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5. On the other hand, if we do attempt to consult the Chinese, I quite accept that it is likely to take a long time, and will not necessarily be successful. They will certainly be looking around for sovereignty implications, and are quite capable of reading such implications into areas which you or I would not see as involving sovereignty. Furthermore current activities in APEC will be distinctly unhelpful.
6.
On the whole, my advice would be to try the consultation route, since successful consultation will ensure that there are no problems after 1997. On the other hand, if it is decided not to do that, then I would not take any steps to inform the Chinese at all, since informing them but refusing to listen to the inevitable request for consultation will only enrage them and make them determined to frustrate you. In such a case if you can manage the matter very quietly with OECD without publicity, it is possible that the Chinese simply will not notice, and Hong Kong's observer status will become a fait accompli. I do not know whether this is conceivable, though I should have thought that you would be quite lucky to get away with it.
7.
It is
I do emphasise that we are not trying to be unhelpful. the likely Chinese attitude, which we are trying to predict, which is unhelpful. How HKG decide to play the matter is very much up to you, and we will give you whatever support we can, whichever course you choose.
bec:
CC:
Mr Michael Sze, SCA Mr David Edwards, LO (IL) Mr William Ehrman, PA
Cum
Cany
ever,
A C Galsworthy
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Mr Peter Ricketts, HKD, FCO
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