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Redacted Under FOI Exemption Sec 27(1)(a)(c)(d)
G
H
(d) Leverage
The
12. The Peking visit is the point of maximum leverage. Governor strongly advises against trying to seek general assurances there while leaving the details to later. This will be a recipe for further very damaging delay. He will try to strike a deal before the visit. If he fails, or if the Chinese chose to delay their agrement until the Secretary of State is in Peking
then the advice is that it may be
7
necessary to take up to Peking representatives of the HKG (the Political Adviser and the Secretary to the Treasury?) to finalise the Peking-Hong Kong assurances in a parallel negotiaton.
Conclusion
He
13. I spoke to the Governor on the telephone last night. made one further point. The Secretary of State should not feel he has to adopt a purist hands-off approach on this issue. Chinese demands go beyond the question of Hong Kong's autonomy and strike at the heart of the Joint Declaration: that is a matter of direct concern to HMG.
We
14. The minute to the Prime Minister refers back to the earlier Private Secretary letter about the visit and is written against the background of the paper prepared for the seminar. The Secretary of State wanted to copy his minute to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor will not be aware of the issues, which should not directly concern him. The purpose of informing him of developments is to guard against Treasury alarm at ill-informed press speculation. do not intend to assume any financial responsibilities ourselves. But, equally, we do not want to damage our efforts to reach a deal by having to insert all sorts of written disclaimers of liability. I have spoken to Mr Michael Scholar, Deputy Secretary at the Treasury, to alert him to the issues, and I have offered to brief his people more fully next week.
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Andrew Buan
RA Burns