TNAG-2448-FCO40-3564-Elections-in-Hong-Kong-Basic-Law-1992 — Page 5

Mr Bunten HKD

pa Klections (BL (TD)

Reference...

4/11

RESTRICTI

Parts Oul

глуби Mar Saphorifi

WS 4/x;

CHINESE REACTION TO THE GOVERNOR'S CONSTITUTIONAL PROPOSAL

1.

Thankyou for copying to me your minute of 30 October to Mr Ricketts. I agree that there is little point to engaging in lengthy public debates with the Chinese over differences in interpretation of the 1990 diplomatic exchanges. The Chinese have focussed on two points: the number of directly elected seats and the composition of the electoral committee. On the first, they claim that the Secretary of State's message of 12 February confirmed a deal whereby the Chinese would write the present number of directly elected seats into the Basic Law in exchange for our commitment to limit the number of such seats to 18 in 1991. We lived up to our side of that arrangement in 1991. However both the message of 12 February and subsequent Government statements made it clear that we did not regard the issue of the number of directly elected seats in later years as closed. The Chinese can have been in no doubt of this. The Secretary of State's reference to "no fewer than 20 seats in the legislature" for 1995, was deliberately so phrased to leave the question open.

2. You have covered the main points of the Chinese argument on the composition of the electoral committee. They have skated quickly over the question of the five principles accepted by the two sides by saying most of them were reflected in various paragraphs of Annex I of the Basic Law. You have commented on the the question of the secret ballot. As far as the other principles is concerned, there is no real sign at all in the language of Annex I that they have been considered at all. The Chinese might argue that such matters are questions of detail and, for after 1997 at least, should be covered in SAR legislation, rather than the Basic Law. However the Chinese have themselves accepted them as principles and their whole approach to the Basic Law was that it should cover the principles, leaving the concrete details to the SAR. As you say, the argument that the composition of the electoral committee for 1995 was not specified in the Basic Law was because the British had agreed to it being constituted in accordance with Annex I is completely contradictory to the statement in Annex II that "Except in the case of the first Legislative Council, the above mentioned Electoral Committee refers to the one provided for in Annex I of this law". the implication of that statement is that the election committee referred to in the NPC resolution on the formation of the first government and legislative council of the SAR is something quite different from the SAR electoral committee.

CODE RAD

RF Wye

Far Eastern Section

Research & Analysis Dept

OAB 2/125 210 6219/6216

3 November 1992

RESTRICTED