PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
SIR PHILIP GOODHART, M.P.
6.3
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SWIA OAA
November 1st 1983
The Hon. Oswald Cheung, OBE, QC,
703 Prince's Building,
Hong Kong.
Thank you once again for your great kindness to Val and myself while we were in Hong Kong. I was once again enormously impressed by the skill and vigour with
which Hong Kong has responded to the challenges that it faces on every side, and I
hope that the discussions that are now taking place about the future of the new
territories and Hong Kong after 1997 reach a satisfactory conclusion.
I must admit, however, that I am not optimistic about the outcome of those talks.
I have great confidence in the skill of Sir Percy Cradock, but the public position
taken up by the Leaders of the People's Republic seem wholly incompatible with
the continued existence of a free and prosperous Hong Kong. And even if a satis- factory agreement were to be reached by the Autumn of 1984, there can be no
certainty that those in power in Beijing in 1997 will actually wish to stick to
the terms of an agreement reached now.
If there is no satisfactory agreement, I presume that a very large number of Hong
Kong residents would wish to leave. You are obviously far better informed on this
point than I am, but while I was in Hong Kong, the lowest estimate of the number of
people who might want to leave, in the face of the threat of a de facto Communist
take-over, was 750,000, while a number of estimates ran well over one million. I
have also heard it suggested that perhaps 250,000 Hong Kong residents might well
be able to find alternative homes abroad through their own initiative, and this
could leave half a million or a million people who fear the prospect of living in
a Communist dominated society, and who cannot protect themselves.
It seems to me that the British Parliament should now consider the nature of the
British responsibility for these people, and the way in which our moral obligations
may be met. Nothing that has happened since the passage of the British Nationality
Acts makes it more likely that it will be possible for the United Kingdom to take a