SECRET
INTERNAL POLICY
General Considerations
20.
On the above assumptions, HMG will continue to be constitutionally responsible for Hong Kong for some time to come. In discharging this rèsponsibility we must aim at an administration in Hong Kong which reconciles as far as possible five rather different requirements:
What is.
(a) the material and social well-being of the people
of Hong Kong must be advanced as far as possible;
(b) the Secretary of State must be able to point to action which meets reasonable criticism from Parliament, the Labour Party and the TUC;
(၁)
in Hong Kong
my should not be such as to cast a olur HMG's international reputation as the metropolitan-power
must be upheld; the patation internat al sequitation of the United
(a) a maximum degree of economic progress and tranquillity in the Colony, and international respect for it, must be achieved during the run-up to the proposed attempt to negotiate about its future with the Chinese in the mid-1980's;
(e) the Chinese must not be given grounds for believing that we are attempting to disturb their interests in Hong Kong by changes in the basic political and economic (but rather less the social) characteristics of the Colony to which they have become accustomed or which are of importance to them or their followers; this is a consideration of particular force in the period of uncertainty which has begun in China.
Labour Legislation
21.
The most obvious field where these requirements can be and should be met is that of labour legislation. Given the weakness and fragmentation of the trades unions, (see Annex C paragraph 22) there is a particular obligation on the Hong Kong Government to safeguard the position of wage earners by providing progressive labour legislation, with a strong Commissioner of Labour's office and
effective conciliation and factory inspectorate services. The objective should be to achieve conditions at least up to the best Asian equivalent (excluding Japan) within 5 years. This, as already
/planned
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SECRET
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