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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
Ms Grace Lui
Constitutional Affairs Branch
Hong Kong Government
Dear Grace,
Telephone 01-
14
HKC04-0
Your reference-
20 SEP 1990
CISTRY
Taken
26
Our reference
RIDAGS
Date
20 September 1990
TENTH EDITION OF JOINT DECLARATION ACTION CHECKLIST
23
1. I am most grateful to you for copying to me your letter to Carson Pigott of 19 July, enclosing a copy of the Joint Declaration Action checklist. I have taken some time to respond because I wanted to circulate the checklist to HKD desk officers and our legal advisers. We all found the checklist an extremely useful summary of the state of play on our various subjects and of the work which lies ahead of us. We have a number of points of detail, which I have listed below. Please do not hesitate to get in touch again if you wish to take up any of these points.
2.
General Section (C): we suspect there is a misprint in the third column ("incompatible" should read "compatible"). More substantially, we should have thought consultation with the Chinese necessary not only about titles but about many other issues which would fall under the heading "Structure of Government".
3.
General Section (E): badges and insignia have a certain symbolic value. The Chinese might well want to be consulted about the designs. I cannot imagine them reacting well to something being imposed by us.
4.
General Section (F): we suspect that column 5 belongs in the next subsection (G). Is there any need to replace the Letters Patent Article XIV? Would it not be needed until 1997, and simply lapse then?
5.
General Section (I): this subject is touched on in the 6th paper from the Governor's policy unit but more thought will need to be given to it. On (i) we shall need to consider carefully consulting or informing the Chinese especially if the intention is to reduce Government representation on statutory bodies (the Chinese are likely to see this as an attempt to reduce the SARG's influence).
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