CONFIDENTIAL
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Paragraph 9: What is your authority for this? If the Intelligence Services are agreeable, we can make the statement for ourselves. I don't know that we are in a position to make the statement as regards other countries.
Paragraph 10: I suggest this should be redrafted as follows:
"As regards your concerns about being possibly drafted into the People's Liberation Army, there is no law of conscription in Hong Kong and Article 18 of the draft Basic Law, which is the authority for the application in the SAR of Chinese laws, does not include any relevant law of the PRC".
There is, of course, no way we can give anybody any comfort about Article 55 of the PRC Constitution save that we understand that the provisions relating to military service can only be implemented under the Chinese system by a law of the NPC and, as stated in the quotation above, no such law is applied by Article 18 of the draft Basic Law of the SAR.
Paragraph 12: The last three sentences are wrong and therefore the whole thrust of paragraph 12 is wrong: see my minute of 21 March to Mr Paul headed "Dual Nationality Consular Protection". Dual nationality is a fact and the unwillingness of the Chinese to recognise it for Chinese nationals is irrelavent. Any person who under the Chinese nationality law is a Chinese national will not, according to British practice, be entitled to consular protection in Hong Kong notwithstanding that he or she is also a British national. If the individuals concerned obtained British nationality when "settled abroad" they would automatically lose Chinese nationality (Art. 9 of PRC Nationality Law), but it seems clear from the statements of Chinese officials that they do not consider residence in Hong Kong as "settled abroad". If they are correct, the only way in which a Chinese national who has acquired British citizenship can rid himself of his Chinese nationality would appear to be by renunciation in the circumstances set out in Article 10 of the Nationality Law.
DMEAAI
Paul Fifoot
Legal Advisers
CONFIDENTIAL
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