1.
2
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confess that the Portuguese were very sloppy about dates. He
had had to explain this to Zhou Nan. The Ambassador also
indicated that there was a problem of Portuguese face over
negotiating throughout in Peking. Also the Chinese were
insisting on describing the negotiations as "talks" (I was not
particularly surprised).
4.
In comment, I was pretty cagey. I explained that I
had not been part of the Sino-British negotiations.
JLG experience, the lessons there were that
Drawing on
a) one prospered by keeping the focus on practical
rather than theoretical matters; and
b)
it was worth taking time to prepare the Chinese
carefully for a new subject. We had made good
use of the time before and between JLGs in
this respect. I said that implementation was
by and large going very well. I had no doubt
of the Chinese wish to make a success of it.
5.
card":
Both the Governor and the Ambassador raised the "Taiwan
recovery of Taiwan was clearly a major Chinese objective
and the British had made skilled use of this. I said they were
probably right about the Chinese sequence of logic but I would
discourage the thought that the British had played this
particular card.
RB P.P.
(J. Boyd)
Political Adviser
30th May 1986
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