SECRET UK EYES A
measures against China going well beyond those agreed after the
Tiananmen massacre. These would include full scale trade
sanctions, freezing China's financial assets abroad, suspending
World Bank Loans etc.
c) UN machinery
If Chinese action clearly threatened international peace and
security, it would be open to us to bring the matter before the
Security Council (although, as a member of the Security Council,
China could use her veto to prevent the Council taking any
action.) We could also try to secure a resolution in the General
Assembly condemning China's actions with the aim of isolating
her internationally and making it easier to mobilise widespread support for economic sanctions.
d) Organise mass evacuation
If Chinese military intervention was prompted by fears of
subversion (rather than by a mass exodus), we could seek
Chinese agreement that all British citizens and other Hong Kong
residents who wished to leave should be allowed to do. At the
same time, we could ask our allies to help in organising a mass
evacuation from the territory and establishing regional holding
centres. We might also wish to convene an immediate
international conference to secure commitments to take that part of the population that wished to leave.
e) Enlist help from intermediaries to persuade the Chinese to
withdraw
In addition to enlisting the support of our Western friends and
partners to mount concerted diplomatic pressure on China to
withdraw, we could also try to enlist the help of other
intermediaries eg. "old friends of China" (Richard Nixon,
Henry Kissinger) or Third World leaders on good terms with China
(Benazir Bhutto, Mubarak). We do not however think that such an
approach is likely to have any significant impact in the extreme circumstances Invisaged in this paper.
SECRET UK EYES A
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