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CONFIDENTIAL
Conversation with Li Chuwen
I had a long chat with Li on the Sohmen's boat on 1 June. He started it.
Wu/Howe Meeting
2.
Li mentioned this: it had gone well and been a very useful meeting.
Li's personal future
3.
No departure date set.
Daya Bay
4.
Thus was clearly his Agenda Item. Li said that NCNA had noted reasoned and helpful statements by the Governor and other on nuclear safety. They were grateful. However, there was still some disturbing press comment, particularly in the local Chinese papers. This was a subject that risked being treated politically. The Chinese were concerned about the mud that was likely to be thrown at their civil nuclear programme generally. I said that the matter was certainly political in e.g. Germany. And naturally the disarmament lobby anywhere would seek to exploit nuclear plant accidents. But as far as Hong Kong was concerned our line was clear: we needed Daya Bay;
there were no conventional alternatives; the technology was quite different from Chernobyl and safe; and doubts were much better talked through than suppressed.
5.
I said the way to cure doubts was to demonstrate, as had recently been done for the SCMP at Daya Bay, exactly what was going on. In Hong Kong itself the spescialist lobbies had uttered in predictable form, but I had not detected major
CONFIDENTIAL