W. S. Carter, Esq., C.V.0., Commonwealth Office.
Our Ref:
C.D.35
19th May, 1967.
I appreciate that it is difficult to judge all this at the moment but we should be grateful for your views. If the situation should quieten down soon we should in any case need to take cognisance of the likelihood of recurrences over the years ahead and with this sort of perspective in mind it seems to us in any case necessary for us to take a view now as to likely Chinese attitudes towards external private liabilities (as these Tunnel Company liabilities would be) in the event of a take-over by force. We should accordingly be grateful if the Foreign Office could let us have comments on this particular point in the light of experience when the Communist regime took over on the mainland. And we should of course, be grateful to be kept in the picture on any longer-term assessments that may be made of the political or economic consequences for Hong Kong of these events.
I am copying this to the Treasury who have themselves expressed to us some concern about the outlook, and to other Departments who will no doubt be interested and need to be consulted if we should be forced to the view, when the time come s for a decision on the case, that the prospects are so uncertain as to make the risk commercially unacceptable. In that event we should require an urgent decision from the Export Guarantees Committee about its desirability in the national interest.
Copies go to Bolland and Mason (F.O.), S.H. Wright and Lucas (Treasury), Spiers (Bank of England), R.L. Davies (Board of Trade) and Cotterill here.
Yours sincerely,
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(C. P. RAWLINGS)
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