TNAG-2456-FCO40-3577-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-presentation-1992 — Page 121

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GOVERNOR'S LEGCO ADDRESS: FIRST REACTIONS

1.

Mr Llellwyn telephoned me from Hong Kong this afternoon with an initial readout on reactions to the Governor's LegCo address. He said that the reaction across the community in Hong Kong was as good as could be expected.

The initial Chinese reaction (via NCNA) was pretty strong, describing the constitutional proposals as "extremely

irresponsible and reckless", and suggesting that the Governor had tried to "dress them up as proposals but everyone could see they were effectively decisions".

Dorothy Liu (ex NPC member) had claimed that the proposals on District Boards were contrary to Article 97 of the Basic Law; (HKG are confident that Annex I of the BL provides ample justification for the Governor's proposals)

The LegCo reaction was "mixed".

Allen Lee had been generous in his support of the separation of ExCo and LegCo but was reserving his judgement on the Government/LegCo Committee.

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Martin Lee of UDHK was evidently not clear as to how to react: he had condemed separation but had said he would "wait and see" whether the other democratic proposals survived the Governor's visit to Peking (he said the Brits had always caved in before). Yeung Sum had also criticised separation but was positive on the remainder.

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Emily Lau's reaction varied depending who was interviewing her: on the BBC she had given the address a "60% approval rating", whereas on local TV her reaction was much more negative.

Martin Barrow had been very supportive. He hoped the business community would react positively to the proposals. (The Hang Seng Index was up 35 points but this closed only 1 hour into the speech and before the section on constitutional reform.)

2. Interestingly, the local press coverage was leading on the proposals for functional constituencies. This seemed to be attracting the most interest. The social side of the speech was also making "quite an impact" although there was some scepticism about how HKG would afford it.

3.

Mr Llellwyn commented that it was of course early days but the key indicator would probably come at the LegCo question and

Legco.add.BTC.JRB

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