TNAG-2941-FCO40-4217-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-ethnic-minorities-1993 — Page 44

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CONFIDENTIAL

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Understand your worries about 3.5m potential BNOS.

But seems to me everything hinges on one's interpretation of Janet Young's 1985 pledge. Imagine we need legal advice on this. But clear to me from reading it several times that she was not just referring to the non-Chinese ethnic minorities, but to all BNOS/BOCs. Indeed, the whole thrust of her argument is that it would be wrong to differentiate

between the two.

In practice, were BNOS / BOCS to come under real pressure to leave here post 1997 and genuinely had nowhere else to go, presumably we would have to consider their cases sympathetically?

What to do?

I suggest that rather than try to reinterpret our past pledges, it would be better simply to restate Janet Young's 1985 pledge in the same terms.

Any other course would make us look very slippery.

CONFIDENTIAL