accord with the views of the Governor of
Hong Kong (Para.
below). He also
suggested that a further point not covered in
C.O. telegram No. 1252 was, the "bunching" of vessels in Hong Kong harbour, sun to be
толбе Fahen was condeantim
5.
In Peking telegram No. 647 Sir D. Hopson
has commented that he would greatly prefer
visits by large or nuclear ships to be cut off
for the time being. Nevertheless he accepts
that it may not be possible all together to
exclude them. He follows this up with an
analysis of details of visits by U.S. naval
vessels in the last three years, based on
details given in Hong Kong telegram No. 321,
and concludes that the general level proposed
for potentially controversial ships is still
very high and that the proposed level for
nuclear vessels would in fact be higher than
in the past. The point about nuclear vessels
is based on a misunderstanding of a point made
in C.0. telegram No. 1252. It was our
purpose there to talk about the spacey of such
Amy
visits, i.e. the minimum that should elapse
between visits. We were not necessarily
implying that we should wish to see visits
occurring/every two months, and a consequent
total of six visits in any one year.
Nevertheless Sir D. Hopson has a point. If
we rule only on the matter of spacing, this
opens up the theoretical possibility that the
Americans, by playing the rule absolutely to
the limit, would send in six nuclear vessels
/per