Background
CONFIDENTIAL
REFERENCES
BTC Hong Kong teleletter of 12 February:
Impasse over Macau airport.
B
C
Lisbon teleletter of 1 October 1990:
Resignation of Governor of Macau.
Minute of 12 April 1990 from PS/Mr Maude:
Record of Mr Maude's call on Governor of
Macau.
Sino-Portuguese Relations over Macau
1. In 1987 the Chinese and Portuguese Governments signed
a Joint Declaration on the future of Macau modelled closely on the Sino-British agreement. Macau will become a Special
Administrative Region on 20 December 1999. The drafting of
Macau's Basic Law is underway, though a final draft has yet
to be published.
2.
The tenth meeting of the Sino-Portuguese Joint Liaison
Group is scheduled for April in Macau. In the aftermath of
Tiananmen Square the Portuguese went ahead with their JLG
meeting in July 1989: we, by contrast, temporarily suspended JLG contact. The Portuguese considered that
their decision had borne fruit: the Chinese praised the
Portuguese attitude as an implicit rebuke to us. More recently however the Chinese have stopped using this stick
to beat us and indications are that they are again
frustrated at the inefficiency of their Portuguese
interlocutors (they have privately in the past compared
them unfavourably with our own team). Issues currently on
the Macau JLG agenda include: the Macau airport project,
international rights and obligations, currency, territorial
boundaries, television and localisation of the civil
service.
CONFIDENTIAL