TNAG-1039-FCO40-1289-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 60

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178

GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT

LOWER ALBERT ROAD

HONG KONG

布政司署

港下亞

畢道

* OUR REF: TSX 1/78

來函檔號 YouR REF:

oyol

M.

PERSONAL AKK OYO

03 AUG 1981

RD Clift Esq

Hong Kong & General Department FCO

TIN SHUI WAI

27 July, 1981

I think FED mujut

Me Quad I Mr. Friar

Dove

wish

18 see but wd. leave it to their advice as

to whether Pething shalo be sent

Departments Worful. Pl. consider

arrying mine)

copies.

43117181

msgorkel (with

оздобил

30

167

Thank you for your letter of 13 July about

the Exco Memorandum on Tin Shui Wai.

2.

I agree that the statement in para 56 about China Resources being motivated "entirely by commercial rather than political reasons" looks rather stark. An unnecessary and unbureaucratic adverb. Nevertheless, I think all the evidence suggests that the profit motive was dominant in their minds. At an early stage we thought that this was not so. But, as you know, we were wrong, or misled, about the possibility that they were seeing this as a way of dealing with the problem of the future. Information over the last few months, particularly from secret reports, shows that the political side of the house (NCNA and, with less strong evidence, the Hong Kong/Macau Office in Peking) were not consulted in any detail about the deal. Also that they were extremely annoyed at China Resources for getting themselves involved both in such a big deal and in the political shenanigans which accompanied it.

3.

On your other point, the reaction of China Resources to the Exco decision on partial approval, we cannot yet be sure. Before the Exco paper was considered, and coincidentally, David Akers-Jones (Secretary for the New Territories) had a meeting with China Resources during which the former explained the difficulty of fitting a project of the proposed size into Hong Kong's planning strategy for that area and raised the question of scaling down the development in such a way that it would be viable from the point of view of both the developers and the government. China Resources said they were willing to come to an agreement with the government about the size of the project. But there was of course no substantive

/contd...

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