TNAG-2716-FCO40-3922-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 127

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are

specific points that you have dealt with one by one in some detail, and

rebutted any charge that the proposals are in breach of the Basic Law,

you aware of what the Chinese Government say to those rebuttals, as it

were? How do they deal with them, when presumably they are put to them in

any negotiations?

(Mr Chamberlain) I think the position is that we are not aware of

any argued points which the Chinese have put to us on this. As you will

see from the paper, we believe the proposals are fully consistent with the

Basic Law, and I think it is incumbent on the Chinese side to formulate

their objections in a coherent manner so that we can then answer them, but

as of now we are not aware of any specific points on this.

Chairman:

Before we plunge on into a little more detail in that area

I would like to clear away the status of the various documents that

everyone keeps appealing to. The other set of documents in addition to the

Joint Declaration of Basic Law is of course the famous Exchange of Letters

between the British and Chinese Foreign Ministers and Mr Gapes would like

to ask about this.

54.

Mr Gapes

Mr Chamberlain, in your paper that you gave us this morning

you referred to the Exchange of Letters between the Foreign Secretary and

the Chinese Foreign Minister in 1990 as "no more than an exchange of

diplomatic correspondence between the two sides". When we were in China

and Hong Kong we certainly got the impression there that the Chinese side

see these Letters as far more than that and we were told that Governor

Patten's proposals in 1992 were a unilateral breach of faith, that they

a violation of the agreements entered into in the 1990 Exchange of

were

Letters.

There was

seen to be great emphasis from the Chinese side on the

status of these Letters as constituting an agreement between the two

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