TNAG-2731-FCO40-3937-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-1993 — Page 205

SECRET

Hats oizte

Foreign & Commonwealth

Office

File

79

11 August 1992

Mr Peter Lai

Acting Secretary for Constitutional Affairs

Government Secretariat

HONG KONG

(By classified Fax)

Dear fete,

London SWIA 2AH

Telephone: 071-

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS WORKING GROUP MEETING, 6 AUGUST

1.

We

Many thanks for sending us the summary record of this meeting. It is most helpful to be kept up-to-date like this with the way your thoughts are developing on all these matters, particularly when things are moving as rapidly as they are. have not yet received the preparatory papers for this meeting, which are coming to us by bag but, as you have kept us well supplied with earlier papers, the background is reasonably familiar to us. As discussed earlier, we have not shown the papers to Ministers, but you may be interested in some quick official-level reactions.

Election Committee

2. We read with particular interest the discussion about the formation of the Election Committee, which strikes us as likely to require the most sensitive decisions, apart from the number of directly-elected seats. We share the view that by far the more democratic and generally attractive of the two options identified would be for the Election Committee to consist of (elected) members of the DBS and MCs.

3. As the Chief Secretary pointed out this would be an important compensation, both in real and in presentational terms, if there is to be no increase in the number of LegCo's directly-elected seats. For the same reason, we think the Chinese would almost certainly be strongly opposed to such an arrangement. They are likely to regard the 10 Election Committee seats as a substitute for appointed members (and with their now having the decisive say on at least 5 of them a useful step forward on the road of "participation"). expect thus to be able to count on a basic kernel of members sympathetic to them, ie a counterbalance to the directly-elected members, not an extension of them. The difficulty of their arguing publicly that they had counted on the Election Committee to vote in some of their stooges is unlikely to reduce their private bitterness about new British tricks which may reduce their ability to control events.

They would

p.lai.PR.JRB

SECRET