CHINA last night revealed its version of the failed Sino-British talks on Hong Kong's democratic reform, accusing Britain of deliberately sabotaging negotiations and attempting to interfere in Chinese sovereignty. The 17,000-character statement released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry charged the British side with failing to agree to an eight-point text proposed by Beijing at the end of only three rounds of talks. This was a set of major principles on key issues of the 1994-95 electoral arrangements. Britain had all along refused to confirm some, had paid lip service to others and overturned the rest when it came to concrete matters, the statement said. Titled ''Facts about a few important aspects of Sino-British talks on 1994-95 electoral arrangements in Hong Kong'', the Foreign Ministry statement alleged that Britain was trying to use the last elections under its administration to maintain its influence over Hong Kong beyond 1997, and thereby manipulate the political situation here. It rejected Britain's claims, as suggested in the White Paper published last Thursday, that the Chinese proposals would cause ''corruption and vote-rigging''. The Hong Kong Government last night issued a statement stressing that it stood by its version of the talks ''no matter how many accounts of the talks are published''. The spokesman said no matter how many accounts were published, the basic fact remained the same, adding that ''the only move the Chinese side was prepared to make was to agree to the lowering of the voting age to 18''. ''This is not much to show for 160 hours of talks when the voting age is already 18 in both Britain and China.'' The chairman of the United Democrats of Hong Kong, Martin Lee Chu-ming, went to see Governor Chris Patten yesterday. He asked for more information on how the British side had last summer come to offer the Chinese side modified proposals on the functional constituency and Election Committee polls. Mr Patten's spokesman, Mike Hanson, said the Government would issue a further statement on the subject before the end of the week. The Executive Council will meet this morning to discuss the Chinese statement. The statement issued at 9.45 pm contained eight parts and five annexes including the eight-point statement, relevant provisions in the Basic Law and a five-point statement submitted orally by China at the 17th and last negotiating session in November. It confirmed the British version that the two sides failed to see eye-to-eye on fundamental issues including the previous understandings on the ''seven diplomatic exchanges'' at the first three rounds of talks. The statement said Chinese negotiators had continually reminded the British side from as early as April 7, 1993, when the two sides agreed to hold talks that any tabling of bills to the Legislative Council ''would mean the breakdown of the talks''. ''The British side turned a deaf ear to the Chinese warning,'' the spokesman said. The Chinese statement, however, did not specifically say whether Britain has accepted the pre-condition of the talks. Officials including Chief Secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang said Britain had never made such a commitment. The spokesman said China argued that the British proposals for functional constituencies and the Election Committee were in violation of the Basic Law and were too drastic. On the through-train issue, he confirmed that it had proposed subversion as one of the criteria to determine whether members can serve beyond 1997. He did not say whether it had responded to Britain's demand that the criteria should have no retrospective power. Instead, he accused Britain of using ''the media under its control to publicly distort the view of the Chinese side outside the talks'' on the issue. China said it had to fight back to make public ''facts concerning several major issues''. China was ''compelled'' to go for the tit-for-tat approach after Britain broke the confidentiality rules by ''unilaterally'' publishing contents of the talks, the statement said. The government version published on Thursday had ''distorted and attacked'' China's position, it argued. The cause of the breakdown of the talks, it said, was ''the sabotage of the British side''. The spokesman asserted that the essence of the dispute was not a ''a question of whether to develop democracy in Hong Kong''. Rather, ''it is one of whether to act in good faith in relations between nations and whether to converge with the Basic Law'' in order to secure a smooth transition of the enclave, the spokesman said.