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British Embassy
11 Guang Hua Lu Jian Guo Men Wai
Peking People's Republic of China
Telex 22191 Cable Prodrome Peking Telephone 521961/2/3/4/5
HKD 37
G Voysey Esq
FED
FCO
Your reference
Our reference
988
Date
29 July 1988
33
Dear Gearze,
Enter
Терито
UK-CHINA JUDICIAL ASSISTANCE AGREEMENT
1.
30
Our telegram no. 1228 reported the Chinese go-ahead on this. The lady's name in the first sentence of paragraph 2 should inciden- tally have been Zhang Honghong.
2. I called yesterday on my Polish opposite number, Mr Kuśnierz, to see if he could tell me anything useful about the China/Poland bilatera agreement and found him surprisingly forthcoming. He gave me the enclosed copy of the Chinese text of the agreement as ratified (ratifi- cation was completed only quite recently) and has promised to let me have next week the first draft presented by the Chinese during negotia- tion, which might be a clearer guide to what we can expect from them. I realise that these texts may not be immediately transparent to people at your end (though Polish would have been worse!), and wonder whether Stephen Bradley might be able to arrange translation from HKG resources If not, I could ask our LE Legal Affairs Assistant to oblige but this would take some time and might not produce such technically authentic results.
3. Kuśnierz told me that the Polish agreement had taken some fourteen months to conclude, from the first suggestion through to signature. The Poles had been in no great hurry since they had little practical contact of any kind with China in the legal and judicial fields, and Saw the agreement mainly as a way of thickening bilateral relations and a facilitating measure for the future. The first step had been for the Poles to table a draft based on their similar agreements with other countries, which included a degree of cooperation on criminal cases. The Chinese replied with a counterdraft limited to civil, commercial and family law cases and closely following the text which was under negotiation with the French at the time. They argued (as with us) that the time was not ripe for criminal cooperation, that they did not have the necessary domestic legislation in place and so forth. The Poles continued pressing for inclusion of some modest provisions, eg for assistance with production of witnesses and material evidence in "normal" criminal cases tried in one country or the other (ie nothing to do with extradition or exchange of prisoners). The Chinese brooded on this for six months and finally agreed. There were then two rounds of detailed negotiation, one in Peking and one in Warsaw, producing agreement in a text which was signed in the presence of President Jaruzelski, the Polish Prime Minister and Zhao Ziyang during the latter
/visit
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