TNAG-0115-FCO40-151-Departmental-briefs-for-Commonwealth-Prime-Minister-s-and-ot-1969 — Page 43

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in the Far East and partly because of the difficulty of devising a

suitable electoral system for a Colony in which much of the popula-

tion at that time was not ordinarily resident and many residents were

not British subjects, In contrast to the general post-war desire for

representative and responsible Government in other Colonial terri-

tories, there is no general demand for constitutional change in Hong

Kong.

The Chinese, who constitute 98% of the population, are not

really interested in constitutional reform: their desire is to live

and work under a well-established system of law and order and to pur-

sue their own private affairs with a minimum of interference by

Government.

Informed opinion in the Colony is also aware of the

danger either that the introduction of elections would lead to open

political strife between Communist and KMT supporters, which would be

intolerable to Peking and might start reactions which would lead to

the end of the Colony's separate existence; or that public political

apathy would lead to complete Communist control of the Colony's

institutions, which would make our position impossible.

The lease of the New Territories expires in 1997 and there is

no likelihood that it will be renewed. Without the leased area the

Colony would not remain viable.

There is a school of thought (e.g.

in the Hong Kong Reform Club and the United Nations Association for

Hong Kong) which considers that the development of representative and

responsible Government in Hong Kong is possible. However, there have

been frequent and plain indications that the Chinese Peoples'

Government expect the "status quo" in Hong Kong to be maintained

and by this they mean that they would not accept any advancement

of the Colony along the normal progression towards self-Government

and independence. All the evidence suggests that any major

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