TNAG-2717-FCO40-3923-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 29

•

Mr. Edward Rowlands : The issue I am talking about was

on Tibet, on human rights,

not just only Hong Kong, but general issues.

on

There was a feeling that we were actually not

arguing the case because

out.

But

Sir Percy Cradock: I spent the last ten years when I was in office, or involved in Government, Mr Rowlands, doing nothing else but arguing. But in the end it is very easy to argue and get up from the table and kick the papers over and walk You have to ask yourself, in the end, what is best for your client, for Hong Kong. It was no good our making the biggest song and dance ever about Tibet because we had other things to deal with. That does not mean that we accept Chinese policy on Tibet, nothing of the kind, and we continue to criticise it. we have to concentrate on our main chance. So I reject entirely the idea that the sinologues were in love with China and sacrificed Hong Kong to it. Far from it: they have tried to follow a cool and realistic policy and the ministers who endorsed that policy have done the same, which has had, as its criterion, the welfare and the stability of Hong Kong. The whole case stands or falls on that. To come back to my main point this morning, my worry about the present policy is that it will do much more harm to Hong Kong than the alternative.

Mr Edward Rowlands: A final question, and trying to get you outside Hong Kong and take you beyond Hong Kong. keep coming back to it, understandably so.

You What should be at the centre of British/Chinese relations, other than the issue of Hong Kong?

Sir Percy Cradock: We have to recognise that China is now going to be not just a great power but a super power.

Mr Edward Rowlands: Sir Percy Cradock:

Economically?

Economically and, in consequence, the weight of that in the world politically and, to some degree, militarily. We must recognise that China and Japan will dominate the Pacific in future years and that that will be the centre of. a great growth area and that economic weight will shift to that area and that we in the West should think of these things and make our dispositions accordingly.

26