TNAG-1411-FCO40-1887-Future-of-Hong-Kong--Hong-Kong-a-Change-of-Destiny---despatc-1985 — Page 69

CONFIDENTIAL

14.

27.

These texts were initialled in Peking on 26 September and I flew back by specially chartered executive jet the same evening to present them to an historic meeting of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, broadcast live on television. The demand for copies of the agreement was so great that Government offices had to remain open all night to distribute them. (Eventually over 3 million copies were distributed in a few days.) To our intense relief, the press and media the following day confirmed that the agreement had been accepted by the public as a good one and far better than most people had hoped for.

28. There was still one more hurdle to be taken. Ministers had undertaken to Parliament that any agreement would have to be acceptable not only to the United Kingdom and China, but to the people of Hong Kong. This was never accepted by the Chinese but they were wise enough not to challenge it directly. There was some controversy over how the test of acceptability should be conducted, with a number of people advocating a referendum. With Hong Kong's electoral system still at an embryonic stage the majority of the population would have been unlikely to participate and the Chinese could, if they had so chosen, have disrupted it. A special Assessment Office was therefore established to receive over a period of six weeks comments on the agreement under the supervision of two independent monitors, Sir Patrick Nairne from the UK and Mr. Justice Li from the Hong Kong Judiciary. The agreement was examined and endorsed by the Hong Kong Executive Council, the Legislative Council and over 100 major organisations, and thousands of people sent in their views. The choice they were presented with was a limited one. It was made clear in the White Paper that there was no prospect of re-negotiating the agreement; it had to be taken as a whole or not at all. The Hong Kong community, with its usual good sense, decided to take it, with only a small proportion of dissenting voices.

منوع

/The Future