TNAG-0124-FCO40-160-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1969 — Page 40

Relivin

to Luv pod She

THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HER BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT

The circulation of this paper has been strictly limited.

141

It is issued for the personal use of Sec. of State Foreign and CommonwEW THE

SEE ORDER TOOK

K(69)1

28 March, 1969

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Copy No..........

4

Affairs

HONG KONG. DEPARTMENT

TO SIR AND E

11.4.69.

ENTE

CABINET

MINISTERIAL COMMITTEE ON HONG KONG

CAS No 11

destraged

Dove &

HONG KONG: LONG TERM STUDY

Note by the Secretary of State for Foreign and

Commonwealth Affairs

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I am circulating herewith, for consideration at a meeting

of the Committee, a copy of an interdepartmental study by officials on future policy in regard to Hong Kong.

2. An interim report (OPD(67)61) was prepared in July 1967 on the prospects for withdrawal from Hong Kong if it were suddenly forced upon us. Officials were further instructed (OPD(67)20th Meeting) to examine policy towards our tenure of Hong Kong in the long term, on the basis that we could not rely on remaining in Hong Kong on present terms until the lease of the New Territories lapsed in 1997 and should therefore consider what adaptations of its status might be possible and desirable after the conclusion of the present conflict in Viet-Nam.

3.

Responsibility for implementing these instructions was assumed by the Cabinet Office and carried out by a small group of the Defence Review Working Party. The Working Party's report, although substantially the work of departments of the former Commonwealth Office and Foreign Office, is therefore an interdepartmentally agreed study. It was prepared in consulta- tion (as opportunity offered) with the Governor of Hong Kong and Sir Donald Hopson, former Charge d'Affaires in Peking.

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