}
Mr Garrett
CONFIDENTIAL
From:
A R Paul
Date:
14 January 1992
MEETING WITH LEUNG CHUN-YING
1
I had a meeting over dim sum on 13 January with Leung Chun- ying, former Secretary General of the Basic Law Consultative Committee and currently a Director of the one Country, Two Systems Research Institute. I was greatly struck by Leung's personal qualities - bright, witty and open, he has excellent English and is an outstandingly good communicator. He clearly has a very bright future.
2. He was disarmingly modest about the way he became Secretary General of the BLCC. It had all rather happened by accident: T K Ann had asked him to serve and he had assumed that he would be acting as little more than a post-box; forwarding views on the Basic Law to Peking. But the job had become much more than that and had consumed a great deal of his time. He had become the principla spokesman of the BLCC and had acquired considerable public prominence. Since then he had returned to his professional life, although he still keeps in touch with Basic Law issues, for example through the one Country Two Systems Research Institute.
3. I asked what could be done to remove suspicion between Britain and Chinese. He commented that, whenever this question was put to him, his stomach turned over. He was frankly not hopeful. He thought a realistic objective would be to consolidate the relationship at its existing level ie, to prevent it from deteriorating further. If we could achieve that "subsistence" as he called it we would be doing well. The reasons for the current uneasy state of relations were complex, but much of the problem lay in form and presentation. Each side should think more about the impact their words and deeds had on the other.
4.
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The key to a smooth transition was better Hong Kong-China relations. There should be more frequent contact between Hong Kong officials and their Chinese counterparts. He knew that this was already happening, but these exchanges should be deeper and franker: Hong Kong officials (including the police) should discuss frankly with the Chinese their worries about the future,
/ eg,
CONFIDENTIAL