TNAG-2790-FCO40-4029-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1993 — Page 39

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The Other Hong Kong Report 1993

representative government, "people in Hong Kong will also be looking at the question of how they can be sure... what they are trying to set up goes on after 1997." We fully recognise the importance of carrying China with the developments instituted in Hong Kong, but we do not see the situation in this way. We believe that this approach can be damaging to confidence in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Government remains responsible for the administration of Hong Kong to 30 June 1997. It must carry out that duty in accordance with the needs and demands of Hong Kong itself, particularly now that negotiations with the Chinese have been so disrupted. Although there is a risk that the Chinese Government will be unwilling to accept the consequent developments in Hong Kong, at the worst, by refusing to incorporate them in the Basic Law, we believe that far greater are the risks to confidence and stability associated with appearing to wait upon Chinese approval before taking action in Hong Kong prior to 1997. Indeed we believe that the Hong Kong Government mast take this opportunity to seize the initiative so as to establish in Hong Kong in advance of 1997 the institutions and systems best designed to guarantee Hong Kong's future autonomy and stability within the terms of the Joint Declaration.

-Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 1988-89, Second Report — Hong Kong, Volume I, p. xii

Must Try Harder

It was against this alarming evidence of the British government's am- bivalence in developing the political rights granted to the people of Hong Kong in the Joint Declaration that Chapter 3 of The Other Hong Kong Report (1989) was written. Not surprisingly it took both the British and Hong Kong governments severely to task for conspiring with China to hold back political reform in Hong Kong until the Basic Law Drafting Com- mittee had devised a model for Hong Kong to "converge" with. British performance overall in implementing the Joint Declaration for the first third of the 12-year run-up to the British handover to China was summed up as follows:

If any lesson is to be leamed from this sad saga of poor political judgment, wishful thinking, broken promises, lack of determination and deliberate misrepresentation, it is this. Implementation of the Joint Declaration should not be resumed until the British and Hong Kong Governments bave agreed on ways of ensuring that whatever is done from now on is in the best interests of the people of Hong Kong, that it does not derogate from their rights under the Joint Declaration, and that it is done with their participation and general consent wherever possible. It cannot be right that the future well-being of the six million people of Hong Kong should continue to be entrusted to a small team of British officials, operating in strict confidence, who do not have to live with the future they are laying down for all those people, and who are not directly accountable to them.