TNAG-2717-FCO40-3923-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 49

a significant change of policy?"

method

-

Sir Alan Donald:

Yes.

Sir Richard Evans: Yes; I would, at the minimum over I say at the minimum.

Question: I do think that just putting the other side of what is going on in China at the moment, there is a tendency to underestimate the pace of change in China itself. When this Committee was in Hong Kong in 1989 we heard a great deal of wisdom and predictions about what was going to happen, but nobody ever mentioned the pace at which China was going to move towards a market capitalist system, or even the vast explosion of economic activity up the Pearl River. Are we sure when we look at China now that it is going to remain this great nation of consensus and central political control and all the things we have talked about, or could it be that we are in for yet another surprise?

Sir Alan Donald: I rather doubt it, because of the strategy which the Chinese Government has adopted. The wealth of China is in the north and west - the raw materials and the business and industry is in the south and east. It is an absolute cardinal part of the reform programme to get those raw materials to the coast and have a trickle down from the rich coast inland.

Deng Xiaoping has said that if China adopted Western style democracy and adopted a Western style capitalism, he feared the result would be the enrichment of 10 per cent of the population and the continued poverty of 90 per cent of the population. that were to happen the next thing would be a revolt, a revolution, from the impoverished countryside. It will not stand

for long one bit of China getting richer than another.

if I may.

If

Mr Edward Rowlands: Let me put another question to you You heard Sir Percy's view that if the Government continued its policy the Chinese Government would tear it up in 1997. Do you accept that assessment?

Sir Alan Donald: I think it would be very foolish to

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