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1. I originally asked Mr McLaren for a new basic paper on Hong Kong to replace that produced three years ago. I thought that this would provide a useful basis for the proposed visit by the Secretary of State to Hong Kong and China.
2.
Sir Murray MacLehose, with whom we discussed this idea last year, was not very receptive. He preferred to concentrate on the immediate question of the leases.
I accept that these
are of paramount importance but I thought then and still think that we need to give some consideration to our interests in and relations with Hong Kong.
3. In the light of Sir Murray's attitude and the way things have been developing over Hong Kong I agreed that we should drop the idea of a planning paper and substitute instead a review of the main issues which might provide the Secretary of State with food for thought before his proposed visit. Now that the visit has been cancelled there would be little point in putting the paper to our present Ministers but I think it could be used instead, as Mr McLaren suggests, as a forward-looking brief for a new government and I agree that it might be submitted to our new Ministers after they have been appointed. I would not think that this should form part of the main brief for the new Secretary of State but should rather be submitted initially to the responsible junior Minister.
4.
I should be grateful for the PUS's views on the paper and the proposed way of using it.
3 April 1979
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