Mr Ricketts
Reference
MR YAHUDA'S ARTICLE ON THE HONG KONG NEGOTIATIONS
1. I am in complete agreement with the comments by Mr Davies in his minute to you of 30 September. I suspect that some of the Chinese he has spoken to will be equally displeased with the way he quotes them in the article.
2. It may also be worth raising the following few points on which I believe Mr Yahuda is in error:
i) The main fault in the argument that the negotiations are structurally flawed in that only the FCO are able to participate is that the negotiations on political structure (which he identifies as the most important) have not had any set structure at all. There have been many players over the years most of whom have been based in Hong Kong. Most notably when they were on the Basic Law Drafting Committee Martin Lee and Szeto Wah played a very prominent role. The joint negotiating bodies do of course have a very rigid structure but there it may be worth reminding Mr Yahuda that 6 of the 14 participants at the last JLG were from HKG as are the majority of the participants in its expert groups and in the Airport Committee. All of the participants in the Land Commission are from HKG. Additionally all agreements in the JLG are first approved by
EXCO.
ii) It may be worth using John Swire and Sons as an example (via CPA) of a British interest in something less than the "Armageddon scenario).
iii) There is an inherent contradiction in saying that Deng cannot allow the Hong Kong "experiment" to fail without putting at risk the survival of the Communist party in its present form, and his statement that he would still be prepared to ruin Hong Kong to achieve full sovereignty. The survival of the Dengist Communist Party must be priority one.
iv) there are 5.8 million inhabitants of Hong Kong. It is not just the 5.5 million ethnic Chinese who consider it home. It is not true to say that all inhabitants of Hong Kong are refugees from Communist China or there offspring, this ignores both the 750,000 or so Hung Yi Kuk members as well as arrivals
yahuda.min
CODE 18-77