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TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 1993
rather longer than it should do to reach agreement on financing an airport, even after the British Prime Minister has flown around the world to discuss it with his opposite Chinese number, I am not sure that those are questions for Hong Kong Government officials. They are questions which Chinese officials have to answer and they are issues which Chinese officials have to explain in the context of their repeated committments to Hong Kong's well being.
Of course, we do not wish to do anything in Hong Kong which does other than promote Hong Kong's prosperity and stability, What would undermine Hong Kong's long-term and medium-term prosperity and stability is if we did things which connived at the undermining of the rule of law, which connived at establishing a rubber stamp legislator rather than a credible legislator, All those things would have economic consequences.
Lastly, I say what I have said before. We do not want to go further or less far than people in Hong Kong wish to go. I wish that their judgments on these matters could be made in a rather calmer atmosphere in which matters in dispute were dealt with by national discourse rather than by raiding the equivalent of Roget's Thesaurus for new words of abuse.
SPEAKER:
After 1997, could not Hong Kong become an
Anglo-Chinese condominium?
Anglo-Egyptian situation- 1
CHRIS PATTEN:
I have in mind a comparison with the
Were I to Answer that in the
affirmative, anything you have read so far in the People's Daily
would pale into insignificance!
/NO. I
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