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Chinese were behaving in conformity with their Own autonomy laws there. Sir John Coles said that we were in
We would have to think very
a very similar position.
human rights delegation went to
hard about whether our human
Tibet. We would not wish to insist that they did so at the risk of prejudicing the entire mission.
14.
But
Sir John Coles said that the Chinese were particularly sensitive about Taiwan at
Taiwan at the moment.
there was business pressure for us to do more. Mr Redwood had recently been the first Ministerial visitor from the UK to Taiwan, on an ostensibly private basis. The Chinese had made surprisingly little fuss about this. We were also in the process of upgrading the ATTC, and were looking at our policy on arm s sales to Taiwan, where we had been very cautious. We needed to avoid any
adverse reaction on our dealings on Hong Kong. Herr Schlaginweit said that Germany had strict rules on its dealings with Taiwan eg no Ministerial visits not even private, and private visits only at senior official
level. But the rules were not observed: business
pressure meant that Ministers went anyway. The Minister
of Posts had visited Taiwan and the Minister of the Economy had recently announced that he would receive his Taiwanese counterpart. This had been against MFA advice. Germany had also made s ome concessions eg allowing the Taiwan office in Germany to stamp visas issued in Italy. Taiwan wanted to establish air links with Germany. Lufthansa was interested in pursuing this. China had insisted that they should be consulted and that Lufthansa's possible involvement was a particular
problem. No consultations had yet taken place. Seaton described the current state of play on Our talks with the Chinese over
air
links with Taiwan and
emphasised that British Airways, although it was
Mr
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