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pursue the matter further.
(xiii) June 1983: An Annex of the UNESCO Executive Board's report
on non-Governmental Organisations contained a statement by the Chinese delegation that "since Hong Kong is Chinese territory, it is
at present no more than a zone not a country". We reacted as in
(xi) above.
(xiv) March 1983: At a UN meeting in Geneva, when the American
representative described Taiwan and Hong Kong as "countries", the
Chinese countered by saying that both were inalienable parts of
China. We instructed the UK delegation to circulate our standard
written statement.
(xv) May 1984: The Chinese objected to the inclusion of Hong Kong
in a list of "countries" in a UNESCO document. We suggested that
the term "countries, territories or zones", which appeared elsewhere
in the same document, should be used. The Chinese delegation were
unwilling to accept this suggestion, on the grounds that Hong Kong
was the only non-country in the list, but it was nevertheless
adopted by the Executive Board's Committee on
on International
Non-Governmental Organisations in their draft report. The Chinese
made no further reference to the matter.
only where
thi
2.
we
Although the Assistant Political Adviser in Hong Kong wrote in
December 1973 that 'as in ECAFE* and elsewhere the Chinese make no
objection if Hong Kong is described as a "region" or "territory"'
have found no documentary evidence in the files of that period of
the Chinese indicating the latter term to be acceptable when used on
its own.
They once suggested "countries or territories" (paragraph
3(v) above), but on other
on other occasions objected to formulations
including the word "territory" because it implied a reference to
Hong Kong's position as a dependent territory of the United Kingdom.
"Countries or regions" seems to have been the term most often
favoured by the Chinese. In February 1974 Far Eastern Department
stated that they were prepared to accept this, but Hong Kong
disagreed on the grounds that "region" implied Hong Kong was part of
China.
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