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B(174
C(180
elected Governorship, retaining an appointed Governor with a Chief
Minister below him and instituting an elected Governorship with cooperation with the Chinese through a joint group. It recommends
the latter course, although the arguments are very finely balanced.
The Ambassador's views
4.
Sir R Evans supports the fourth option. He believes that
some sort of deal could be struck with the Chinese involving their
acceptance of an elected Governor in return for our agreement to a
joint group in Hong Kong. He also considers that we would need to agree that other senior officials in Hong Kong should be chosen with
Chinese concurrence. (Peking telno 1152).
The Governor's views
5.
The Governor has now sent his own draft paper on the subject. (Hong Kong telno 1673). He disagrees with us on two main points:
(a) He does not accept that we should agree to a joint group in
Hong Kong:
(b)
He does not agree that we should consult with the Chinese about
the development of representative institutions, including the
Governorship.
He argues that we must have an elected Governor in Hong Kong before
1997 and from this proceeds to consider two questions: how HMG
exercise their residual responsibility after the election of a
local Governor, and how Chinese acquiescence in representative
systems of government could be obtained, without consultation.
6. Many of the Governor's arguments are persuasive, particularly
the value of establishing a complete system of representative government before 1997. However he seems to put too little weight
on the difficulties of maintaining British authority under our
elected Governor. I would agree with him that it will be the
proximity (in time and space) of Chinese power which will provide
the main deferrent to disorder, but he does not go on to apply the same logic and realism to the question of the joint group. We can expect it to exist; we need to control and make use of it and it
need not be more of an inhibition to representative institutions than the knowledge that the PLA are over the border. The key point
is that any system will require Chinese acquiescence.
We shall in
the long term do more for stability if we obtain it by some kind of
deal than if we attempt to impose our own arrangements for the
pre-1997 period against Chinese wishes. Here the Governor's
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