HKB
-DEIVED:
INI
SE
011/3
18 MAY 1989
CONFIDENTIAL
Mr
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Hong Kong Department
/RMITS,
Miss Marsden (366 Mr Foston N1545 Mr Wong Widy
ttus 6
мо ногой Mr Haguel
Hong Kong: Foreign Affairs Committee
Hague 10/5
15/5
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The Secretary of State was grateful for the briefing you provided for his discussions with Mr David Howell at Chevening on the weekend of 6/7 May.
The Secretary of State got the firm impression that Mr Howell had thought a great deal about Hong Kong. He congratulated Mr Howell on the way he and his Committee had handled their visit to Hong Kong and Peking. Mr Howell said they had consciously tried to find ways of lowering expectations; they had been quite taken aback by the extent to which the Committee's enquiry had raised hopes.
In general, Mr Howell had been struck by the fragile nature of confidence in Hong Kong despite the booming economy. He had been struck by Hong Kong's ability to self-induce a feeling of insecurity. There was a risk of severe consequences from any recession in the United States. Mr Howell was therefore as worried by, say, 1992 as by 1997. He felt that part of the answer to this had to be an almost continuous diet of "gesture politics" to convince people in Hong Kong that Britain really cared.
Mr Howell said that his Committee would be seeking more briefing both on and off the record. He particularly wanted to test some of the impressions he had had from the Chinese with our experts (the Committee thought that the Chinese had played straight with them but recognised that there could be other interpretations).
On nationality, the Committee were clear that there was no question of giving right of abode to 3.3 million people. They were equally clear that something significant had to be done. The present arrangements were not worth the paper they were written on. There had been a tiny success rate among applicants under Section 4(5). Other categories of people either did not know what was available to them or did not believe it. The assurances we had given had been far too inprecise in particular to the Indian community (on which Mr Howell questioned the figure of 21,000 that he had been given and estimated that only 6,000 or so were without passports; the Secretary of State got the impression that Mr Howell saw this as an area for recommendation.) Mr Howell believed that the Chinese were relatively relaxed on this complex of issues.
He
On representative government, Mr Howell did not doubt the good faith in which we had been handling the process. pointed to Mr Peter Shore's rejection of Martin Lee's broken promise argument. However, he felt that the scene was
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