TNAG-2032-FCO40-2895-Visit-by-Douglas-Hurd--Secretary-of-State-for-Foreign-and-Co-1990 — Page 175

BUSABO (4)

representative government); the stationing of Chinese troops in Hong Kong; and the scope for the imposition of national laws (including

martial law) in Hong Kong.

Representative Government

Following the events in early June in China, there has been much debate in Hong Kong on whether there should be a faster pace of development towards representative Government than is set out in the

draft Basic law and than was set out in the 1988 Hong Kong

Government White Paper which made provision for 10 directly elected

seats in 1991. The Office of the Members of the Executive and

Legislative Councils (OMELCO) proposed in July that one third of the Legislative Council should be directly elected in 1991 and that there should be no less than 50% directly elected members by 1995. This latter proposal goes further than the present draft of the Basic Law, which provides for 27% directly elected seats in Hong

Kong's Legislation Council in 1997. There are also a number of other models under discussion in Hong Kong. The British Government

has made clear that the provisions of the draft Basic Law on constitutional arrangements after 1997 should fully reflect the

views of Hong Kong people

Vietnamese Boat People

Recent events in China have overshadowed Hong Kong's most immediate practical problem - how to cope with the large numbers of boat people who have found shelter there. Since 1975, over 160,000 Vietnamese have been given temporary asylum in Hong Kong. Some 110,000 have been resettled, around 62,000 to the USA and over 13,000 to the UK. Since 1987 there has been a renewed and dramatic increase in the number of people leaving Vietnam: over 18,000 arrived in Hong Kong in 1988 and the figure for 1989 is now close to 34,000. But whereas the early boat people were fleeing political persecution from the Hanoi regime, those of recent years have been predominantly farmers and fishermen from the North, leaving in

search of a better life.

Since June 1988 new arrivals in Hong Kong have been screened to