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could be presented to the people in Hong Kong as the Hong Kong Government's programme.
It was not sufficient to cite United Kingdom political considerations when presenting programmes to the Hong Kong Chinese. He stressed the critical need to reach an agreed programme rather than resorting to the imposition of programmes from London. As a corollary of this he hoped that, when the programmes were agreed, it would be possible to leave the Hong Kong Government to find the best way to implement them.
3. Mr Lipsey said that tho aim of the paper must be to produce a policy for Hong Kong which Ministers felt was defensible. If this were not possible he thought that Ministers would consider as the alternative a policy of cutting HMG's losses in Hong Kong and leaving it. In order to persuade Ministers that they had a defensible policy it was not enough that progress should continue at the same rate as in the past: there must be some acceleration. The break, in other words, must be noticeable. He suggested that the weaknesses of the redrafted paper as it stood were twofold. There was a need for concrete signs of progress in the immediate future as Ministers would not be content with targets five years ahead. Secondly, he felt that the references in the redrafted paper to institutional changes had little appeal to interested parties in the United Kingdom.
4.
Mr O'Keeffe outlined the problems of drafting a planning paper which was at once acceptable to all sides and also conveyed to Ministe the political difficulties involved both for HMG and the Hong Kong Government. The new draft was a neutral one which attempted to
Mr Larmour establish agreed programmes for progress in Hong Kong. asked Mr Lipsey, how seriously would Ministers consider the idea of trying to extract HMG from its responsibilities for Hong Kong. Mr Lipsey replied that this was not an option discussed but he felt that it would be an instinctive reaction within the labour movement and perhaps to certain Ministers. Mr Bentley made the point that there could be innumerable problems in producing a policy which was both presentationally effective in this country, and at the same time acceptable to Peking as representing no fundamental change in the status quo. The latter was particularly
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