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4.
Next, let us look at what Chinese officials said to us in the course of our past exchanges on this matter. Let me just take one example. In his messages of 18 and 31 January 1990 to Foreign Minister Qian Qichen Mr Hurd stressed the need for arrangements for constituting the "grand electoral college" to be "open and fully representative". we then set out five principles for the Election Committee, including a reflection of this point, and the Chinese side told us quite explicitly that they accepted these principles. One of the principles is that the EC should be as representative as possible.
Could
you please tell me how this principle could be met if EC members are not elected fairly and openly in Hong Kong ? Another principle is that the procedure for the EC's nomination of candidates to LegCo should be simple and open. How could that principle be met if the elections within the EC are not themselves fair and open ?
5. Finally, what have Chinese officials said, not in the course of our confidential diplomatic exchanges, but to visitors from Hong Kong and to the media ? As usual, I have a long list of quotations, but I shall confine myself for now to just two remarks made in the past year by Director Lu Ping.
6.
At a press conference last October, Mr Lu Ping said that he fully agreed that arrangements for the 1994/95 elections should be fair, open and acceptable to the people of Hong Kong. He went on to argue that the chinese side had worked for those precise objectives in the process of drafting the Basic Law. More recently at a meeting in June Mr Lu Ping
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