from the Law of the Sea Convention 1982. Our conclusion was that the Territorial Seas Convention may be too sensitive as for the Chinese. The Continental Shelf Convention is of little practical use to Hong Kong given that there is no Continental Shelf off Hong Kong. The few provisions which would be of benefit to Hong Kong ships (the provisions in Article 5, paragraphs 1, 5 and 6) are perhaps of insufficient benefit to justify the continued application of this convention. The High Seas Convention may well, however, prove useful if it were to continue to apply to Hong Kong after 1997. While it is a codification of customary international law, it would give Hong Kong ships additional protection as regards the parties to this Convention. To sum up, since these conventions are declaratory of customary international law, there may be no great loss if they are not applied to Hong Kong, with the exception of the High Seas Convention which would confer benefits on Hong Kong ships as regards other parties to the Convention.
It may however, be that the Hong Kong Government takes the view that there are insufficient practical benefits to Hong Kong to argue with the Chinese for the continued application of this Convention. If, on the other hand, it is considered that there would be practical benefits, it would be worth trying for its continued application. (Problems to do with state-owned ships and war ships may perhaps be overcome by reservations). The assessment of practical benefits would seem to be a matter which the Hong Kong Government is better able to make than HMG.
I accept the proposed deletion of item 15.16 which is about the compulsory settlement of disputes.
4.
5. As regards paragraph 7 of the paper on the UN Charter and the Statute of the International Court of Justice after 1997, the Benefits section does not really make out the case as to why the Charter and the Statute should apply to Hong Kong after 1997. The Chinese are likely to say that this is a matter for them to decide. I would nevertheless like to replace the second sentence in paragraph 7 by the following sentence.
"The Charter, together with the Statute of the International Court of Justice which forms an integral part of the Charter, is an international treaty of fundamental importance and since it applies to all the territory of a party it would put beyond doubt the issue as to whether the Charter and Statute apply also to the HKSAR if our two sides were to agree that the Charter would continue to apply to Hong Kong after 30 June 1997."
An example
You may well be able to improve on this sentence. of a practical benefit is that the PRC would be able to implement mandatory Security Council sanctions in respect of the HKSAR if the Charter applied to the HKSAR.
2
/6.