CONFIDENTIAL
THIS IS A COPY THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN CLOSED UNDER
FOI EXEMPTION NO. 27(1). H012)
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LKY 16
Hong Kong
6. LKY said that we were not wise to be quarelling with Beijing over the Airport and he had indicated so to the Governor in October 1990. The nature of our position in Hong Kong was that our authority would inevitably be eroded day by day as we approached 1997 and it did not make sense to start a rumpus when Britain needed Chinese acquiescence eg for loans and also to use China's air space when flight patterns were changed, LKY did not understand our approach: talking about democracy and the legislature did not add up. Successive British Governors had been telling him since 1984 why they could not hold elections in Hong Kong. For the Chinese, Hong Kong would only be a subordinate legislature and they could easily let it wither, if only simply by stopping food supplies to Hong Kong. This was the nature of the equation. He still thought that we had been wrong in 1982: we should have sat it out and lived year by year. But once we had put 1997 on the table Beijing had had no option out of pride but to take it up. The Opium War was still felt to be a humiliation. Hong Kong was now losing between 50,000 and 60,000 executives each year. Only a few (2,000) had come to Singapore, simply because they decided, if they had to leave, that they might as well seek the wide open plains of Canada and Australia; they tended to see Singapore as being surrounded by mad muslim-men to the north and the south. Yet Singapore was doing what it could to help replace these executives; some 5,000 Singaporeans were now working in Hong Kong and Singapore companies with commercial interests there were encouraged to bring their Hong Kong executives to Singapore to work, thereby acquiring the right of permanent residence and giving them the opportunity to come to Singapore in an emergency if they so wished.
Lee Kuan Yew's Role.
7
Lord Fanshawe asked what LKY was doing with himself now that he had handed over. He said he was simply sitting back, having tea with his friends and chatting. He did not envisage going to live anywhere else: this was not a bad place and he had a reasonable pension. He saw Singapore's main problem as getting the younger generation to realise that growth did not simply happen and go on for ever: they had known only peace, stability and growth. But Singapore lived from a narrow base and if it were to break up it would be impossible to put it together again, like Humpty Dumpty. Singapore was really a fluke of history. He thought that Singapore would be alright
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PTAT