TNAG-1397-FCO40-1869-Future-of-Hong-Kong-Basic-Law-1985 — Page 81

CONFIDENTIAL

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

London SW1A 2AH

R P Margolis Esq

Deputy Political Adviser HONG KONG

Pa

Telephone 01-

273 3342

Важ

Сло

Your reference

Our reference

18 September 1985

Date

ник

1040/21

ASEP 1995

(၄၇)

m 23/9

Dear Richarel,

HONG KONG: BASIC LAW

7

I dri

1. Paragraph 3 of Hong Kong telegram no 1384 of 8 July asked for any research analysis or background information from Research Department on Basic Law. I am sorry that it has taken so long to come back to you; the fact was that there was no analysis in exsistance. I therefore have had to start from scratch, with leave and other preoccupations intervening.

•

Never-

2. I begin with Rod Wye's letter of 5 November 1984, to which the above telegram referred. In that letter, Rod sent a collection of constitutions (or references as to where they might be found) for various autonomous areas of China. I have some doubt about the value of these as a guide to Chinese thinking on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), which I discuss below. theless you might find useful the enclosed set of older Research Department papers on minorities and some of the autonomous areas. These are obviously now dated, but they still provide a useful guide to why the Chinese approached the minority peoples and the problem of government in the areas where they lived in the manner they did. The events of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath often interfered in dramatic fashion with the situation as described in these papers, but recent years have seen a return to something approaching the attitudes and policies of 1949-1959 as far as minorities are concerned. We have not prepared much beyond essentially ephemeral pieces on the minority areas for some years, but there are a few published works available. One is June Teufel Dryer, China's Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the People's Republic of China (Cambridge, Mass. 1976)

3.

As stated above, I doubt whether this material is much value as a guide to what might be China's policy towards Hong Kong and the Basic Law. Such lessons as can be drawn relate to the apparent care which the communist central authorities took to reassure the minorities about their future and to overcome suspicions largely created by the actions of previous Chinese administrations. As far as the constitutional position is concerned, the constitutions of the various minority areas, whether autonomous regions or lesser units, do not differ excèpt

CONFIDENTIAL

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