Dear
Am Adley
25 September 1983
The question of what will happen in Hong Kong in 1997 has in the past week or two become a critical one, because the Hong Kong dollar is depreciating by the hour due to uncertainty.
I am not concerned about myself of better-off people of any race, but about the workers who cannot buy their daily food at the steeply rising prices, or whose employers are going abroad and leaving them jobless.
China blames the British for their tough stand in talking about sovereignty and treaties, and in trying to separate sovereignty from administration, hoping to fly the Chinese flag over a British administration. The British delegation and its Government-appointed supporters on the Legislative, Executive and other Councils and bodies, blame China for insisting that sovereignty and administration are inseparable. While they argue, Hong Kong falls apart.
In my estimation, the only realistic approach is to admit that sovereignty and administration are both China's by right, and from that relaxed stand it may be possible to get some special status for Hong Kong which would ensure the stability and prosperity that both sides claim to be their aim.
Some hesitate on the grounds that they do not trust China. Right or wrong, there is really no choice because Britain cannot interfere in Chinese affairs. This hesitation, this open mistrust of China, increases tension rather than relaxing it. China is not Argentina, and Hong Kong is not the Falklands; they should not be treated as if they were.
There is, at the moment, a rash of Mainly Conservative Members of Parliament in Họng Kong, ostensibly to gather public opinion on 1997, but apparently absorbing only what the elite of the rich Chinese have to say. The elite, naturally, want to keep Hong Kong under British administration to preserve the privileges of their own families. It would be interesting to know how many of them have their money stashed away in the U.S.A. and their escape route all prepared. They can therefore afford to let the present crisis develop in the hope of winning concessions, or failing that, to leave. The workers, however, live from hand to mouth, and no regard is paid to their plight.
Members of Parliament are reminded that those Hong Kong people who visit London to talk to the Government, or who meet visiting M.P.s here in Hong Kong, are not elected representatives of the Hong Kong people, and their views should not be accepted as representative in any way. If they had ever taken sides with the Hong Kong people on any issue, they would never have been appointed to the high Councils of Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong's delicate situation, much is at stake: the future of Hong Kong, relations between China and Britain, and international political and trade relationships. It will require greater and less prejudiced politicians to find a solution than have yet emerged on the British side!
I enclose a rather prophetic address which I gave at the Rotary Club shortly before the situation reached its present crucial stage. No one openly opposed what I said, but some English and Chinese editorials agreed with it, along with Mr. Edward Heath's later statement that we must face realities and no one would mistake Edward Heath for a Communist. For the first time in history, a Conservative M.P.'s honest statement enraged Government-appointees in the Hong Kong Government.
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lay I ask British M.P.s and the Press to study this subject before our Hong Kong world falls apart or another Falklands crisis arises.
Encl.
Yours faithfully,.
E. Luott
Elsie Elliott, Elected Urban Councillor
since 1963