TNAG-2791-FCO40-4030-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China.-With-maps-1993 — Page 153

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technical details such as the financing of the massive airport

project. More broadly, other than the institute that directly

serves the Office, there are no research institutes in China

devoted to Hong Kong affairs.

Possibly because of these factors from time to time the

negotiations tend to get held up and log jams develop until,

either because of an injection of urgency from above or due to

the need to meet an arbitrary deadline, a whole series of often

complex matters incorporating difficult details have to be

decided quickly under stressful almost crisis conditions. Two

examples may be cited to illustrate the tendency: In order to

meet Deng Xiaoping's September 1984 deadline for the completion

of the negotiations for the Joint Declaration both delegations

had to work virtually non-stop for days on end until a

satisfactory wording was finally agreed at the last moment. Since

the British side were the better prepared in advance with

detailed documentation on legal and other technical details some

of the wording in the agreed final document has turned out to be

somewhat embarrassing to the Chinese even though the general

structure of the Joint Declaration reflects their original

negotiating position. Thus China's spokesmen hardly ever refer

to the commitment to retain "unchanged" the "life-style" of Hong

Kong, but they repeatedly proclaim the necessity of upholding

"stability and prosperity". Similarly, since the differences

erupted over Tiananmen the negotiations in the Joint Liaison

Group have made little or no

technical, but important

progress. A whole series of

matters

are

being held-up without