XN000022-1995-10-23 — Page 8

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Question: I would just like to say that when I have been in Asia, one thing that has struck me about Hong Kong is that the press comes as a breath of fresh air. Do you feel that perhaps that the South China Morning Post should start with self-censorship and perhaps in 1997 will just report on what the Chief Executive said today?

Governor: One has to regularly remind oneself as a politician, as a governmental figure that even though it would wonderful if all the newspapers did was to celebrate your successes and report your words as you said them or as you meant to say them! Were that to happen it would perhaps be a reflection of a rather disagreeable society. Hong Kong enjoys a free press, it enjoys free speech, and in my judgment the greatest threat to those things is not the heavy-handed censor, but the self-censorship which you mentioned.

To be candid, we see examples of it already and that is the view too of many of the members of the journalist profession in Hong Kong. It underlines a point which I feel very strongly, that Hong Kong will remain an open and free society provided people want it to enough. It will continue to have a free press, provided journalists, editors and proprietors want that sufficiently. While there are examples of self- censorship, there are also examples of the press behaving as the press should in a free society.

Question: I think it was in September you caused quite a stir on Any Questions about suggesting passports for three million Chinese. You were probably misquoted! What was the reaction in Hong Kong to that broadcast or the reports of that broadcast? Also, what were the responses in China, if there was any response at all?

Governor: First of all, I was not misquoted! I delivered the remarks in our own ballroom in Government House. I am sure every house has a ballroom! It is our "Great Hall of the People"! We were doing an Any Questions programme to a packed audience, about 300 people, in the ballroom. It went very well. A question came up about Britain's responsibilities to the people of Hong Kong, whether they should have full British passports and the Governor of Hong Kong gave the answer which governors of Hong Kong had given ever since 1989. I repeated what had been the Hong Kong Government's position for six years, and therefore in the hall and in Hong Kong, a leaf did not drop! It was not remotely controversial since people would have regarded it as being amazing if I had said anything else.

It hit the United Kingdom on a slow news weekend with one or two 'rent a quote' MPs ('Would you agree Mr X that -?'. 'Yes, I would'. 'It's a monstrous outrage', says Mr X!). It became very apparent that people in Hong Kong knew more about the British Government's policy on the issue and the Labour Party's policy on the issue than perhaps the political parties in this country knew about our policy on the issue.