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two rounds of talks in June, and that in the course of these the two sides should discuss all the substantive issues on the table so that decisions can then be taken on how to move forward. That would maximise the chance that by the end of June we would be in a position to judge whether a visit by the Secretary of State on return from the Tokyo G7 Summit would have any prospect of being useful.
6. There is no certainty that this tactic will produce the right answer. But by keeping the Secretary of State in reserve at this stage, it avoids the risk of devaluing the currency of messages from him to Qian (the last one he sent was played with a dead bat). Looking slightly further ahead, I think it is increasingly clear that we will not get detailed ideas from the Chinese side. At most, they will go through each of the electoral issues dressing up the "points of principle" they have already given us as comments of substance. It will be particularly difficult to get the Chinese to say anything useful on the through train. Ministers will therefore have to decide sooner or later whether they are willing to draw a line under the efforts to smoke out the Chinese position, accept that we have only obtained a very sketchy account of their approach, and authorise Sir R McLaren to start the real negotiation by offering changes to any of the Governor's proposals. This will be a particularly sensitive moment, although it was striking that no-one in ExCo demurred when the Governor gave some very broad hints of the areas in which he was prepared to compromise. In my judgement, we will have reached this position after one or at the most two more Rounds. A visit
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