TNAG-1561-FCO40-2125-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-and-passports-Hong-Kong-(Br-1986 — Page 210

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ASIAWEEK

MARCH 2, 1986

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HKK 040/4

1- 7 MAR 1986

DESK OFFICER

An Excuse for All Seasons

ver the past decade or so, people who follow diplomatic news have grown used to that code phrase, "the China card.” The ploy in question supposedly would mean foiling and confounding the Soviet Union in some crushing way. That China has never considered itself a pasteboard ace in someone else's hand may explain why the strategy has been honoured more in the mouthing than the execution. But what few people realise is how faithfully since the 1960s the British in Hongkong have trotted out the device, though with a different spin, to trump every initiative for sharing out power and privileges. A popularly elected administration? China would never stand for it. Filling seats on the Legislative Council by ballot? Peking would frown. This defence was not always for the record, but it seldom failed to prove the clincher.

It came as no great surprise, then, that the People's Republic flag was hauled out by the British once again recently to smother a protest by Hongkong minorities who have been urgently appealing for the protection of British citizenship. Some 11,600 lifelong residents of Hongkong, about 7,000 of them South Asians and the rest mostly of Portuguese or Eurasian stock, fear that they will not be accepted as full-fledged citizens of China after Peking resumes sover- eignty over the territory in 1997. The ethnic-Indian lobby in particular argues that a reserve right of abode in

the United Kingdom would serve as port in a storm and would, in any case, be no more than what is due: many if not most of their families followed the British flag from the Raj's turf to Pearl River treaty port and helped develop John Bull's domain.

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Their plea has evoked widespread sympathy, and the old argument that favouring a few would be to discrimi- nate against the many namely, 3.25 million Hongkong Chinese theoretically eligible as well was vitiated when local Chinese leaders themselves came out in support of the minorities' petition. Indeed, a motion to that effect put in January before the Legislative Council, now newly expanded with indirectly elected members, drew the first unanimous Legco vote in living memory. When the issue came up for debate in the British House of Commons on Jan. 16, however, Mr. Robert Adley, head of the China group of MPs, countered with some warmth that "fall- back positions" are "not only pessimistic but deeply

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offensive to the government of the People's Republic of China," implying as they do "mistrust" of Peking's motives. Mr. David Waddington hastened to agree: the Home Office minister of state for immigration, who pre- sented the government's case for resisting the appeal, solemnly warned that "to grant British citizenship now would certainly be looked at by some, particularly the Chinese, as a demonstration of a lack of confidence in the Sino-British agreement.” Case closed, no?

No. Last week, it turns out, China's senior represen- tative in Hongkong, Mr. Xu Jiatun, told a visiting British

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peer that Peking would prefer London to concede the minorities' claim. While the Indians and other non- Chinese will remain welcome and valued pillars of the community after 1997, the local director of Xinhua news agency said, the comfort of knowing that they have a refuge would make them, in Xinhua's ex- planation to Asiaweek, “more willing to stay on in Hongkong." Mr. Xu's report of China's position to Lord Cledwyn, Labour Party leader in the House of Lords, was followed up by like confidences to Lord Chitnis, a member of the same delegation. Though the spokesmen for Peking promised that minorities would receive sympathetic consideration for Chinese citizenship should they apply for it, they were realistic enough to recognise that such assurances would not solve all anxieties.

hat this makes of Westminster's insider in- telligence is, of course, hash. In this case, fur- ther, ministers manning the immigration bul- warks even lack one of Mr. Adley's accursed fallback posi- tions: on a parallel issue formulating a post-1997 device to certify in non-resident British passports that their holders have the right of abode in Hongkong - British of- ficials have been consulting their counterparts in China closely. It is hard to believe they were simply ignorant of Peking's sentiment, but even if they were they could always have asked. In the past, though, China habitually remained silent whenever its supposed concerns were in- voked in support of British policy. Whatever its views real- ly were, it seems clear now that it suited British purpose to wipe the red flag in Hongkong's face as long as Foreign Office mandarins wanted to run the place as a closed shop. But it seems equally clear now that the excuse has run

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EDITORIAL

its course. All the warnings about Peking's discountenanc- ing direct elections in Hongkong may, in fact, be exploded soon also if hints from the mainland prove reliable. An an- nouncement favouring a popularly elected Legco would certainly earn Peking a large fund of goodwill. And as far as the 7,000 South Asians go, Mrs. Thatcher's men will

have to plead a new case or admit that the real reason they do not want to award citizenship is that they fear losing the anti-immigrant vote. Hongkong is no issue at all in Britain except as a racial-scare bomb. Now, without the red flag as shelter, ministers shrinking under the glare will have to show their true colours.

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DOGAAM

Mr Wood

Legal Advisers