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surprisingly liberal, in essence the concept of a capitalist
system surviving in Hong Kong as an enclave in a surrounding
socialist economy. They do not recognise the vital defects of
their plan: that it lacks real guarantees or adequate detail;
and they are reluctant to admit that the history of China over
the last 30 years is bound to arouse deep suspicion of the
durability of any Peking assurances on the part of the inhabitants
of Hong Kong. They are convinced that their plan for Hong Kong will
be sufficient to preserve its prosperity, whatever the British may
say. At the decision-making levels they remain also deeply
ignorant of Hong Kong and suspicious of our motives: they continue
to believe that we extract revenue from Hong Kong; and that we
recently manipulated the fall in the Hong Kong dollar as a means
of bringing pressure on Peking. They find our declarations of our
moral responsibility to the people of Hong Kong baffling and
hypocritical; and they continue to think that in the end it is
British economic interests we are concerned about and that we can
be satisfied with some suitable commercial or financial quid pro quo.
11.
Deng himself is not only suspicious and ill-informed but
impatient. At 80 he realises he has little time left. He would
like to accomplish something Mao could not, the recovery of some
lost Chinese territory. Taiwan is for the present unattainable,
but Hong Kong is within reach; and particularly at the present time
when he faces internal opposition over Party rectification, he
needs tangible successes. We must accept that he will insist on
some announcement by the Chinese side in September 1984.
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8.
/12. The