two
3.
My telephone conversation with Mr. Adley was
necessarily brief but I suppose inevitably rather acrimonious. He started off by saying that "The problem (of the currency and fear of the future) in Hong Kong at the moment was entirely of the making of Hong Kong people: that they simply would not stop making a fuss about their own future; that all their criticisms of Communist China were seen to be seriously insulting to the Chinese in Peking who felt it necessary to retaliate in self protection. I interrupted him to say that he was talking absolute rubbish: that the problem largely existed because of the repeated statements from Peking on the future of Hong Kong - statements which now surely had to be seen as being in breach of the undertaking of September, 1982, between Mrs. Thatcher and Deng Xiao-ping who had agreed that the talks would be kept confidential and that neither side would speak publicly of the talks other than through official communiques issued from the negotiating room in Peking. Ho refuted this and said it was quite clear to him and to China that the responsibility for the present problems in Hong Kong lay with Hong Kong people.
4.
He went on to claim that the broad masses of Hong Kong people wanted to see Hong Kong returned to China. Again I assured him that he was talking "total nonsense" and that all the indications from independent sources showed very much the opposite. At this stage he said that this is not what hẻ under- stood from Hong Kong people and from the Chinese. I asked what he meant by this and he said that a number of Hong Kong people had written to him congratulating him on his newspaper articles and television and radio statements. He also said that he spent a lot of his time shuttling between the Foreign Office and the Chinese Embassy discussing matters to do with the future of Hong Kong, I suggested that next time he went running off to see his Chinese friends it would be useful if he were to also make the point that statements in Hong Kong as to the people's concern for the future, arose entirely because of various apparently authoritative, but very damaging, comments coming out of Peking as to the future of Hong Kong.
5.
Our final few brief comments were to the effect that he claimed that there were three ways in which he could act :
(1)
say nothing. (I quickly said that obviously this had to be the best solution, but he replied, "I refuse to say nothing");
(11)
for Hong Kong people simply to ignore what Adley says; or
(111)
for Hong Kong people to accept what Adley says and play the game and get a reasonable settlement.
.../.