CONFIDENTIAL
convincingly demonstrate that we have violated the Joint
Declaration.
5. As the paper points out, there are a number of measures they could adopt, but only by themselves violating the Joint Declaration. We cannot rule out at this stage the possibility that they might choose to go down such a path; but my judgement is that they would do so only if further
provoked and pushed. If we can lower the temperature and avoid public pronouncements which further make them lose face, I believe that there is a good chance that they will turn away from the more extreme options available to them.
6.
There is, however, a risk that they might seek to bring to a head the issue of the loyalty of senior Hong Kong civil servants. They could say, publicly or privately, that
anyone who opted for British citizenship under the Nationality Bill would be regarded as disloyal and leave the
people concerned to draw the obvious conclusions about their
career prospects in the Hong Kong SAR Government. If they succeeded in demoralising senior or potentially senior civil servants in this way, a large number of them could leave
sooner rather than later.
7. For this reason it is vital that we should ensure that
the Home Office understand the need for flexible measures to cater for the special concerns of this group (see para 15 of the paper). It is by no means certain that this is the case. Rigidity on the part of the Home Office could make all the difference between the fifty or so key people in the Hong Kong Administration staying or leaving. What they do could have a knock on effect on many of their colleagues. This will be the subject of a separate submission in the
near future.
ARPanc
A R Paul
KEWABC/2
CONFIDENTIAL