TNAG-1858-FCO40-2633-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-memoranda-and-minutes-of-me-1989 — Page 43

HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 5 July 1989

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in April, at the time when no one anticipated that what happened in China could have happened. If their work were to have started in June, it would be logical to assume that the evidence put forward by the witnesses would have much more intensity and urgency and that the Foreign Affairs Committee would have drawn different conclusions and recommendations. After all, the Foreign Affairs Committee stated in the introduction to the report that "the action of the Central People's Government and the People's Liberation Army have appalled and shocked the world."

But such would not have been the case. For although the Foreign Affairs Committee took into account the latest events in China, its mind has been closed and its recommendations on the question of British policy and actions with regard to nationality have been formulated even before they came to Hong Kong. This certainly answers the Honourable Stephen CHEONG's question why there was not more taking of evidence after the Tiananmen affair.

Despite the Foreign Affairs Committee's acknowledgment in many places in the report of the British obligation to the territory and Hong Kong's unique position as the United Kingdom's only colony or dependent territory whose people cannot exercise the fundamental rights of self-determination, and despite its acknowledgment that the British Government must also find ways to restore confidence in Hong Kong in the shorter term, it fails to address the fundamental concern of the Hong Kong people: to have the assurance of a safe abode in case the worst should happen.

The recommendations to mount an international rescue of the Hong Kong people in an Armageddon scenario after 1997 and to grant right of abode to identified key personnel do not fulfill the aim and objective which the committee professed to accomplish, that is, the restoration of confidence in Hong Kong in the short term. The former is neither practical nor re-assuring; the latter is divisive.

Representatives from nine professional bodies met with the Foreign Affairs Committee in Hong Kong on 19 April 1989. The Foreign Affairs Committee was told of the confidence crisis that has affected Hong Kong and led to a steady brain drain in the past few years. They were given statistics produced by the Hong Kong Government that showed convincingly the magnitude of the problem in relation to those who emigrated from the professional, administrative and management classes. I would not go over these statistics again. During that public hearing, committee members expressed to the professionals several times the political difficulty of admitting 3.5 million people to the United Kingdom. Thus, it can be seen that the committee's position in June after the events in Beijing has not changed from its position during its first public hearing in Hong Kong in April. The position has always been that political difficulty transcended any real consideration of British obligations. What is even more damaging in the Foreign Affairs Committee is that it failed to recognize the realities of the Hong Kong situation and the wishes of the Hong Kong people: which is that Hong Kong is their home; and it was plainly wrong, and grossly misleading to the British Parliament and the British people, to assume that millions of people from Hong Kong would be emigrating to the United Kingdom if they were given the right of abode.