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SECRET AND PERSONAL
He saw the solution in strengthening Aston's outfit,
so that where you were inhibited by your
responsibilities to Hong Kong from taking a wholly
pro-British line, Aston could do something to fill
the gap.
6. We have argued that this line of thought could be
dangerous. There might be advantage in an expanded
PR effort in Hong Kong to counter the impression of
But we
Britain as a decadent and inefficient society. were bilateral WKI Hong Kong points are involved, we must not get into a position of apparent conflict
even it this means that the
Bitish case 's
sometimes less than fully argued to the people of Hong Kong
with you as the Queen's representative. This means
hich
This is
that where there are points of potential conflict exist between Britain and Hong Kong we must leave it to
your people to put the best construction on our
actions that is possible in the circumstances.
constitutionally night but also because partly because, if it was once accepted that putting
the British case was Aston's job, there would be even
less pressure on your officials to do so themselves.
7. I am sure you will agree that this is the right
way to tackle the problems of Britain and Hong Kong.
But if we are to convince people here that this policy
works, we have to be able to show your people actually
going out of their way to put the British case, even,
sometimes, at some marginal cost to their own
credibility. A recent case in point may have been the
Your people put out a press
release, and Jordan very fairly explained it to
Legislative Council. But we might have done more to head off the discontent that is now apparently being
beginning to be expressed in the Hong Kong, industry,
if the Hong Kong Government could actually have
welcomed the declaration, recognising that in practice
/it was the best
EEC GSP declaration.
SECRET AND PERSONAL
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