TNAG-2783-FCO40-4002-UK-business-interests-in-Hong-Kong-Chinese-discrimination-ag-1993 — Page 76

CONFIDENTIAL

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TELNO 190

OF 261727Z MARCH 93

AND TO IMMEDIATE UKREP BRUSSELS

INFO IMMEDIATE HONG KONG, BTC HONG KONG

INFO IMMEDIATE UKREP JLG HONG KONG,

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YOUR TELSNO 393 AND 417: EC-CHINA: HONG KONG AND BILATERAL TRADE

SUMMARY

1. Conditional acceptance of Commission offers of discreet assistance over Chinese threats to disrupt UK export prospects.

DETAIL

2. Besides the instances quoted in second TUR, we have now received several other pieces of information suggesting that, at the very least, hints of action against the interests of British companies are increasing.

This is obviously disturbing and is likely to lead to further representations to us by senior businessmen. For the time being we are sticking to the public line already faxed to you. The difficulty will be to detect which if any, instances of UK companies Losing contracts are attributable to politically-directed discrimination. The Chinese will have an interest in sowing the seeds of mistrust between British business and HMG by attributing any/any loss of contracts to fall-out from the Hong Kong issue. Many businessmen will jump to that conclusion themselves.

3 We see no advantage in encouraging the Chinese in this tactic by demonstrating over-sensitivity ourselves. We note that Qian Qichen's remarks were somewhat more nuanced than Li Langing's but the danger remains that procurement decision-makers further down the line will now begin to interpret these generalised threats to the disadvantage of our firms. In these circumstances we and the DTI would see some advantage in taking up, prudently and avoiding over-dramatisation, the Commission's offers of help (para 5 of peking telno 393, and wright's TL to Jones-Parry of 18 March). Robert Madelin of Mr Brittan's Cabinet also discussed

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