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At the time the White Paper was published in November 1984 the Chinese did no more than take the studiously correct public line that this was a matter for the British Hong Kong Government. Even privately, they only said that they reserved the right to comment on anything they did not like.
26.
From that point onward, however, the Chinese attitude to rapid constitutional change in Hong Kong hardened steadily. In May 1985, XU Jiatun, the Director of the Hong Kong branch of the New China News Agency (in effect China's senior representative in Hong Kong), told Sir Edward Youde that the development of representative government had to be handled very carefully. Other signals followed. By August XU was talking publicly about the fears of "some people" that reforms might come too suddenly and go too far. In October the Chinese Prime Minister, on a visit to London, expressed similar concern directly to Mrs Thatcher. The Chinese started pressing, against initial resistance on our side, for discussion of the whole issue in the Joint Liaison Group. By November XU, giving his first ever press conference, said that the post-1997 political system would be determined by the Basic Law and that it would be unfortunate if, meanwhile, a system were to be developed which would be incompatible with the Basic Law. He spoke of "some tendencies to act not in accordance with the Joint Declaration".
27.
These remarks caused immediate and widespread concern in Hong Kong, and a sharp drop in the stock market index. Alarmed by the reaction, the Chinese began to take a more conciliatory line. But their concern was now a matter of public record.
28. The Chinese arguments against early political reform, and in particular against the introduction of direct elections in 1988, were two-fold:
(a)
that the future political system was for them to stipulate in the Basic Law which, under a timetable announced in July 1985, would be produced in first draft form in 1988 and passed in 1990; that the Basic Law should not be pre- empted; and that in any case they did not yet know what it would say on this complex question; and
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/(b)
THIS IS A COPY THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN
CLOSED UNDER
FOI EXEMPTION NO...27(1)