CONFIDENTIAL
UK/CHINA RELATIONS
6.
Dr Sohmen said that the forthcoming visit of Mr Maude to China would be widely welcomed in Hong Kong. People wanted to see the relationship improve. He doubted, however, whether the Chinese would be ready to compromise much on the nationality issue. His advice was the least said about that the better.
7. He was however, more hopeful that the Chinese would be more forthcoming on PADS. He added that with hindsight, it might have been wiser to take the Chinese into our confidence over PADS. But he could well understand the political need to make an early announcement to bolster confidence after last June.
CHINA/TAIWAN
8. Dr
Dr Sohmen said that he had heard that there might be the possibility of some political reprochement between China and Taiwan. Had we picked this up too? Dr Sohmen commented that in the short term that would not be good for Hong Kong, since it would deprive the territory of its traditional middle man role between the two Chinas. But in the long term, reprochement was very much in Hong Kong's interests.
THE LEASE
9.
I asked Dr Sohmen if he had ever had any grounds for believing that the Chinese might be interested in extending the lease on the New Territories (he had been a principal proponent of that idea in the months after the Tiananmen). He said that he had no evidence of this, and had floated the idea simply to see if there would be any glimmer of interest from the Chinese. It was now clear that there was no prospect of any interest, at least while Deng Xiaoping was alive. But when he had discussed it with him Xu Jiatun had taken the idea semi seriously - at least to the point of asking if the UK and Hong Kong Governments had drawn up a "blueprint" for the idea. Xu had apparently been surprised to discover that we had done nothing of the sort. Dr Sohmen recognised that his idea was viewed by HMG/HKG officials as batty - but it was no more batty, he ventured to suggest, than some other ideas that had been floated in recent months, for example the proposition that Japan would ever give Japanese passports to Hong Kong Chinese!
ARPanc
A R Paul
JONAEJ
CONFIDENTIAL