CONFIDENTIAL
3. The Secretary of State agreed there was a tendency among
some local people to treat politics like a debating society.
We wanted to see good candidates from the business
community standing for election. impressions?
4.
What were Mrs Gorman's
Mrs Gorman replied she was afraid the prevailing
attitude she had encountered in the business community was
one of great cynicism. The taipans had their own future worked out and were not interested in putting their money
into elections. (She quoted as typical a remark by someone called Simon To (?) saying "Why should we pay to give a few people in Kowloon the vote?") The middle-rank employees,
those who would be staying on after 1997, were too scared to
put themselves forward. Mrs Gorman said she had been told
that China was known to have a large number of cadres
(15,000) in place in most largish firms to report on people's attitudes.
The Secretary of State said he was not in favour of
Britain giving money for a variety of reasons.
The scope
5.
for allegations of corruption was just one of them. But he would look into what more could usefully be done to help
with education and advice.
6. Mrs Gorman's second point was that the people of Hong Kong had not been given a chance to make their case for independence. Could not something be done through the United Nations for example. She realised this might not be a very realistic option. The Secretary of State agreed that
this was a non-starter. The consequences of history meant
that some people, for example the Kurds or the Tibetans,
unfortunately drew the short straw. The best way to help
them was to put pressure on the governments of those countries to which they belonged.
PJMAVH/2
CONFIDENTIAL
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