GUNS LUBNA JADI
5
Foreign Policy
8. The Chinese leadership is clearly devoting its
main attention to internal affairs. In foreign policy,
China's recent actions have mainly been in the form of
responses to external events and not initiatives. But
the violent and chauvinistic atmosphere of the Cultural
Revolution and attacks on "moderates" such as the Foreign
Minister and senior Foreign Ministry officials have
affected the nature of their responses. There is good
evidence that a group of revolutionary rebels in the
Foreign Ministry exercises much influence, and there was
a poster raport of an incident on 13 May when groups of
Red Guards broke into this Ministry in search of con-
fidential matter to incriminate Ch'en Yi. However
Ch'en Yi remains in charge and to some extent has been
supported by Chou En-lai. The pressure of Red Guard
activities probably means that Ch'en Yi and others under
attack are forced to react strongly to external events,
such as Hong Kong or the incidents in Ulan Bator involving
Chinese teachers, even if they may not consider this to
be in the best interests of China's foreign policy.
Hong Kong
9. The pro-Communist leadership in Hong Kong, having
suffered a defeat in the first round of their confronta-
tion with the Hong Kong Government, seem now to be
reconsidering their tactivs. They may well also be
waiting for instructions from Peking. Meanwhile, they
are organizing short token strikes designed presumably
CONFIDENTIAL
/to