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placed great emphasis on the need to demonstrate its ability to act autonomously in all areas of activity which would fall to the SAR Government after 1997. This applied particularly to the ability of the RHKP, unaided by the military, to handle any and every internal security problem in the years before 1997. At the same time, the HKG still hoped that the example set by the British Garrison in its last years, in terms of both its size and its location, could influence the PRC to maintain as small a Garrison as possible, and one based outside
the urban areas. This pointed to a Garrison in the last couple of years of British rule which would have been no more than symbolic of
British commitment and sovereignty.
22. It is also relevant that at the time the 1987 Outline Withdrawal
Plan was being formulated, the Defence Cost Agreement (DCA) of 1981 had still to be renegotiated and sensitivities on funding influenced
views about the future shape and size of the Garrison.
23. The events in China in 1989, and their aftermath, together with
other developments, have led the HKG to the belief that the Garrison
should remain "stronger for longer" than it envisaged in 1987. These other developments include the negotiation of a DCA satisfactory to
both parties which extends to the end of the period of British sovereignty; the funding of the British Garrison has, for the moment
at least, become a less sensitive issue. Meanwhile incidents at sea
have involved challenges, of varying degrees of seriousness, to British sovereignty by Chinese Patrol Vessels in Hong Kong waters.
This coincides with the failure to achieve the expansion of the Police, and supporting Services, at a rate which was assumed in the
original plan. At the same time it is now clear (see paragraph 20
above) that there is little either the British
Hong Kong
Governments can
can do, by way of reduction and redeployment of
of the
British Garrison or by exhortation or any other means, to influence
the size or deployment of the PLA in Hong Kong after 1997.
24.
or
Moreover, while it remains as true now as in 1987 that confidence
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