TNAG-2487-FCO40-3618-Future-relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China-1992 — Page 165

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INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS (ICJ) REPORT ON HONG KONG

1. Mr Burns commented on Mr Rickett's minute of 11 May to Sir John Coles that he wondered whether HMG did, in the early eighties, distinguish between the issues of the lease and the issue of self-determination. You asked if I could shed any light on this subject.

2. I have not looked exhaustively through all the files of that period. However my first reaction, which has tended to be confirmed by my researches, is that HMG did not make such a distinction. Hong Kong has, by and large, been treated as sui generis and no real attempt was made to prepare it for self rule or independence as happened with most other colonies. Thus, for example, the 1984 Green paper on the further development of representative government in Hong Kong spoke of its main aims as :

a) to develop progressively a system of government the

authority for which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong, which is able to represent authoritatively the views of the people of Hong Kong, and which is more directly accountable to the people of Hong Kong.

b)

c)

to build this system on our existing institutions, which have served Hong Kong well, and, as far as possible, to preserve their best features, including the maintenance of the well established practice of government by consensus; and

to allow for further development if that should be the wish of the community.

This was, of course, a publication of the Hong Kong government, not HMG, and came at a time when the JD negotiations were well advanced. Nonetheless there is no reference to, nor any treatment of, self determination as a concept. The, generally unspoken, assumption in HMG's attitude towards the future of Hong Kong has always been that it lay in some fashion with China. More directly, a paper, known as the Hong Kong Study, which was submitted to the Prime Minister on 3 September 1982 expressly dismissed the option of independence for Hong Kong as impractical. I realise that the ICJ definition of "self-determination" is wider than simple independence, but even on a wider interpretation of the concept there appears to have been little acknowledgement of it in HMG's attitude towards matters relating to the future of Hong Kong and the relationship with China. It appears to have been accepted, again largely without argument, that the future of Hong Kong was something to be decided between the British and Chinese governments, since it was widely understood even before the JD negotiations that independence was not a possibility.

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