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(Defence Puthi Order;
Marc Law
From: JD K Grant
(199
News Department
Date: 21 August 1989
62/1
i
Mette PS/M Mande
Mr Gillmore
the Mclaren
Miss Marsie, HKD
Private Secretary
HONG KONG/CHINA: PLA IN HONG KONG
K 1.
201
The Secretary of State has asked (eg your minute of 16 August) about press coverage of our attitude to the stationing of Chinese
troops in Hong Kong after 1997:
2. This issue was firmly established on our public agenda by Sir Geoffrey Howe in his statement to the House on 5 July when he said that "we shall take up with the Chinese Government two matters of special concern
and, even more important, the question of the stationing in Hong Kong of Chinese military forces." This was said against the general background of the declaration of intent in
that statement that "It is of the first importance that the Chinese Government take early, tangible and sustained action to begin restoring confidence in China's intentions towards Hong Kong. We shall be pressing them strongly on this".
3. Press reports of the Secretary of State's meeting with the
Chinese Foreign Minister on 30 July in Paris made clear that the
Secretary of State had raised the stationing of troops with his y opposite number. Those reports also underlined the importance he
attached to China taking action to restore confidence.
4. Although we have chosen our words carefully in talking to the
press, our line has only really been susceptible to the
interpretation that we hoped the Chinese would, at least, restrict
the basis on which PLA troops were to be stationed. Thus, when a
Chinese official was reported as saying that troops would be based
in the territory (The Times' piece of 12 August about which the