NOT too many people know that the lease of the FCC, that popular hang-out of PR operatives and marketing types in Lower Albert Road, runs out in May 1997 - a month before Hong Kong's. Since all important government properties (and the FCC sits on one) have to be discussed under the Sino-British agreement, we wondered whether that was the reason why Beijing-based German newspaper correspondent Peter Seidlitz - a former president of the FCC - was entertaining China's outgoing chief negotiator, Guo Fengmin, to lunch at the club the other day? When we located Seidlitz yesterday at the poolside of the Bangkok Oriental (the life of a foreign correspondent is indeed a tough one) he told us he had other reasons for facilitating Guo's first ever visit to the FCC. 'I was lobbying not for the FCC Hong Kong but for the FCC Beijing which has no status whatsoever.' So now we know.
