TNAG-0568-FCO40-701-Planning-paper-on-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 112

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continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

There

are two main risks: that the ideologues will gain ascendancy over the pragmatists in the Chinese Government that succeeds the present one on the death of Mao; and that there may be a struggle for power between the two with consequent disturbances in China similar to the Cultural Revolution which

spilled over into the Colony in 1967. The pragmatic arguments would seem likely to weaken over the years: but even so the Chinese might be persuaded of the advantage of a continuing separate status for Hong Kong as an outlet for her exports and centre for her invisible trade; and the disadvantage of any

^

attempt quickly to absorb a reluctant population accustomed to a different way of life to that on the mainland. On balance a sudden change of attitude by China seems unlikely but the long term trend is probably unfavourable to the prospect of Hong Kong's continued existence as a Colony, even if this is what

we ourselves would want.

10. A major consideration is the running out of the

lease on the New Territories in 1997.

On our

interpretation of international law, there is a

distinction between the status of the New Territories,

held on a 99 year lease under the Second Convention of Peking (1898), and that of the Island of Victoria, the southern tip of the Kowloon peninsula and Stonecutters Island, ceded in perpetuity by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and the 1860 Convention of Peking. However, the logic of the Chinese position that all three treaties were "unequal" and hence invalid makes the distinction more theoretical than real; and in fact Hong Kong Government policy in such matters as new towns is based on the recognition that the Colony is indeed a single entity (although Crown leases to private individuals in the New Territories are granted for periods of less than the remaining portion of the 1997 lease).

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