TNAG-2365-FCO40-3437-Visit-by-Sir-Geoffrey-Howe--former-Secretary-of-State-for-Fo-1991 — Page 21

Mr Ricketts

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SIR GEOFFREY HOWE'S VISIT TO HONG KONG: CFA

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1. Under our agreement with the Chinese, only the Chief Justice must be an ethnic Chinese. The other judges, including the "permanent Hong Kong judges", can be ex-patriates. This is a point that Mr Galsworthy has stressed to the press in defending the agreement confirmed at JLGXX. Indeed, granted the shortage of ethnic Chinese judges in Hong Kong, it is likely that most of the judges on the CFA will be ex-patriates for the forseeable future. This will not necessarily change after 1997 (I very much doubt that Hong Kong will lose its fiscal attractions for non-first class UK lawyers after 1997 - if it does, the CFA will be the least of our problems!).

2.

Sir Geoffrey Howe's suggestion in indent three of

Mr Gozney's minute raises different, more sensitive issues. I see two major problems:

a) If the Chinese discover that we are, in effect, planting British lawyers in Hong Kong to serve as judges on the CFA after 1997, it will confirm their suspicions about the British plot to establish covert control of Hong Kong after 1997. They would inevitably react badly. At the very least they would block further progress on the CFA (they have plenty of leeway left to do so). We could also give up any hope of jointly selecting senior officials, including the CE, for the first SARG;

b) I doubt whether Sir Geoffrey's suggestion would go down well among ethnic Chinese lawyers in Hong Kong. The implication is that they are inevitably in Peking's pocket or powerless against Peking's blandisments. Is this the message we really want to give to the professionals we are trying to persuade to stay behind?

S Riordan

WH 305 270 2655

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