TNAG-0752-FCO40-956-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1979 — Page 40

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PACIFIC COMMUNITY `

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governing the place; and the increasingly articulate and demanding population of Hongkong itself, whose interests do not always coin- cide with either those of China or of Britain. At the centre of this intricate arrangement stands the Hongkong government, led by British civil servants.

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The official Chinese policy towards Hongkong, for purposes of international consumption, is set out in the letter which the Chinese government sent on March 8, 1972 to the Chairman of the UN General Assembly's Special Committee on Decolonization. This defined Hongkong as a "part of Chinese territory occupied by the British authorities," and reserved China's right to settle the question "in an appropriate way when conditions are ripe" without the intercession of the UN or any of its committees. The argument could be paraphrased thus: that original acquisition of Hongkong, by Britain was improper and immoral under "unequal". treaties forced upon a weak Chinese government by a strong British gov- ernment, that for these reasons the treaties must eventually be abrogated or revised in order to fit better with China's self-respecɩ and national aspirations, but that meanwhile the status quo under them has in fact been respected by the People's Republic from the " very beginning and will continue to be respected until such time as the Chinese government is ready to take up with Britain the ques- tion of altering or regularizing the position. It is thus possible for a British minister to say that there is an "unarticulated understand- ing" between the three communities involved, in London, Peking and Hongkong, to the effect that "the status quo should remain

because it is of mutual convenience."

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What are the objectives of these constituencies for the future of Hongkong? China's long-term objective, it must be assumed, is to integrate Hongkong into the People's Republic and make it part of China's communist society. But this is to presume a lot, and it is quite within the realms of possibility that China may become gradually less communist in future as the years go by, or that the Chinese government may become progressively more flexible and accommodating on the question of how and when it might seek to integrate Hongkong. For the time being it is clear that the Chinese are making increasing use of Hongkong as a source of easy earnings of hard currency through the export of foodstuffs and other staple commodities for consumption in Hongkong and by

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