TNAG-1849-FCO40-2624-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 29

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24 MAY '89 19:52 FROM COI TECH RADIO

TRANSCRIPT I

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SELECT COMITTER OF HONG KONG

24 MAY 1989

11

KR TED ROWLANDS:

Minister, if I could just take you back to first

principles. Can you give the Committee any other historic

examples where a government and a Parliament has actually

transferred the sovereignty and the nationality

potentially of the future of millions of people to a

foreign power?

IR RENTON:

a great

I think Mr Rowlands, I realise you have

Kr

history in this area as Minister for the Dependent

Territories yourself a few years back. But it is not

really, the problem is not as you state, is it?

As the Foreign Secretary made very clear when he

gave evidence to your Committee, the fact of the matter is

that in Hong Kong, 92 percent approximately of the land

is only held under lease from mainland China, a lease

which expires in the middle of 1997.

Therefore, it is not to that extent a transfer of

sovereignty, it is actually recognising, as the Foreign

Secretary pointed out and as we all know well, a fact of

life that the lease ends in mid-1997 and I think there has

always been a common acceptance, certainly since I first

went to Bong Kong in the mid-1960s a5 a businessman,

the rest of Hong Kong, particularly Hong Kong island and

part of the Kowloon peninsular, was not viable as an

that