A
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eclaration was working well. Both sides should do their best
to keep it that way.
Hu Yaobang said that there were two important questions
as regards Hong Kong. The first was the Basic Law which was now being drafted. He was confident that both Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would be satisfied with it. The second was
the handover in 1997. If a good job was done on working out
the Basic Law, this would guarantee a smooth handover.
The Prime Minister noted that both sides were satisfied
with progress on Hong Kong and agreed on the need to maintain
confidence.
B
East/West Relations
The Prime Minister suggested a general exchange on
East/West relations and the prospects for a further United
State/Soviet summit, as well as on China's relations with the
Soviet Union. Hu Yaobang commented that, as far as the summit
was concerned the United Kingdom knew more about it than
China. The Soviet side had never given China any information
about the last summit. The Chinese Government had only
learned about it from others.
In
The Prime Minister said that we were convinced that both
the United States and the Soviet Union wanted a further
summit. But it had to produce practical results and not be simply a goodwill session like the Geneva summit.
particular there would need to be agreements on arms control.
The most promising areas for such agreements were chemical
weapons and INF. On the former, the West had in practice observed a moratorium for a long time while the Soviet Union
had produced a large stockpile of chemical weapons.
On INF,
we sought a global solution. There would be no point in
simply allowing the Soviet Union to move weapons from Europe
to Asia. We did not wish to export our security problems to
Asia or increase the threat to China from the Soviet Union.
Talks on strategic nuclear weapons, on the other hand, were
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