CONFIDENTIAL
5,
most of them the issue was not only investment, but whether their life-style would continue for them and their children after 1997, or whether they would be incorporated into a Communist state. In the face of such anxieties there was little point in telling them to set their hearts at ease.
10. The land lease proposal was put to the Chinese more formally in July of that year. In September, the Chinese Government formally rejected it as "unnecessary and inappropriate". This indicated that it would be difficult to blur the deadline of 1997: the Chinese would either have to acquiesce in British administration continuing beyond it or they would insist on a significant measure of change. Either way, the problem could not be dealt with by sleight of hand.
11. By the spring of 1982, the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils were beginning to seek a voice in the future. At the ceremony at which I was sworn in on 20 May that year the Senior Unofficial of the Executive Council sought confirmation that I would recognise the future as the most important issue then facing Hong Kong. There was also a growing expectation, and indeed a demand, that the issue should be addressed during the Prime Minister's visit to Peking scheduled for September.
12.
There was no doubt at all about what the population of Hong Kong most wanted. It was the continuation of British administration and of the link with the United Kingdom. This was not because they relished colonial rule; national feeling runs deep even in Hong Kong. It was because the link with Britain, a liberal democracy, provides for them the guarantee of similar freedom under the law in Hong Kong. Thus they saw British administration as an "insulation" between them and Communist rule. For their part the Chinese
/were active ..
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