30 April 1993
The Hon. Mrs Elsie Tu
55 Kung Lok Road
Kwun Tong Kowloon
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
London SWLA 2AH
From The Minister of State
Thank you for your letters of 15 and 17 April concerning the arrangements for the 1994 and 1995 elections in Hong Kong.
You will not be surprised that I do not agree with your assertion that Britain has never been able to get it right for Hong Kong during the last 150 years. I believe that successive administrations have much to be proud of. I am pleased that you at least recognise some of the achievements of Lords Maclehose and Wilson and Sir Edward Youde.
I find the bulk of your argument somewhat confusing. On the one hand you attack the British Government for not introducing more democracy sooner and on the other argue that until recently the majority of people in Hong Kong did not wish to have more democracy. The truth is that the Joint Declaration requires the Legislative Council to be fully elected in 1997 (indeed this is one of the reasons the JD was so well received in Hong Kong). For there to be a smooth transition in 1997 it is necessary gradually to increase the elected element of Legco before then.
We, of course, would have wished to have seen a faster pace of democracy in the Basic Law. Indeed in the exchange of letters with his Chinese opposite number to which you refer, Douglas Hurd made it clear that we would agree only to having at least 20 directly elected seats in the 1995 Legislative Council and we reserved the right to raise this issue with the Chinese at some future time. I cannot accept that the exchanges in 1990 constituted an agreement on the composition of the Election Committee for the 1995 elections. It is clear that the Chinese also did not believe that the composition had been agreed since as late as last summer Chinese officials were referring to the possibility of an Election Committee on quite a different basis.
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