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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
SECRET
нка
May 1988
Sir David Wilson, KCMG
Governor and Commander-in-Chief
HONG KONG
Dan Davil,
THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IN HONG KONG
1.
I must apologise for the fact that you have not received an earlier reply to your two despatches of 1 March. They have been read with close attention by
They offer a both Ministers and officials here. fascinating historical survey of the development of representative government in the particular circumstances of Hong Kong, and also draw attention to a number of
We important questions to be considered in the future. are all grateful to you for the clarity of your analysis. 2. It is instructive to consider the historical background in the first despatch from the "what if" viewpoint. If Sir Mark Young's ideas had struck more of a chord with the local community in the late 1940s and early 1950s and it is quite understandable that Hong Kong people then had more immediate preoccupations - might have been able to conduct our negotiations with China in the 1980s from a stronger basis of constitutional development in Hong Kong. "difficulties and dangers" identified by
But the
Sir Alexander Grantham were bound to be powerful inhibiting factors.
we
3. It is also instructive to look back, over only four years, at the 1984 Green Paper and the ideas that it floated, including the possible election of ExCo members
It was perhaps not and even of the Governor himself. only the Chinese Government, as you suggest, which was too preoccupied by the negotiations on the Joint Declaration to think through all the implications of the
The ideas put forward for discussion in the Green Paper. delayed Chinese reaction, when it came, gave us a much clearer recognition of the constraints within which the further development of representative government has to be pursued.
had
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