TNAG-2291-FCO40-3300-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-Taiwan-1991 — Page 56

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TAIWAN AND CHATHAM HOUSE

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1.

Peter Ferdinand, the Asia Director of Chatham House, rang me on 8 May to say that he was shortly to give an interview to a Taiwan TV Station. One of the subjects that would be raised was the recent refusal of the Hong Kong Government to allow an official of the Taiwan Executive Yuan to enter Hong Kong. This incident had been taken in Taiwan as evidence of the British Government's

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animosity towards Taiwan. He proposed to explain that the decision was one taken by the Hong Kong Government, and that the UK Government was in no way involved. He also wanted to try out on me a line that he proposed to take if he were asked about how Taiwan should treat Hong Kong in the future. He would suggest that Taiwan treat Hong Kong seriously as an independent financial and economic entity, as provided for, for example, in the Joint Declaration. would also urge the Taiwan authorities to be both diplomatic and imaginative in their attitude towards Hong Kong, bearing in mind the kind of problems that the Hong Kong Government faced at the moment. I asked him further, bearing in mind your minute of 2 May about Taiwan's relations with Singapore, to suggest that Taiwan did all it could to maintain commercial and business confidence in Hong Kong.

2. He could not remember the exact name of the TV Station concerned. The journalist is called Carol Chang. She has recently arrived in this country to take up her present job, although she had previously spent two years studying journalism on the Cardiff course. She hopes to improve coverage of Europe in Taiwan, and to introduce to the Taiwan audience how the outside world perceives Taiwan. She is clearly an active journalist, and one who could become quite influential in creating opinion on Taiwan. She has apparently already had interviews with the Free China Centre, and has approached the Hong Kong Government Office on the matter of the refusal of a visa to the Taiwanese official.

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