Peking OKs Taiwan Links to Hong Kong

China assured Taiwan on Friday that it will not harm its lucrative links with Hong Kong when Britain hands the colony back to Peking in 1997.

“After China’s resumption of the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, the relations existing between Hong Kong and Taiwan, including those in the shipping, civil aviation, economic and cultural spheres and exchanges of personnel will remain unchanged,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

He was responding to reports that the rival Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan was rethinking its stated plan to cut all links with Hong Kong when the colony reverts to China.

Western diplomats said the pledge was significant as an explicit statement of China’s intentions toward Taiwan’s interests in Hong Kong after the implicit guarantees written into last month’s Sino-British pact on Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is Taiwan’s third biggest trading partner and provides the Nationalist-ruled island with $2 billion a year in business.

Peking has said it will preserve Hong Kong’s capitalist system and its institutions for at least 50 years after 1997 under Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s principle of “one country, two systems.”

Taiwan Model Suggested

Deng has already suggested this could be a solution to Taiwan’s objections to reunification with the Communist mainland.

China has said Taiwan could keep its government, army and capitalist system as long as it agrees to unity. Taipei has dismissed every offer as trickery.

Recent studies commissioned by the Taiwan government have recommended that ties with Hong Kong should not be cut.

The Council for Economic Planning and Development said it favors a continuation of shipping and air links and the setting up of trading companies within Hong Kong to oversee Taiwanese business interests.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman encouraged such a course.

“It is hoped that the members and organizations of the Kuomintang (Taiwan’s ruling Nationalist Party) will make contributions to the reunification of China and to the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong,” he said.