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an ected governorship before 1997 are based on the advantage of promoting full local autonomy, which would carry on thereafter. There could be problems for HMG however if the need arose, before 1997, to exercise British authority (eg to put down local
disturbances).
An elected Governor might find that his position as
a Hong Kong "representative" conflicted with that as the Queen's
appointee. There could be difficulties over division of
In
responsibility for internal security and the answerability
respectively of the police and the Commander British Forces. Short
of unrest, political differences could also arise between London and
Hong Kong. One possibility might be to retain a British appointed Governor but to add an elected Chief Minister (with powers for defence, foreign affairs, and in an emergency, internal security reserved to the former). The problems here would be two-fold. the first place differences between London and Hong Kong would surface on the ground. The Chief Minister might still feel obliged to advise against a course of action favoured by London and the
Governor. The resulting political crisis would be little less than one in which London overruled (and possibly dismissed) a locally elected Governor. Moreover, such an arrangement would only be a half-way house to the full local autonomy which we would aim to see
continued after 1997. While we should seek a transition in which
the Governorship disappeared in 1997 and the Chief Minister became Chief Executive of the SAR, the Chinese might seek to use the
arrangement to allow a Peking representative to exercise the
reserved powers after 1997. Even if they held to their undertaking not to send anyone to rule Hong Kong, public opinion now would see as extremely risky the establishment of an outside British
representative to exercise the same powers as would be reserved to China after 1997 under an agreement.
5. In practice, if we could obtain Chinese acquiescence, a move to an elected local governor would be the most advantageous option for Hong Kong. The problem of the exercise of British power in the 1990's should not be seen in terms of a normal colonial relationship or even as analogous to the situation shortly before independence in
other countries. Order would be maintained on the one hand by the confidence inspired by the original agreement and by indications of
Chinese readiness to honour it, and on the other by the imminence of
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