CONFIDENTIAL
straddling 1997. The Prime Minister confirmed this in writing to Li Peng:
4.
"As you know, we want to cooperate with China on major
matters straddling 1997, including those related to the airport. We are willing to consult the Chinese Government about them and to take Chinese views into account whenever possible. There should be no room for doubt that the interests of the future Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be fully safeguarded."
If, before taking our final decisions, we are to be sucked into a consultation exercise, eg formal discussion in the JLG, I believe it desirable that we should have some fat built into our initial position which we can afford to jettison later. General negotiating psychology, added to Chinese considerations of face and bureaucratic
back-covering, make it desirable that at the end of the day the Chinese negotiators should be able to take back to their authorities some improvement in our position, or some additional element of reassurance which was not in our first statement of it. But I have seen on other Hong Kong matters over the last year that this is not an approach which commends itself to Sir R McLaren, Lord Wilson or Mr Galsworthy.
5.
An additional thought underlying my own approach was that if we could include in our first statement a point inessential to us but on which the Chinese might focus their concern, it could then be easier to get them to swallow the rest of the mixture. Paragraph 9 of our draft (on funding the scheme) was partly intended in this sense (though, as Mr Bunten has pointed out, it would probably have been better used orally rather than incorporated in the speaking note. It might also have been desirable to make even clearer that any future discussion between HMG and the HKG or the SARG would be to see whether Hong Kong wished to make a voluntary contribution: no obligation could exist after 1997).
6.
Most of this is now water under the bridge. However I think it still worth our asking Peking and Hong Kong how they envisage responding to Chinese arguments that we are breaching our commitments to consult them on major matters straddling 1997. We should be in no doubt that if the Chinese do make a row over this, accusing us of breaching our undertakings, and if they take up local civil servants' cudgels against HMG and the expatriates, the results will be very damaging. I attach a draft telegram.
Moxo
NJCAAW
CONFIDENTIAL
N J Cox
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