TNAG-2289-FCO40-3293-Future-of-Hong-Kong-Basic-Law-1991 — Page 70

CHINA'S BASIC LAW FOR HONG KONG

COMMENTS

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Page 11, Paragraph 12: The second sentence might be more accurate if it read .. "the Joint Declaration makes clear that Chinese military forces may be stationed

". The Joint Declaration does not itself state that they will be.

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Page 14, Paragraph 15: It would help in the penultimate sentence on this page if you could specify by whom efforts were made to get an explicit reference to the Joint Declaration. The assumption might be that this refers to efforts by the British Government which would, I think, be untrue and in any case would be a revelation of confidential exchanges between Governments.

Page 23, Paragraph 22: It might be more accurate to refer to the British Programme "offering British nationality up to 50,000 individuals plus spouses and dependents". The idea of "conferring British nationality" does not convey the fact that the scheme is a voluntary one.

Page 34, Paragraph 34: "The rights of non residents are to be left to the legislature" suggests that the Basic Law makes no mention of them. To take account of Article 41, you might add before this phrase "the definition/scope of". In the next sentence you might change "one" to "a" since there are other significant differences.

Page 36, Paragraph 35: "It would not be unreasonable of them" suggests a neutral view but it is one with which many in Hong Kong would disagree. You might consider attributing this view to the Chinese eg 11

in relation to the SAR,

they might well expect people in Hong Kong

.....

#1

Page 41, Paragraph 40: You might qualify the sentence "the institutional provisions of the PRC constitution" with "some of".

Page 43, Paragraph 41: The words "would be apt to deal with" imply that this will be a legitimate use of Article 160. Unless this is the meaning you want to convey, it might be better to say "could be used to deal with".

RIDAMN