13 December 1993
PF Ricketts Esq Hong Kong Department FCO
INUL
Dear Peter
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HONG KONG: ELECTORAL ARRANGEMENTS
Summary
1.
Fairly hostile line taken by Chinese official, in talks with New Zealand Government, about Britain's policy on Hong Kong. But eventual agreement in the talks with Britain not ruled out.
Detail
2.
I took advantage of FCO Guidance telno 46 to have a session on 13 December with John Carter, Head of North Asia Division at the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I spoke from the guidance and left a version of the "for-use" bit with him. I added, referring to the reported remarks over the weekend by a Chinese official that China would not stand idly by if there were chaos in Hong Kong, that nothing we had done or planned to do was intended to increase uncertainty in Hong Kong, nor was it likely to have that effect. If anything gave rise to tension in the colony it would be the Chinese government's vague-but- threatening statement. Carter noted our views and said he would summarise them for the Foreign Minister and Prime Minister (if this sounds a routine remark, he claimed to have done an account for Ministers after each of the seventeen rounds of talks between Britain and China, which if true must be a record of some sort).
3.
Carter went on to give me an account of the discussions here last week during the visit of a Chinese Vice-Minister, Liu Hua Qiu, who had talks with the Foreign Minister, McKinnon. It may be worth recording the following in case it is new. New Zealand has good and frequent contacts with China and of course New Zealand threatens nobody, a fact which sometimes loosens the tongues of its interlocutors.
McKinnon began by asking Liu how the problem in the talks with Britain could be resolved. Liu claimed that
4.
/ Britain's ..
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