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plenty of activities outside the Government/LegCo circuit,
which should play well.
3.
On many of his visits and calls, the Minister will be
looking to his hosts to brief him. We have therefore
focused the briefing on checklists for the key occasions on which the Minister will be expected to set out HMG's views:
the various meetings with local politicians (one composite
checklist); the meeting with Zhou Nan (Director of the New
China News Agency in Hong Kong: effectively China's
representative in the Territory) and briefings for the
press.
The main issues which are likely to recur in many of the
discussions are as follows:
4.
(i) The 1995 elections.
Miss Saunders to insert paragraph giving line to take.
(ii) Airport committee and Airport contract.
Mr Stone Ditto.
(iii) -Privatisation/Corporatisation
The Chinese are suspicious of all proposals to change the
structure of government. They fear that these are part of a
British strategy to sell off the family silver, or at least weaken HKG's control over aspects of Hong Kong.
a
They have
therefore opposed corporatisation of RTHK: We have consulted
them on HKG's plans (which are justified on economic
grounds) in the JLG. But we have also made clear that HKG X reserve the right in the 1st analysis to take the decisions
they think are best for Hong Kong. There are few if any
other corporatisation or privatisation decisions in the pipeline (indeed business criticises HKG for being too X cautious) One possibility might be the Kowloon-Canton
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