Ex-Hong Kong governor pushed Britain in 1989 to oppose citizenship requirements for top advisers and judges, seek concessions on PLA, declassified papers show

In a newly declassified 1989 telegram to Britain’s Foreign Office, then governor David Wilson argued his proposals were ‘important to restoring local confidence in the future of Hong Kong’ after the Tiananmen Square crackdown

The British government ultimately declined to take his advice regarding the nationality of top judges and executive councillors, while its efforts to prevent a peacetime PLA garrison from being stationed in Hong Kong ultimately failed

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Former governor David Wilson presides over a Legislative Council session in 1987. Photo: SCMP

Published: 7:30am, 15 Jun 2021Updated: 7:30am, 15 Jun 2021

The British government in 1989 dismissed calls from then Hong Kong governor David Wilson to push back against a proposed constitutional requirement that high-ranking judges and top government advisers be Chinese citizens after the city’s handover.

Wilson had also urged London at the time to press Beijing to make a statement declaring it would not exercise its right to station a peacetime People’s Liberation Army (PLA) garrison in Hong Kong, after acknowledging there was “no real prospect” of language to that effect being included in the Basic Law.

Wilson’s argued that his suggestions – revealed for the first time in a set of documents declassified nearly 30 years early following a freedom of information request by the Post – were “important to restoring local confidence in the future of Hong Kong” in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, as the city’s 1997 handover to China loomed.

The proposals – neither of which came to pass – came at a time when the British government was seeking to influence the final language of the Basic Law, which was drafted between 1985 and 1990 by a joint committee comprising Hong Kong and mainland Chinese members. The mini-constitution would ultimately be endorsed by China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, in April 1990.

In a telegram sent to Britain’s Foreign Office on July 13, 1989 with the subject line “Basic Law: Way Forward”, Wilson urged the government to push for the removal of the Chinese nationality requirement for Executive Council members and chief judges of the Court of Final Appeal and High Court, noting the rule was not stipulated in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

But Alan Paul, head of the office’s Hong Kong Department at the time, disagreed, brushing aside Wilson’s concerns in an August 18 memo to then Minister of State Francis Maude.