SECRET
01/6/1
037
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
pa
Brite
Taper
49
BY FAX
14 December 1993
Peter Lai Esq
Deputy Secretary for Constitutional
Affairs
Government Secretariat
Lower Albert Road
Hong Kong
Dew Poker.
WHITE PAPER: KEY POINTS
London SWIA 2AH
Telephone: 071-
THIS IS A COPY
THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN
CLOSED UNDER
FOI EXEMPTION NO. 27......
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Many thanks for sending us with your letter of 14 December your draft key points paper.
We thought that this was basically fine (as Jiang Enzhu would say). We had two points of substance, and a couple of drafting suggestions.
The points of substance were:
The final tiret on page 2. As we said in commenting on the draft of the Governor's 2 December statement, we think that you are over-stating the importance of this point.
We would
therefore prefer to focus on the two substantive reasons (which are also those given in the Governor's and Foreign Secretary's statements).
-
Second tiret on page 4, the phrase "the Chinese side would not confirm that they (ie members of the EC) would be returned by election". It is equally true that they did not confirm that they would not be returned by election. It would be more accurate to say that they declined to discuss how the first three sectors would be formed until agreement had been reached on the FCs (see paragraph 38 of Peking telno 51 to Hong Kong). You could add that one effect of the Chinese proposal on composition of the EC was that a large part of the fourth sector would not be openly elected in Hong Kong.
lt.white14.PETER
JEB
SECRET