CONFIDENTIAL
FM FCO
TO IMMEDIATE HONG KONG
TELNO 304
OF 311759Z MARCH 93
CONFIDENTIAL
HKCC 040/1
6
127720
MDHOAN 1041
RECEIVED IN ETCISTRY TOP COPY
APR 1993
REGIST
INFO PRIORITY PEKING, UKREP JLG HONG KONG
Q DIST ?
pa.
(BA
YOUR TELNO 456: BOUNDARIES
.
040/1
1 We have discussed this with our departmental Legal Adviser. It is a complex question and we recognise that we may not have the full picture here. But the balance of advantage as between the three options looks somewhat different to us. We would welcome your further views before we submit to Ministers. It will not now be possible to consult them before Easter. We would therefore be grateful if you could postpone putting this issue back to ExCo.
2. You list a number of significant advantages for the first option (a change to the existing legal boundary to bring it into line with the administrative boundary) in para 5 of your TUR. You also say that there would be no guarantee that such a legal boundary would be adopted by the NPC as the SAR boundary. It would surely be more difficult for the NPC to decide not to adopt the legal as the SAR boundary if they had already agreed with us on the legal boundary of Hong Kong? It seems to us to be worth doing anything we can to put obstacles in the way of an extension of the SAR to include Shenzhen, and this therefore seems to us to be a point in favour of the first option.
3. You List two disadvantages of this option. The first is that it would require legislation. We do not think that this would pose problems at this end. Our Legal advice (our telno 1327 of September 1992) is that this could be done by Order in Council. We believe that we could explain this to any MPs who expressed interest on the grounds that we were aiming to achieve an agreed boundary both up to 1997 and beyond. It may be that, as you say, Legislation would be more controversial in Hong Kong.
But as you note in para 7, there would also be questions in LegCo about the value of the second option.
4
The other disadvantage of your first option is that in present circumstances the Chinese are most unlikely to confirm an
1
PAGE CONFIDENTIAL