Cypher/Cat A
CONFIDENTIAL
TO: COPY 377
IMMEDIATE HONG KONG TO COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
Telno 344
CONFIDENTIAL
18 March 1968
Hw
Addressed to Commonwealth Office telegram No. 344 of
18 March
Repeated for information to Peking
371
My telegram No. 342; Film Stars.
367
I have been considering how best we could make capital out of this exercise and what follow up action we should now take.
2.
The incident naturally aroused considerable Press interest here and the Communist Press has been expectedly vituperative on the subject although there are no signs of protest meeting and so on being organised. The neutral and Right-Wing Press, while making a few criticisms, has not, on the whole, said anything particularly damaging nor is public opinion particularly disturbed.
30
Other factors are:-
(a) Chinese at Lo Wu could have made much more of a
demonstration there, had they wished, in a number of ways:
(c)
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(b) The protest in Peking seems from Peking telegram
No. 207 to have been reasonably mildly worded: Our contacts here seem to have bungled, at least to some extent (at NCNA meeting referred to in my telegram No. 333 Liang and Poon appeared to know nothing of our prior warning of what we intended to do and to be surprised what we had given it; reference was also made by them to our having used "the wrong method" but without further elaboration there may be eventual scope for some different arrangement with the Chinese here):
(d) There is some evidence from observation of the gestures, etc., of the border guards and the relaxed attitudes of the film stars themselves on return that they themselves were not particularly keen to cross and this may have had some effect on the final outcome.
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371 985, 389
40 I suggest, therefore, that we might now press fairly hard but not publicly along a general line Charge d'Affaires has already taken (Peking telegram No. 207 refers) namely that we were annoyed and disappointed at the Chinese reaction. We had
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