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opposition in Hong Kong after 1997. The divisions that had always been in Hong Kong relating to the teras of the Joint Declaration regarding the handover of power to China in 1997 came to the fore with greater intensity.
The very size of Hong Kong and its clear dependence on trade and growing trade with China ensures a consensus that "the business of Hong Kong is business" to borrow a US American saying, nevertheless there is a considerable split in Hong Kong politics between a business interest and a liberal professional one. The business interest is hypersensitive to the need • whatever abuses of human rights take place in the PRC, to placate the leadership in Beijing. Whilst not insensitive to the need to accommodate the leadership of the PRC, the liberal professional activists, and trade union activists have felt increasingly moved to protest on behalf of the fellow Chinese in the PRC and by the same token to ensure their own democratic rights after 1997. The more rights they can establish before 1997, the stronger their hand will be after 1997, they believe.
It is significant that in the elections to the Legislative Council in September 1991 it was those candidates who were most closely associated with the pro- Democracy movement who did best.
The question now remains whether these elected representatives can in fact gain any further concessions from the UK and PRC governments.
Since the events of Tiananmen there has been some subsidence of political unease leading commentators to describe the UK/PRC agreement on the future Hong Kong airport as being the start of a new phase of Hong Kong/China relations. In the negotiations the Chinese PRC government successfully argued that although the Joint Declaration did not entitle them to interfere in Hong Kong before 1997, nonetheless decisions taken during that time would affect the discharge of China's duties after 1997. This was particularly the case in the financial arrangements of the airport scheme, where the PRC expressed apprehensions that financial commitments binding on the PRC after 1997 would be undertaken without the proper consultation of the PRC now. The UK government conceded this point. In Hong Kong itself, the agreement on the airport was greeted with some relief and adjudged as a sign of a more pragmatic intention by all parties to Hong Kong's futura. It is your rapporteur's assessment that the mood in Hong Kong has moved from overconfidance in the period before Tiananmen, to gloom in the immediate aftermath, to a more nature and realistic optiniam following the airport deal.
Hong Kong has been the best place for westerners to "China watch" and the degree of sophisticated knowledge of Chinese affairs at hand in Hong Kong is unmatched elsewhere. The continuous dialogue on the future of Hong Kong does give us an excellent indicator as to the mood of PRC politics itself. Though internal politics remain obscure to us, the way in which Hong Kong is treated is open and therefore the PRC's behaviour towards Hong Kong is an accurate barometer for the much hoped for political liberalisation in China itself.
The political unease after the Tiananmen massacre has lead many Hong Kong citizens to seek residential and nationality qualifications elsewhere. Many countries have offered skilled Hong Kong workers favourable terms of settlement, from the routine and expected, for example Australia provided easy access to allow the recruitment of air traffic engineers, to the bizarre situation where the moribund German Democratic Republic (GDR) offered passports at a price during the period of German unification, so that the recipients would be able
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7.
PE 156.153/rév.