SECHT
3
Hong Kong has to be considered as a whole). The best assurance we could hope to get would probably be a rostatement of Chinese sovereignty and intention to resume it at an appropriate time, coupled with an assurance that leases issued by the present authorities for periods beyond 1997 would be honoured irrespective of the Administration in power in Hong Kong. This would be very well worth having, in that it would remove the 1997 hook. An assurance relating to the New Territories alone balanced by a statement on sovereignty would perhaps be easier, in that our legal position there is that of leaseholder only. But I do not think it would serve the Chinese need. Official representation is another possibility; but it seems to me that this would be more troublesome, in creating dual loyalties and inadequate, in that it would not meet the main Chinese object: ve, which is, alomst certainly, a concession on sovereignty.
7. We shall be able to talk this over when I am in Hong Kong at the end of April. Meanwhile I agree with the line you propose for Philip Haddon-Cave to use. I doubt, however, whether we shall be able to make progress on this issue in the two step way mentioned in paragraph 19 of your letter: we may well need several rounds before the Secretary of State comes. For that reason I should like to take action with the Chinese fairly soon in Peking after I get back, and in any case before I go on leave
at the end of June.
copy to
HA H Cortazzi CMG FCO
PERCY CHALOCK
SECT
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