country, in Hong Kong
in Hong Kong and all over the world, and it is political fact. As Sir Percy argued so persuasively I thought,
political facts have to be taken account of.
a
Sir Richard Evans: I did take part in negotiation of an agreement when I was political advisor in Hong Kong with the Guangdong authorities, which has had a tremendous effect on the well-being in Hong Kong, and that was the agreement in 1974 and
I rather fancy Mr Rowlands may have been Minister of State at the time but in 1974 there was a local agreement between the Hong Kong authorities and the Guangdong authorities for the return to China of illegal immigrants who came into Hong Kong. There was a great deal of anxiety at the time, and I am sure Mr Rowlands will remember, that if Hong Kong embarked on this course this was in 1974, not long after the rest of the Gang of Four and and
the cultural revolution was still in everyone's minds anyone sent back from Hong Kong to Guangdong would end up before that
a firing squad, and that would have been very ill received in this country.
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The agreement was made orally; there was no written record of it, and the agreement has been honoured. about 1983 and has been honoured very strictly to the present It was amplified in
day, except for a very short period of a few days when in a moment of displeasure something went wrong and they held up the return for about a fortnight.
But that is an example of an agreement which could have had dire consequences. I do not know of anyone who has been returned from Hong Kong who has been executed; the numbers are very small and there have been a few fines, or something like that.
Mr Robert N Wareing:
This is a question about the individual liberties and individual people of Hong Kong. I think it was Sir Alan who said previously that we need to understand a lot more about China, but I think that China needs to know an awful lot about Britain and other countries which societies.
are open So the relationship between China and Britain is bedeviled to a large extent by our feelings over human rights in China. Tinanmen Square is very much to the fore as far as we are
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