7447 D073840 101M 8/74 Cr.P.C. 839/3
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may well not be apparent for some years. We will also need time to assess its political stability and the character of its policies both internal and external (not least towards Taiwan) before we can determine the best negotiating posture. These considerations point to negotiations in the mid-1980s; but obviously the question will need to be kept under constant review in the light of the evolving situation in China and in the Colony. Delay is not without risk e.g. of a crisis in the Colony as a result of instability in China similar to 1967; but our experience of events then provides us with some guide as to the signs of approaching trouble and we need not be as unprepared (Annex A). And delay has advantages in permitting the possible evolution of a less harsh and idiosyncratie regime in China and a rising standard of living if the economy continues to develop as at present.
14.
It is premature to speculate on what our own attitudes, and those of the Chinese, will be at a date so far in the future. Some options are given in Annex B. Perhaps the most that could be said is that any arrangement designed to avoid the worst difficulties for us would need to offer sufficient inducements to the Chinese both political, to help them over the sovereignty issue and the 1997 difficulty, and economic. But there is no certainty that any approach, however
larded carefully timed and however spiked with inducements for the Chinese, would lead to a clear-cut agreement. They may calculate that any agreement would place them in a weaker situation and ourselves in a stronger than at present. They may seek to put us off with the flexible but vague formulae in paragraph 8 above and
expect us, as at present, to deduce their attitudes to the Colony by their actions. These might point to a wish for the present status quo to continue (which is not necessarily in our interest) or a wish for a gradual evolutionary change e.g. by the expansion of their economic, political and cultural activities:
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