XN000022-1993-05-08 — Page 9

SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1993

principle, as well as for strictly utilitarian reasons. It happens to be similar to the case which Chinese officials are at present--at present putting.

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It's--very agreeable to find myself in such good company, but you know as well as I do that because of the close intimate symbiotic relationship between Hong Kong and the Chinese economy, between Hong Kong's success and China's continuing economic opening, you know that because of those things anything which damages China's economy, anything which restricts trade between our two most important trading partners is potentially worrying and damaging for us.

QUESTION:

Do you think [

and [ 7

break his campaign promise on China

] if he's going to actually do what hà wanted to do? [?] What do you think he'll be able to [? the issue as it were so that he can and do what you want him to do? [?]

GOVERNOR PATTEN:

?

7 ]

1 up on China

I think that were I to set up in business monitoring campaign pledges and their subsequent implementation, I might be in danger of crossing over that border line between the acceptable behaviour of a guest and the unacceptable.

I'm sure that the President was entirely honest in what he said during the campaign and will be entirely straighforward in his attempts to turn that into policy.

He's got many factors of which he has to take account. He's got to take account of feelings in a predominantly Democratic Congress, he's got to take account of feelings in the country and a number of organizations who are pressing him on, for example, human rights cases.

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He has to take account, I'm sure, of what he's told about weapons proliferation and the impact on a very sensitive situatión in the Middle East and elsewhere, and he's got to take account, doubtless, of the sort of expressions of view from the business community which were faithfully recorded without any elisión in The New York Times this morning, so he's got a lot of factors to weigh up a demonstration that governance and taking decisions in government is tough and nowhere more so than in the United States.

I

I'm sure that he understood my argument, that almost the most important factor for Hong Kong's long term success, stability, prosperity is the state of the relationship between China and the United States. Frances?

/HE HOPES