TNAG-2732-FCO40-3938-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-1993 — Page 25

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CONFIDENTIAL

Publicity

The meeting noted that there were still difficulties over publicity for the talks. The Chinese position was driven by NCNA hard-liners. They were maintaining unrealistically that after the first round there should be no publicity. This was reflected in the Chinese refusal to grant visas to journalists.

Longer Term Issues

The Secretary of State asked about the inter-face between the Anglo/Chinese talks and LegCo's consideration of the Governor's proposals. The Governor said he believed the Hong Kong community could accept greater concessions from the LegCo process than from the talks, although in practice LegCo would probably accept any agreement which came out of the talks. The two key points for the Chinese were the Election Committee and the Functional Committees. On the former the crux was whether the Committee was elected or selected. Provided that the principle of election was met, the Governor believed alternative forms to that in his proposals could be tolerable. However, the Chinese were likely to accept the principle of election, but to differ on what that meant in practice. The Governor saw Functional Committees as more of a problem. Any new Functional Committees would involve fewer people voting. Thus the success or failure of the Governor's strategy would be judged by the outcome on this. But various gradations were possible. We should use the talks to flush out the Chinese.

The Governor said that the issue of the through train was very important. A dilution of the Governor's proposals could be defensible in LegCo, including to the liberals, provided that the Chinese made an acceptable commitment on the position in 1997 of those elected in 1995. The exchange of letters provided quite a strong basis for our position on the through train. He thought that moderate Chinese understood the problems China would face if they did not provide acceptable through train arrangements for people like Martin Lee. However, we must avoid a situation where the British and Hong Kong Governments appeared to connive at unfair arrangements for 1995, and failed to secure the through train.

CONFIDENTIAL

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