in Hong Kong: there was much international money invested there because of confidence in British administration, the certainty of the British legal system and the existence of the Hong Kong dollar as an international currency.
Did the Chinese Government suppose that a similar financial centre should be established under Chinese rule in, say, Shanghai or Canton?
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/ Concluding