TNAG-1256-FCO40-1589-Third-countries-and-the-future-of-Hong-Kong-1983 — Page 85

/Japanese

Cáuch attach Sahilində

ii. All papers

HONG KONG

All papers report Chinese Communist Party Secretary General Hu Yaobang's meeting on 3 October with a group of visiting journalists. The full text of Hu's statement is carried in the Daily Yomiuri. In a separate meeting with the journalists, Vice-Foreign Minister Qian Qichen made the following points:

a) He criticised Britain, which he said is trying to

preserve the right to rule Hong Kong after 1997; it would serve no useful purpose, he said, to work out any plans to prevent China regaining its sovereignty.

b) When China started talks with Britain on the future of

Hong Kong.during Mrs Thatcher's visit to China in September 1982,

China hoped to conclude the talks in 1-2 years. Already one year has passed, and China hopes to complete the talks within the next year.

c) In the Anglo-Chinese talks, the 2 countries are

discussing how to maintain Hong Kong's prosperity in Che transitional period up to 1997, and beyond, but there is no room for negotiation on the question of China's sovereignty over Hong Kong.

d) Rejecting Britain's proposal that China should have the sovereignty over Hong Kong while Britain had administrative power, he said that it was unreasonable to suppose that Hong Kong's prosperity can be maintained only by British rule.

iii. Mainichi and Asahi

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman issued a statement in Peking on 3 October, through the New China News Agency, emphasising that Kowloon and the New Territories were an inseparable part of Chinese territory, and that there was no doubt that China would regain sovereignty over the whole of Hong Kong. The Mainichi says that in making this statement, the spokesman had in mind the statements by Mrs Thatcher on 23 September that there was no reason to criticise Britain for colonialist policies on the Hong Kong issue, and Mr Richard Luce's statement on 28 September that comments by the Chinese Government on the details of the Hong Kong talks would not help to solve the problem.