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Mr Samuel
CONFIDENTIAL
CHINA VISA OFFICE IN HONG KONG
1.
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8717/5
For the sake of the record, you may wish to have the following supplement to the argumentation set out in Mr McLaren's submission of 3 August.
2.
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We in FED had supported from the outset the principle of agreeing to the Chinese request for the establishment of a Visa Office in Hong Kong. But in the early stages all concerned at home and in Hong Kong had underlined the fact that what was envisaged would not involve the opening of an office with a title which could imply some sort of official representa- tion of the Peking Central Government in Hong Kong. When therefore the Chinese came up with their request that the office should be described as the Hong Kong Visa Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, it seemed to us that were we to agree, we might be seen to be crossing over the narrow line and conceding the principle of official PRC representation in Hong Kong. We could also envisage something like a scenario in which some years from now the Chinese would suddenly tell us that they had withdrawn their "diplomats" from the NCNA office and replaced them with bonafide journalists, while simultaneously insisting that their senior representative would now be the Foreign Office official heading the Hong Kong office (however designated) of the MFA of the PRC.
3.
We wondered therefore whether we ought to try to extract some concession from the Chinese in return. However it soon became clear that all that we could realistically ask for in return for the rather small move contemplated over the Visa Office would be rather intangible, unless we were
unless we were to make a great song and dance about the title. But this would have drawn undue attention to a point which we wished to handle discreetly, particularly in view of the need not to jeopardise the delicate state of the search for Chinese acquiescence in what Hong Kong needs on the question of leases.
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At this point we despatched FCO telno 616 to Hong Kong and received reassuring replies from both Peking and Hong Kong. Subsequently HKGD and we agreed that the best way to exploit any concession of principle which we might appear to have made, would be to refer to it subsequently if we should want to press for a concession by the Chinese: for example, asking the Chinese, who have now acceded to the Vienna Consular Convention, to negotiate a Consular Agreement with us and/or to agree in principle to the opening of a Consular Office in Shanghai or Canton. Alternatively, but less convincingly, it might be possible to make some play with the further increase in the numbers of businessmen and tourists reaching Peking as a result of the operations of the PRC Visa Office in Hong Kong, to press for action by the Chinese to resolve the official accommodation and residential problem in Peking so as to permit an early increase in the number of staff in the British Embassy.
17 August 1979
cc: Mr Quantrill HKGD
J.J. has fall
J T Masefield
Far Eastern Dept
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