CONFIDENTIAL
Chinese living abroad with foreign passports as foreign nationals.
3. The Joint Declaration places the following restrictions on holding office in the SAR:
(a) JD 74 states that British and other foreign nationals may be
public servants except for heads of major government departments and
deputy heads of some (unspecified)..
(b) JD 46 states that Government and Legislature should be composed
of local inhabitants.
(c) JD 64 provides that judges may be recruited from other Common
Law jurisdictions.
4. The Basic Law further provides that the following posts respectively should be restricted to Chinese citizens: the Chief Executive, members of the Executive Council, principal officials of
the Hong Kong SAR, the President of the Legislative Council and the
Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal and the Chief Judge of
the High Court. It also limites to 20% the proportion of the
legislative which may hold foreign nationality. We have pointed out
to the Chinese that nationality restrictions on key posts may
severely limit the numbers of suitable candidates. However, we have generally accepted that the Chinese would wish to limit certain posts to Chinese nationals and that we cannot claim that this is in
contravention of the JD.
5. It is clear that Chinese leaders are very suspicious of our
motives. They appear to believe that by granting passports to key personnel we are seeking to extend British influence in Hong Kong
beyond 1997. We cannot expect them to support the package, but our
aim should be to dispel their suspicions as far as we can, and to
get them to say as little as possible in public.
International Support
6. Since announcing our nationality package, we have been taking every opportunity to encourage our partners and allies, especially
CONFIDENTIAL