CONFIDENTIAL
MR MURRAY'S VISIT TO HONG KONG:
DISCUSSIONS WITH THE CHIEF
SECRETARY/ATTORNEY-GENERAL ON 24 SEPTEMBER
PROPOSED VISIT TO LONDON BY HONG KONG URBAN COUNCILLORS
1.
You may wish to seek the Chief Secretary's (and, perhaps, the Governor's) advice on the response we should give to proposals for greater democracy in Hong Kong, which we expect to be made by two delegations from the Urban Council who are planning to visit
London in the coming months.
Background
2. In June, two elected members of the Urban Council, Mrs E Elliott and Dr Denny Huang, wrote to ask the Prime Minister if she would agree to meet two delegations from the Council who are pro- posing to come to London, the first in the latter half of October this year, and the second (which will consist of a different group of members) in February and March next year, to propose certain constitutional changes in Hong Kong. Mrs Elliott and others have been campaigning for a number of years for an expansion of the Council's powers, for the phasing out of appointed members and for an extension of the franchise. They would also like to see elected members of the Legislative Council. After consulting the Governor,
we told No.10 that we thought it would be inappropriate for the Prime Minister to receive the delegations, but suggested that they might be seen by the appropriate FCO Minister of State.
3. All the available evidence suggests that there is little public support in Hong Kong for such reforms (although Dr Rayson Huang, Vice-Chancellor of Hong Kong University and an Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council mentioned in a private conversation recently that he was thinking of proposing that a minority of members of the Legislative Council should be elected). Nonethe- less, such proposals inevitably strike a responsive chord in this country particularly among parliamentarians.
4. The Government of Hong Kong have already gone to considerable lengths to establish formal and informal channels through which
CONFIDENTIAL
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