18
TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 1993
Much as I admire my friend, the Governor of Macao, I am not sure that he would argue that we have very much to learn from the Portuguese experience of conducting its relationship with China during the transition to Chinese sovereignty over Macao. It is very different. The Portuguese during the Portuguese revolution took the view I recall that they should quit all their dependent territories. That was the background to subsequent discussions with China about them actually staying on and staying on until
1999.
There is
difference.
considerable
There were
differences in the scale and size of the two dependent territories and I suspect that some Portuguese officials would say that perhaps they have benefitted a little from being much smaller than us and managing to move along in the M-slipstream. I hope that their Joint Liaison Group is even more successful and expeditious in dealing with business than ours is.
JOHN DICKEY: Governor, in view of your differences with Beijing over whether your proposed electoral procedures are consonant with the base of law, is there not a good reason for the people of Hong Kong to be extremely worried that after 1997, any interpretation of the basic law will be totally one-sided?
Secondly, may I take it from what you have been saying this afternoon, that there is no question that if a point were reached where uncertainties over your proposed electoral procedures were causing damage to the prosperity of Hong Kong and to investment from outside, that you would in any way seek to modify your
proposals?
CHRIS PATTEN:
First of all, it is true that the
/INTERPRETATION OF