TNAG-2702-FCO40-3908-Memoirs-of-Sir-Percy-Cradock--diplomat-and-sinologist-1993 — Page 172

talks with the Chinese. The Foreign Secretary visited China

in April, tried for agreement and came very near reaching

it. But the Chinese remained elusive. They shifted their

ground. New demands appeared Or old demands were

resurrected. What they seemed be seeking were two

things. First, extreme financial reassurance in the form of

guarantees of money to be left in the Hong Kong reserves

after the construction of the airport and limitations on

government borrowing, SO that the new site and its

buildings would come to them almost as a gift. Second, and

most worrying, they sought a generalised right of veto over

major Hong Kong decisions in the transitional period. The

veto claim

claim was not baldly stated; the Chinese Foreign

Minister denied that it was being made; it was concealed in

a demand that certain matters should be subject to

consultation and consensus; but the meaning was clear

enough. At its most ambitious, the claim was that consensus

should be reached on any responsibility or obligation to be

taken on by the Government of the Special Administrative

Region. It was impossible to reconcile this with the

British Government's responsibility, acknowledged in the

Joint Declaration, for administering Hong Kong until 1997.

Nor was there, among these large and generalised demands,

any sign of the precision and certainty that we needed on

finance, on franchises, on consultation, if the Hong Kong

authorities were to get on with

on with the project, and that

private investors needed if they were to venture their

money.

This was the situation in the summer of 1991. A

2-