HONG KONG GOVERNMENT OFFICE (LONDON)". TRANSCRIPT
Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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Witnesses:
Sir Percy Cradock
Sir Alan Donald, and
Sir Richard Evans
Chairman (Rt Hon David Howell):
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INDEX
We
welcome
+
this
morning Sir Percy Cradock. Sir Percy, thank you very much for agreeing to come before us this morning and discuss issues
related to our inquiry about UK/Chinese relations up to and beyond 1997, and, of course, central to those relationships is
the matter of Hong Kong. We are extremely grateful that you could come to us this morning. You have been ambassador to the Peoples Republic of China up to 1983 and have played a central role in the negotiations leading up to the joint declaration and
have held central advisory roles to Government and to Prime Ministers since then. So you are obviously superbly equipped to
share thoughts with us on the problems and possibilities.
I understand, Sir Percy, that you would like to make a short
opening statement and we would be very happy if you wished to do
that. After that perhaps we could go into some questions.
Opening statement by Sir Percy Cradock
Thank you, Chairman. I am very happy to come and answer questions which you and your colleagues may wish to put As you say, I have a very short opening statement which
to me.
I will now give you.
Since my memorandum of October, which I think is in front
of you, the Hong Kong situation has greatly worsened.
As you
know, the constitutional talks have broken down, the Governor has
announced that he will table unilateral legislation in the next
weeks, and the Chinese government have said that there will be
no more talks and they have repeated that they will dismantle a
legislature in 1997 and undo any unilateral legislation. We now
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