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Should Lady Limerick herself begin this discussion when she was in Peking later in the month?
(ii) did we envisage any problem with the Hong Kong Branch continuing their professional (as well as voluntary) activities? They had in mind in particular the well-regarded blood donor operation, which if I understood it correctly the Red Cross run on behalf of HKG.
4.
On the first point, we encouraged Lady Limerick to seek your advice on timing. I said that my first reaction was that they should give priority to building up as high a degree of autonomy as possible for the Hong Kong Branch now. That could then be presented to the Chinese Red Cross closer to 1997 as the existing practice, which should under BL148 be able to continue unimpeded with whatever nominal affiliation to the Chinese Red Cross was required by the Red Cross's own rules. I thought that there was some risk in opening up the subject too soon that the Chinese would make a meal of it.
5. On the second point, we said that in our view Red Cross operations which were wholly funded by HKG should be protected by BL144 Provided that the assets of the Hong Kong Branch were vested in a registered company or society, the ownership of them would also be protected by the Basic Law.
We encouraged Lady Limerick to ensure that the Hong Kong Red Cross were in touch with Constitutional Affairs Branch over the detail of their thinking about how and when to open up a dialogue with the Chinese about their position in 1997. We said that we knew of work underway within HKG on organisations with commonwealth links. It might be well that other organisations (eg the churches) were facing problems similar to those of the Red Cross and HKG might be able to offer additional insights. Lady Limerick seemed grateful for all this and I think took on board the advice about playing things long with the Chinese. She will aim to discuss that point further with you if she sees you
in Peking.
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