Fanling Lodge served as a secret venue for talks between China and Britain over Hong Kong's future prior to the 1997 handover, former monetary chief Joseph Yam Chi-kong said.
"I sincerely appeal to everybody in society to leave Fanling Lodge alone" Yam wrote in an article published in the Hong Kong Economic Journal yesterday.
"The significance of [the lodge] goes beyond being a welfare benefit for Hong Kong's chief executives... It witnessed the Sino-British collaborative efforts in paving the way for the handover of Hong Kong's sovereignty, including the foundation of Hong Kong's monetary and finance policies," Yam wrote.
The lodge hosted a series of negotiations during the transition to 1997, he said.
Yam recalled his participation in one such secret meeting when he was deputy secretary for monetary affairs in December 1988, a time when the political atmosphere was tense and people were anxious about the future.
It was a meeting of a top-level Sino-British taskforce on financial affairs. He said five Chinese officials, including Lu Ping , the leading Beijing official in charge of Hong Kong affairs in the run-up to the handover, met him, then Financial Secretary Sir Piers Jacobs and Secretary for Monetary Affairs David Nendick.