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Land Commission
8.
Land
Commission has
been
A Sino-British
also
established under Annex III to the Joint Declaration.
This i s staffed on our side by Hong Kong Government
officials and i s making good
good progress in resolving
a number of complex technical issues concerning the implementation of Annex III of the agreement on Land.
Basic Law
9.
believe that the real
the Chinese Hong Kong
encouraging that the
Under the Joint Declaration the Chinese have
agreed that the policies set out in paragraph 3 and
elaborated in Annex I will be stipulated in a Basic
Law of the Special Administrative Region and will remain unchanged for 50 years. The Chinese have begun
work on this 1 aw and plan to complete it by 1990.
They have appointed Basic Law Drafting Committee
including a number of Hong Kong representatives, and a
larger Basic Law Consultative Committee is being
established in Hong Kong. We
drafting work will be done by
and Macau Office, but it
Chinese are prepared to show
s ome sensitivity to Hong
Kong's views.
It is vital that the Basic Law
accurately reflects the Joint Declaration and that its
stipulations in areas where the Joint Declaration i s
vague, such as Government structure, are acceptable in
Hong Kong. The Basic Law is for the Chinese to draft. Any suggestion that we have a role would be strongly resented. We shall need to achieve a means of talking
the Chinese informally about
about it without appearing
to interfere in the drafting process.
to
Nationality
10.
is
At the time of the signature of the Joint Declaration we exchanged Memoranda with the Chinese on nationality. Under this exchange we agreed that Hong Kong people would lose British Dependent Territories
citizens would use that status on 1 July 1997
but
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