TNAG-1318-FCO40-1722-Future-of-Hong-Kong-views-and-involvement-of-the-European-Co-1984 — Page 4

HKCK 01/20.

02 JAN 1985

Hong-Kong Departmen/11

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28 December 1984

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HONG KONG AGREEMENT:

GERMAN PRESS COVERAGE

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1. The signature of the Agreement in Peking on 19 December was covered widely in the news sections of the German press. Many articles quoted from the speeches made by the Prime Ministers at the signature ceremony, calling the Agreement an historical milestone and an example to the rest of the world.

2. The views of the commentators and leader-writers are generally favourable. Helmut Opletal, writing from Peking for the Frankfurter Rundschau and others, notes that the agreement secures special status for Hong Kong's 5 million inhabitants for a further 50 years. London, he says, is able to pull out of its last major colony with honour. The Chinese were much more forthcoming than expected over their guarantees for Hong Kong, and the Agreement, although not optimal, is satisfactory. This is all to the credit of the UK. Opletal refers to the dissenting minority of opinion in Hong Kong on the merits of the Agreement and the need for the feasibility of "two systems, one country" to be demonstrated. But he says that most of those who have commented in the Colony regard the Agreement as a solid basis for Hong Kong's further development. He sees the local debate as now being over and expects the Hong Kongers to get down to work and made the best of it. Only after 1997 will one be able to judge whether the arrangements for Hong Kong were good ones.

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3. Worthmann, in the Süd-deutsche Zeitung sees the Agreement as an experiment without parallel in the history of state socialism, namely the toleration of an island of capitalism. notes however the fact that Deng is an old man and asks whether Deng's policies will survive him. But, as long as the instability of Mao's later years is not repeated, he is not too pessimistic. A return to more orthodox communism in China need not mean that Hong Kong could not be tolerated as an exception. After all, most Eastern European countries' economies are more liberal than the Soviet Union's. Indeed he suggests that a successful Hong Kong could be used by the Eastern Europeans as a lever to gain more economic independence from Moscow.

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