CONFIDENTIAL
R Williams Esq
нин
UNITED KINGDOM MISSION
37-39 RUE DE VERMONT
1211 GENEVA 20
TELEPHONE 34 38 00
33 23 85
HNK 040/2
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
- 7 FEB 1986
DESK OFFICER
REGISTRY
Action Taken
C
Department of Trade and Industry
1 Victoria Street
London SW1
Dear Roy,
GATT:
CHINA AND HONG KONG
29 January, 1986
14/12
3/
2. Aiton dr. haghen Ryder of
Layden dr. Pune. m.
14.11
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on
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1. When I called on Arthur Dunkel (Director-General, GATT) last week I found him keen to talk about his recent visit to Peking. The Chinese were approaching the question of their "resumption" of GATT membership very methodically, and he saw his own invitation to Peking as the culmination of a series of steps designed to bring China back to the GATT. He had gained the strong impression that the exponents of economic reform in China saw this as one means of ensuring the reality and irreversibility of China's "open door" policy. The Chinese were well aware that negotiation of the terms for readmission to GATT could take as long as five years, and they were as conscious as other Contracting Parties that the fiction of "resuming their seat" would help to avoid a precedent being set for the admission of the USSR.
2. Dunkel said that the Chinese had made absolutely no mention of Hong Kong, although he had expected them to do so. He concluded that the Chinese knew what they intended to do and had no need of advice from the GATT Secretariat. explained that, in our view, the establishment of separate CP status for Hong Kong offered the best guarantee that China intended to honour its obligations after 1997. Dunkel took the point, but said that he did not think that Hong Kong's status was a problem for China and the UK; the Chinese had a good record for keeping their word. He suggested, as indeed he did to Anne Warburton (my telegram No 11 refers) that the real problem might be overcoming the
CONFIDENTIAL
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