TNAG-0777-FCO40-981-Involvement-of-Hong-Kong-in-air-services-agreements-1978 — Page 214

CONFIDENTIAL

Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1A 2AL

Telephone 01-

HKK 186/1..

INDLA

23

NO MAGS

Your reference

Our reference

234

R Impey Esq.

Department of Trade

Civil Aviation Division

Shell Mex House

Strand

LONDON WC2R ODP

Date

16 January 1978

UK-CHINA AIR SERVICES AGREEMENT

1. You asked me to what extent the briefs prepared for Tseng Sheng's visit ould be used for the meeting with Mr Liu on 19 January. We think it will provide a good basis subject to the following amendments which I have agreed with those interested here.

(a) At the end of Paragraph 2 add :

"Our position on accepting these conditions has not changed."

(b) Paragraph 5. Put a full stop after "now" in line 4, delete

the remainder then add :-

"It has not been clear how much weight should be attached to this and the assessment of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Embassy in Peking and the Government of Hong Kong has been that probably there has been little change in the Chinese position. This view was confirmed to some extent before Christmas during discussions with the Chinese on non-scheduled cargo flights into Hong Kong when they asked that no CAL aircraft should be on the cargo apron when CAAC aircraft were there. No response was made to this but no difficulty arose because CAL aircraft were not operating at the time the Chinese aircraft arrived. It is possible that there will be further cargo flights for which separation can be maintained by appropriate scheduling. Hong Kong will say that this is done because of air safety considerations thus not implying that we have conceded this point. While we cannot guess at the approach Mr Liu will adopt during his call it may be significant that the Chinese are now coming to us and that they have recently come to an agreement with Thomas Cook and Thompson Holidays for a massive increase in British tourists visiting China up to 5,000 in 1978 and possibly 10,000 in 1979.*

(c) For the Line to Take substitute :-

Line to Take

We shall be most interested to learn what Mr Liu has to say on this subject. As he will be aware, we have been keen to sign the Air Services Agreement ever since it was initialled and our own position is well known. We will consider carefully any proposal he has to make.

CONFIDENTIAL

/2.