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Mr Galsworthy, Hong Kong Dept
Future of Hong Kong: White Paper
30
HKIL 040/50
fr lu2119
with your
The Secretary of State was grateful for the draft of Part One of the White Paper which you submitted minute of 31 August.
On procedure, he agrees with Sir P Cradock that he should put the final draft to OD(K), although he would also hope that they will not want to get too much involved with drafting changes. I agree that we should aim to do this at the OD(K) which is envisaged for the week beginning 10 September.
He very much hopes that Mr Luce will have an opportunity to comment on the draft before it is circulated to OD(K).
On the substance, you will see that the Secretary of State has made a number of suggestions on the draft below. His main points are as follows:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
he considers that in each case where we are referring to the joint declaration and its annexes we shall need to choose wording that will underline that the annexes are an intrinsic part of the agreement, not just "associated" with it;
the references in paras 2 and 3 to the Chinese Government need to be made consistent.
The Secretary of State suggests that we should refer once to the "Government of the People's Republic of China (referred to hereafter as "the Chinese Government")";
similarly, in paras 5, 6 and 7, the references to HMG and the Hong Kong Government also need to be tidied up;
(iv) in the passage describing the course of the
negotiations, the draft refers (para 10) to the decision not to seek continued British administration after 1997. It then records (para 11) that this was disclosed by the Secretary of State in Hong Kong in April. is concerned to avoid as far as possible any implication that this was a belated disclosure of a decision already taken;
He
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