June/July, Shenzhen here the French went
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first, followed by the UK. Agreed thresholds,
including moves along the "capitalisation"
route, but the French did throw in a
"dollar option", whose mathematics confused
us if not the Chinese. But it was quite a
good example of a "feint" where the French, knowing all along that the Chinese would
insist upon the currency of the supplying country, wished to underline that concessions
were viewed critically by their authorities,
hence prepared to offer more in a lower
interest rate currency.
In this period, negotiations on Framatome
had stalled, because the Chinese drew in
some expert reports on technology and
price based on Korean, Taiwan and other
references - having used a US consultant -
that the French did not accept. On the GEC
side, there were still technical discussions
to clarify options and pricing of packages.
The Bank of China team, who had been away
from Beijing for three weeks by the time
the UK had been in Shenzhen a week, were
visibly impatient. And we had no problem
in concluding on the basis that we would
consider seriously further concessions
from our "authorities", but it was pointless
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