NOAA LÄBIL'LADI
overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in October 1976. The NPC as a body assed greater importance, and Ji was much in the public eye leading NPC elegations abroad. In 1979 he became Head of the Party's International Liaison Department, and for the years of his office there until 1982 he presided over a large increase in the width and substance of the Party's foreign relations. At about the same time
he gave up his NPC posts on being made a Vice Premier, in which post he evidently had responsibility for the conduct of foreign affairs. seems to have retained some of his former responsibilities, both in Party and government terms, when he retired from the post of Vice Premier and was made a State Councillor in 1982.
He
Ji has no obvious previous connections with Hong Kong.
For a short time in the early sixties, he was the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs responsible for relations with Britain. In June 1973 he became the first Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China to visit Britain, and met the Prime Minister Mr Heath and the Secretary of State Sir Alec Douglas-Home. It is not clear when he first assumed responsibilities for Hong Kong. He has not been one of the Chinese leaders who have regularly received visitors from Hong Kong. However his attendance at Deng Xiaoping's meeting with Hong Kong delegates to the NPC in June 1983 was a clear sign that he had begun to have an interest in Hong Kong affairs. His appointment as Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Office, which is formally responsible for coordinating all work on Hong Kong and Macao, was announced in August 1983.
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