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Now although, Governor, you have called on discussions on these issues be taken up with China, you have done so for some time and there is still no result. But I believe that the National People's Congress is very shortly going to debate this explanatory or amendment or whatever to the Nationality Law which will become legally effective as Chinese Law.
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If there is no route through diplomatic channels will you consider perhaps through another channel, say the Preparatory Committee members, some of which sit on this Council, including myself who I genuinely feel that I have been able to to use your quotation of Chairman Mao "to speak my mind" in the Preparatory Committee - to through us to see whether we can do something to ensure that this result in explaining the Nationality Law is satisfactory and will dovetail with Hong Kong law in this regard. The time is so short and I believe the next opportunity will be towards the end of May at the next PC Meeting.
Governor: Not least because of his own experience in the functional constituency which he represents, the honourable member knows as well as anyone just how important this issue is to Hong Kong's self-confidence and to Hong Kong's continuing prosperity as an open society with the maximum freedom of travel.
Our position is quite simply this: in January, Mr Rifkind had a successful meeting with Vice Premier Qian Qichen during the course of which Vice Premier Qian Qichen confirmed that anybody who had permanent residency in Hong Kong before 1997 would have it after 1997, though both of them of course recognised that the precise way in which this was to be achieved had to be worked out in relation to the Basic Law and so on.
Now we very much hoped that that meeting could be followed by very rapid expert talks. It is not a question, or should not be a question, of high politics, it is a question of dealing with real administrative difficulties in a way which helps people in Hong Kong and helps people - the extended Hong Kong family in Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Unfortunately, those expert talks have not yet taken place though we have had leaks of what the Chinese position is and we have now had this interesting speech by Director Lu last week.
I don't know any more about the situation than that, nor do my officials, though they have and this is not because we are carping it is because our Immigration Department is eventually going to have to make this work they have literally dozens of difficult questions which we are being asked. Look at the newspapers. Look at the difficult questions which the newspapers are asking about these arrangements. Consider the questions which our Immigration staff are going to start having at Immigration counters before very long.