TNAG-0943-FCO40-1162-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1980 — Page 236

NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN

CONFIDENTIAL

in maintaining the status quo in Hong Kong.

However, at no time during this period did the Cine

•Hacial Government make any direct claim for the return of Hong Kong as a whole, or of the leased territorics. Hong Kong, it was assorted, was Chinese territory, over which the "compatriots" in Hong Kong would continue to "struggle". But it seemed clear, too, that the "needs of the situation" as seen from

Peking did not yet require the ousting of British administration and the return of the territory to China. Since 1967, "struggle" has gradually given way to more moderate and pragmatic attitudes. The 1967 "Anti-British, anti-atrocity" campaign has

recently been condemned by at least one left-wing

Hong Kong publication as "erroneous" and a contravention of the general principle of CCP strategy /Zheng Ming (Cheng Ming) No 12 October 1975

see below.

32. On 25 October 1971 the United Nations General

Assembly voted to admit the representatives of the People's Republic of China to the UN. Although this step served to stimulate the emergence of a new, more flexible diplomacy on the part of China, and a breaking out of the self-imposed isolation of the

Cultural Revolution, Chinese attitudes towards Hong Kong continued to be expressed in somewhat familiar

terms. A letter of 8 March 1972 to the UN Committee

then on Decolonisation signed by the Chinese Ferrarent Representative Huang Hua (Annex K), is probably the most authoritative statement to date of the Chinese

view of the status of Hong Kong. The letter maintains that Hong Kong and Macao fall within the "category of questions resulting from the series of unequal treaties left over by history", and should not, therefore be considered as colonial territories:

"Hong Kong and Macao are part of Chinese territory occupied by the British and Portuguese authorities. The settlement of the questions of Hong Kong and Macao is entirely within China's sovereign right and does not st all fall under the ordinary category of

'colonial Territories' With regard to

the