TNAG-2790-FCO40-4029-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1993 — Page 40

The Implementation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration

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If the political ground lost in the first four years of the transition period is to be won back in the eight short years still remaining; if the proposals made by the Foreign Affairs Committee for faster constitutional reform and improved protec- tion for human rights in the Basic Law are accepted by the British Government and are to be implemented; if the Hong Kong Government is not to be intimidated by China and is to be seen by its people to be firm in rightfully claiming what it was promised under the Joint Declaration, a much stronger Hong Kong front will have to be presented to China when implementation of the Joint Declaration is resumed. Until Hong Kong has had time to develop representative local leaders with broad-based support, that front will have to be organized and led by the Governor of Hong Kong. If public confidence in the future of Hong Kong is going to be restored that Governor will have to be perceived as the strongest Governor of Hong Kong that the people have ever had, and not as the most cooperative Governor of Hong Kong that China has ever had............

The choice facing the Foreign Secretary and the Governor of Hong Kong is either to go all out for what Hong Kong people were promised under the Joint Declaration, knowing that this will have international support, and incur the risk of confrontation with the Beijing Govemment or, to avoid all risk of confrontation by making the kinds of compromises that were made in the first stage of Implementa- tion. In the certain knowledge Hong Kong people will get only those dghts and conditions written into the Joint Declaration which China deems fit to grant them. It is a choice between uniting to wage a righteous fight for survival and freedom with a good chance of coming through bruised but alive and victorious; or offering no resistance to the Beijing Goverment's attempts to claw-back power and suffer- ing certain death by slow strangulation.

There is little doubt that the people of Hong Kong owe it to themselves, to their children and to the future well-being of China to encourage and support the British Government and the Governor of Hong Kong in taking the former road in spite of the risk it entails. What is in doubt is whether Sir David Wilson is the right Governor of Hong Kong to lead them along that road............

But if the present Governor is to be replaced by someone with appropriate leadership qualities who is it to be? The candidate is certainly not to be found in Hong Kong. The task is difficult and it is time consuming. It requires a style of leadership rare in career civil servants and unlikely to be found in anyone from the British Foreign Office. It needs someone with a sense of mission and with the sure touch that comes from competence backed by an unassailable social and political pedigree. It has to be someone with unquestionable authority and the gift of being able to bring together in support of the common cause powerful Hong Kong interest groups with divergent or opposed objectives.

The Other Hong Kong Report (1989), pp. 55-62

It might well be imagined that in the fall of 1989, after Parliament's most prestigious select committee had presented the Thatcher govern- ment with overwhelming proof of its failure to sustain the confidence of the people of Hong Kong in the viability of the Joint Declaration and