TNAG-2119-FCO40-3025-Future-of-Hong-Kong-general-1990 — Page 124

HK2040/4

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07 JAN 1991

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Ms Major

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Reference

110

COMMENTARY: WHO LOST HONG KONG?

1.

LOST

inture: general

I attach a copy of an article by Mr Ross Munro, which was published in the United States, entitled "Who Lost Hong Kong?"

York.

2.

It was sent to me by the Information Officer in New

As you will see, the thrust of Mr Munro's thesis is that the Foreign Office made a major mistake in 1979 by its decision to raise and then to press, the point about extension of land leases in Hong Kong after 1997.

believes that had we not done so, the Hong Kong question need not have arisen with the Chinese and Britain need not have "lost" Hong Kong. He asserts that:

"The British Government's China hands had thus trapped themselves. Because of their ineptitude, they had not merely presented the Chinese leadership with a proposal it was compelled to reject; they had also provoked the leadership into forbidding the British from devising a solution of their

own.

"1

The article goes on to refer to the FCO's "clumsy actions in 1979" and their "smug confidence" that they understood China better than Mrs Thatcher.

Mr Munro's thesis is not new but it is forcefully argued. Perhaps the most damaging section of the article is the comments attributed to Lord MacLehose, based on an interview with him earlier this year. According to Mr Munro, Lord MacLehose first denied, then played down, the importance of his exchange with Deng Xiaoping in 1979; and then allegedly said "I wasn't frightfully keen on doing so but the Foreign Office said, Don't let the occasion go by without a mention".

4. I do not think that it would be sensible to produce any written rebuttal of Mr Munro's thesis. Mr Galsworthy, with whom I discussed this article in Hong Kong, agrees. But it would be helpful if some research could be done into the background to the decision to raise land leases in 1979. Perhaps Mr Walker could take this on. We would then be in a better position to defend the 1979 decision, should it become a major issue at any time between now and 1997, as well it might.

20 December 1990

ARP

A R Paul

Replicate

CC:

Mr McLaren

Mr Burns

Mr Walker, RAD

BUGADW

CODE 18-77

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