TNAG-2717-FCO40-3923-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 13

Question:

Question:

Chairman:

These are dire, predictions indeed.. That is for sure.

To be worse off of course is not entirely a matter to be decided by measurement of economic prosperity. To be worse off can also reflect the quality of life, and indeed the suppression of liberties and democracies in the Territory. But what I have inferred, or gathered from Sir Percy's remarks, is pessimism and it is pessimism - based upon not only a very knowledgeable assessment of Chinese thinking, but above all on the Chinese fear of democracy. Are the Chinese afraid of democracy simply in the context of Hong Kong, or are they afraid that it will spread from Hong Kong to mainland China itself?

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Sir Percy Cradock: On both points, Mr Chairman, they fear democracy. They are deeply afraid of it because they see it as a virus spread into their own territory. afraid of democracy when it came up in the violent context of They were very 1989, and they associate the student riots of those times with democracy. And I am afraid they also condemn Hong Kong for help which came from Hong Kong to the students at that time.

So they fear it in itself; they fear it as a virus; they certainly fear it in Hong Kong, because they see it as an attempt by the British to go back on the provisions of Declaration and make Hong Kong more independent than we had the Joint

signed up to at that time. They see it as part of a plot to try and detach Hong Kong from the mainland, and they fear that other countries could be involved in a kind of conspiracy on point.

that

If I could take up the earlier remark that Mr Shaw made, Mr Chairman, about economic prosperity and other factors, course never suggested that all we are concerned with here is the I of

economic prosperity of Hong Kong. He must have mis-heard my remarks if he came to that conclusion. time pointing out that in various abstract aspects of Hong Kong, I spent a great deal of

namely democracy, the Rule of Law, the attributes of a free and open society, we shall be much worse off at the end of the day if we take this course than if we go ahead.

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