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under FOI exemption 27(1)(a)(c)(d)
of the British Government delegation;
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that no Hong Kong
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Chinese, official or unofficial, could be members of the
delegation; and that we had to be extremely careful about
the way in which we argued for the interests of Hong Kong. We could not say that this or that proposal was acceptable
or unacceptable to the people of Hong Kong. We did not wish to say that it was or was not good for the British.
Fortunately, the Joint Statement of September 1982 made it
possible for us to say that a proposal was or was not likely to promote the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong.
18. At any rate until late on, another political factor was the deep suspicion of the Chinese of our purposes, creating a tendency on their part to misread the import of what we
were proposing.
W
We shall have to continue to live
with the suspicion of the Chinese. But it is, I believe, very much in our interest to work to mitigate it by educ- ating people who matter in China about the way in which Hong Kong really works.
19. A third political factor was the concern of the Chinese with appearances. This concern meant that they were not prepared to negotiate a treaty as such with a foreign govern- ment about what they regarded as a part of China. It also meant that the detailed arrangements for Hong Kong after 1997 could not be set down in the agreement as the outcome of negotiation although of course that is precisely what they
are. These arrangements had to be presented as a gratuitous elaboration of China's own 12 Point Plan. During the negotiation, the Chinese had always taken care to present their responses to our working papers in this form.
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