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contracts to British firms or to firms with significant British
interests that would in effect
in effect drain off Hong Kong's spare
capital and its reserves
administration with vast
thereby leaving the post
post British
debts. Hence the
Memorandum of
Understanding of July 1991 specifically obliged the (British)
Hong Kong authorities to leave financial reserves of at least HK$
25 billion for the new administration in 1997. The issue has
continued to delay further developments on the airport well into
the following year.
(3) There has been a tendency on each side to view the other
as engaged in carefully coordinated acts as if playing out a
carefully conceived and controlled plan of operations. Every word
and gesture by politicians and officials is read as a signal
intended to convey subtle messages, with the implication that,
unlike its own, the other side's government exercises tight
control over all the different manifestations of relations with
Hong Kong and is purposive in all the acts carried out in its
name. To cite but two recent examples, there is a tendency by
some on the British side to regard the delays by the Chinese
negotiators on reaching agreement on the airport issue (in 1992
after the 1991 Memorandum of Understanding) as indicative of a
Chinese strategy to use the issue as leverage to extract
concessions from the British on separate political matters. The
possibility that the delays may be the product of administrative
weaknesses on the Chinese side does not always seem to get the
attention it deserves. For their part many Chinese officials
professed to see not only a linkage but evidence of a carefully
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Private notes are available after approval.