TNAG-1869-FCO40-2657-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-Macau-1989 — Page 112

we lear that

3.

feeling!

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Ramos we swapped impressions of the two Chinese teams. complained that the Chinese seemed to expect the Portuguese to do all the work. I said that this was probably our fault since the Chinese had got used and indeed expected us to make the running. He said he had the impression as we had that the Chinese had made a mistake by sending all their experienced staff to Macau leaving only very thin cover in Peking. Contrary to how I described the situation in Hong Kong, he said that the Chinese JLG team seemed to have considerably more authority in Macau than NCNA. When he had first met Kang Jimin, the Chinese Ambassador, it had been in the company of Ke Zaishuo and it had been clear that Kang was a political midget. However, he had seized his chance and blossomed in the job, being in control of his brief and highly authoritative.

4.

I asked Ramos whether he was getting involved much in the work on the Basic Law. He said he had been thinking of recommending to Lisbon that they made some attempt to cultivate sympathetic members from the Macanese represented on the BLDC. At the moment he had no direct input, nor did anyone in the Macau administration. Pamos said he had the impression from what he had heard that the Chinese were making attempts to claw back points conceded in the bilateral negotiations during the drafting process. I encouraged him to put forward Portuguese views by explaining the ways in which we had tried and succeeded in influencing the drafting process.

5. Ramos said that the point that was most exercising him in the JLG process at the moment was International Rights and Obligations, in particular GATT. The only person on the Portuguese side who had IRO experience was Coelho and he had of course left. He said that the Chinese had agreed in principle that Macau should be entitled to the same access to GATT as had been granted to Hong Kong. But there was still a long way to go. He wondered whether other countries might resent another separate membership for a Chinese territory. I said that there was indeed a risk that other members might be uneasy, particularly with the long-term prospect of the possible reunification of China and Taiwan. I told him that Guo Fengmin had mentioned the Macanese interest in GATT to me during his recent visit, though I did not say that Guo had been considerably more sceptical about the possibility of Macau's involvement than he seemed to have been to the Portuguese. I also told Ramos that Wang Weiyang, the member of the Chinese JLG team with special responsibility for IROS had visited Macau on 11 May to brief his opposite numbers on the intricacies. Ramos was unaware of this, as indeed he seemed to be of various high level Chinese visits to Macau.

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