TNAG-0229-FCO40-265-Long-term-study-of-future-of-Hong-Kong-1970 — Page 50

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

K(70)1

The circulation of this paper has been strictly limited.

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‡t is issued for the personal use of 5/5 foreign and Commonwealth Affeceris

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February, 1970

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MINISTERIAL COMMITTEE CN HONG KONG

ENT HONG KONG: LONG-TERM STUDY

Note by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

In the early months of 1969 officials completed a comprehensive study of Hong Kong in the long-term. This is the first occasion on which their report, circulated by me under cover of a note as K(69)1, has been considered by Ministers.

2. I shall not attempt to draw up a balance-sheet in respect of our continuing administration of Hong Kong. The advantages we derive and the liabilities we could incur in the short or longer term are carefully set out in the study. But this is not the central issue. What is crucial is that we have little freedom of choice about the future discharge of our responsibilities. Hong Kong is a special case in the political evolution of our colonial territories. We cannot attempt to bring it to any form of independent status, since this would be quite unacceptable to the Chinese. We must recognise that it will eventually be returned to China, and that the circumstances of the return are almost bound to be painful, both to the inhabitants of the Colony and to ourselves. The saliently gloomy features of the problem as they emerge from study are these:

(a) The Chinese Government have at their disposal

(even without the use of military force) the means of making our position in the Colony humiliating and intolerable.

(b) In whatever circumstances we abdicate our position, it

will be impossible to discharge all our responsibilities to the Hong Kong Chinese, cr to remove or protect all British and Hong Kong owned assets; and we shall in effect be abandoning some millions of unwilling inhabitants to Communism (of whom about two million are citizens of the UK and Colonies).

(c)

If we were to try to withdraw from Hong Kong prematurely, it is by no means certain that the Chinese Tould accept our renunciation of authority. They might attempt to force us to maintain a "puppet" British administration under their control.

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/ (a).