TNAG-2716-FCO40-3922-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 184

01-NOV-1953 17:31

BRITISH EMBASSY PEKING

532 1965

P.02

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Mr Cox

MR BUNTEN'S FAX OF 29 OCTOBER TO MR EDWARDS: FAC: Q & A'S ON THE THREE PRINCIPLES.

The following occurred to me as read Mr Bunten's fax (you may think they are nit-picking):

The status in international law of the Basici aw

i) 3rd and 4th tirets: Lu Ping and Qian Qichen made a very skillful presentation of the Chinese side's position on incorporating our views into the Basic Law, using the simple formula that they had taken account of our views and the final version of the BL reflects them. David Howell, in the FAC's earlier meeting with the NPC FAC, went so far as to state that the BL was actually one of the agreements between us, putting it on a par with the JD. The Chinese did not pick him up on this but there is clearly room for improvement in putting across to the FAC an accurate version of our view of the BL. For example, there might be scope for describing which of our suggestions were actually incorporated in the BL and to what extent that incorporation reflected the point we were making, and which were not. The 20 percent rule is pertinent here since the Chinese are now arguing that we agreed to it in the form in which it now appears in the BL, and that we should therefore agree to implement it before 1997.

ii) 5th tiret: although the BL will not come into effect until 1 July 1997 and its provisions do not therefore have any binding effect on the HKG before then, HMG have agreed to the principle of convergence with the BL Although that may not be an internationally binding agreement it surely has some bearing on the issue when we are talking about the transition period ?

status of the JD, the BL and the 1990 exchange of

Relat

correspondence

(iii) 2nd tiret: is the BL intended tom

only "some" of the

Chinese Government's obligations under the JD ?

iv) 3rd tiret: ought we not to be careful about saying that the 1990 exchanges do not constitute an agreement or understanding between our two sides at all? Surely, we have acknowledged that they contain an agreement or understanding about the 1991 elections ? If we are now changing our public presentation of how we see the exchange of correspondence we should be careful how we say it since this will be an open session and no doubt many of the HK press will be there scrutinising every word (not to mention the Chinese side!).

v) 5th tirét: do we need to give details of comments we made to the Chinese side about the BL once it had been published pointing out that eg the 5 principles agreed (internal

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