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Consequently, the Director does not enjoy the kind of
administrative support common to other ministries. As far as is
known he has a relatively small staff. Although there are major
Chinese establishments with huge and extensive economic interests
in Hong Kong such as The Bank of China, China Resources, the
China International Trade and Investment Corporation (CITIC)
etc., who are extraordinarily well informed about how the
territory is run, they tend to stay clear of the sensitive
politics associated with the negotiations even though apparently
they will give expert advice when required on technical details
such as the financing of the massive airport project. More
broadly, other than the institute that directly
directly serves the
Office, there are no research institutes in China devoted to Hong
Kong affairs.
Possibly because of these factors from time to time the
negotiations tend to get held up and log jams develop until,
either because of an injection of urgency from above or due to
the need to meet an arbitrary deadline, a whole series of often
complex matters incorporating difficult details have to be
decided quickly under stressful almost crisis conditions. Two
examples may be cited to illustrate the tendency: In order to
meet Deng Xiaoping's September 1984 deadline for the completion
of the negotiations for the Joint Declaration both delegations
had to work virtually non-stop for days on end until a
satisfactory wording was finally agreed at the last moment. Since
the British side were the better prepared in advance with
detailed documentation on legal and other technical details some
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