that this is their position, they feel it very strongly, and they will act upon it. We therefore must give this matter great weight as a political fact in our calculations. If we do not, if we brush it aside and say they ought not to feel like this, or, 'let's take a change and maybe they will not do what they say they will do', then we are being indefensibly reckless with the future of six million people who are in our charge.
Mr John Stanley: Sir Percy, it would seem to me that the whole thrust of your paper, and indeed of what you have been saying this morning, is based on the view that the only parties which matter in this issue are the British Government and the Chinese Government. Would you not agree that the people of Hong Kong also are utterly central to this decision process as to the extent to which democracy is built in in Hong Kong before 1997? Would you not agree that it is a clear moral responsibility on the British Government to put to LegCo proposals for a further extension of democracy and through LegCo let the people of Hong Kong be able to express a view as to whether they want to go down that path or not? Are not the people of Hong Kong a central issue in this equation, and should they not be given the opportunity to take a view on the Governor's proposals?
Sir Percy Cradock: I entirely agree that the people of Hong Kong are a very important part of this crisis. during the 1982
Indeed,
1984 negotiations we reiterated that: at each stage we said, 'subject to the agreement of the people of Hong Kong' if you remember
-
that came in in every letter which was sent. So I do not deny that for a moment.
Where we may part company is the suggestion that they have the final say on everything. I do not think the Chinese, for one moment, would accept that, and they are an essential party to any agreement. They insist that this is basically a bilateral business between London and Peking and they deny that LegCo, for example, should have a central voice in it because they consider LegCo as simply an advisory body.
As regards the views of the people of Hong Kong, of course those are very important. I am not, myself, sure what they are. We are often told that the people of Hong Kong fully support the
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is
Governor, and of course they say this and they do. At the same time, there is no doubt that the people of Hong Kong, if asked whether they want co-operation with China, say, 'of course we do'. The question that is hardly ever, if ever, put to them, 'Do you wish to have democratic reform and support the Governor at the cost of confrontation with China?' I am not that question has ever been put and I am myself doubtful what sure that
answer. we would get from them.
a
As regards our obligation to push democracy, we have no legal obligation to put forward the Patten reforms. there is in the Joint Declaration is a very generalised statement All that
saying that the legislature of the SAR will be constituted by elections.
I agree entirely that we have a moral and political responsibility to push democracy as far as we can in Hong Kong in the special circumstances but that certainly does not cover pushing democracy to the point where the Chinese carry out a vicious backlash and undo much of what you have done before. That is the position in which we now find ourselves. That would be highly self-destructive as a policy. obliged to take that course.
We are not The right course- is to negotiate an agreement with China as we did, for example, in the period 89/90 when we dealt with democracy in Hong Kong, because I am sure that it is of little benefit and of great damage to set up disputed arrangements which will merely be torn down in 1997 when the Chinese take over.
Mr Robert Wareing: Sir Percy, you did in fact lead the negotiating team in the talks which led to the Joint Declaration. I wonder whether you do not think that we foresight at that time and that these problems which are
were lacking in
facing the present Governor after all, he was not responsible for the situation in which he found himself should have been addressed at the time? I would welcome your comment.
now
to me from the visit that the Select Committee made to Hong Kong It seems
that there are some interests in Hong Kong, and I would place them as the rather bigger business interests, who have got on very well,
thank you very much, under British rule without
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democracy and are fully prepared, provided their own interests are protected, to do the same under China. But those of us who are interested in human rights and seeing the human rights violations which have occurred in China even before 1983, long before Tiananmen Square, the Cultural Revolution and so on, would have thought that perhaps a negotiating team on behalf of Britain, which, after all, was only committed to handing over the new territories in 1997 and not the rest of Hong Kong, that we should perhaps have had more foresight. What is your response
to that?
Sir Percy Cradock: My response to that is that it bears very little relation to the situation at the time. negotiating on a vast range of issues under a tight timetable. We were
We covered everything as far as we could and it is unreal now to say that we should have covered every conceivable detail. is a point which was made to you by Lord Howe in his recent This
exchanges with you.
As regards democracy in Hong Kong, we fought for it as far as we could at the time of the negotiations. The Chinese were adamant against it and we only managed to get generalised phrase in at
that very the very last minute and with the personal help of Geoffrey Howe in a message to Wu Xueqian, the Chinese Foreign Minister. I should add that democracy at the time was by no means the head of the priorities for ExCo: they thought we were wasting our last shots and they would have much preferred them to be used on a matter concerned with nationality. As regards democracy in the years before the negotiations, you have to bear in mind the attitude of the Chinese Government to any suggestion of that kind at the time. They made it plain to us and to their supporters in Hong Kong,
Kong, that towards democracy in the Westminster style in Hong Kong would be any moves
regarded by them as moves towards independence, and you know what their attitude was to any move that Hong Kong should be independent
So that talk about introducing democracy earlier on in the sixties and seventies in Hong Kong is, with great respect, unreal. We dealt with it as far as we could during the negotiations and in the years after
it was absolutely out.
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