TNAG-2781-FCO40-4000-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-Chinese-reac-1993 — Page 12

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Jiang's expansion of the reference to "one country two systems" as meaning the principle that on the mainland socialism will be practiced, while in the SAR the capitalist system would continue. It is unattractive to require members of LegCo to endorse the continuation of socialist policies on the mainland. A fallback would be to agree to include wording from the preamble of the Basic Law, ie that "the socialist system and policies should not be practiced in the Hong Kong SAR ..."

- A reference to legislators dedicating themselves to "bringing about a smooth transition and a smooth transfer of power". Hong Kong argue that the oath will be taken on 1 July 1997 and that the transition will have occurred by then.

5. On the last point, I propose that we should put to Hong Kong the possibility of including some wording about dedication to a smooth transition, if the Chinese side press the point: there would be some political attraction in registering the point that the transition is something which continues beyond 1997 (just as the Joint Liaison Group remains in being until the year 2000). I do not see that there is any disadvantage to this. But we need not have this in our opening draft.

6.

We have just received a letter from Nigel Cox in Peking raising a number of points on the draft oath. We have considered this with Departmental Legal Advisers who agree that Mr Cox only raises one new point of law. He argues for deletion of the reference in the oath to Hong Kong being an inalienable part of China. This has not been raised by Jiang and has no obvious attraction. I propose that we suggest to Hong Kong that it should be deleted and held in reserve in case the Chinese should raise it themselves. We will reply by letter to his other points: in particular I disagree with his point that it would be better to leave out the undertaking not to overthrow the Chinese Government. It would of course be much better from our point of view not to have anything on subversion. But if we omit it, the Chinese side will surely conclude that we are not serious; it is the central point for them. And we need to include a formulation on it to make the point that any such provision must be prospective.

7. I believe that Hong Kong's draft would provide a good basis for the start of what could be a lengthy negotiation of texts. It would be useful to maintain the momentum of discussion of this issue by introducing it at the next round.

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PF Ricketts

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