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this Mission, operating from makeshift quarters in what was
my house, beside the shell of our former Chancery building,
cxist in a sort of diplomatic limbo. We are fed and housed
and no longer particularly harassed in our daily lives, but
we are (and have been for over a year) excluded from any
official Chinese function, and are denied exit visas or even
permission to move outside Peking. Thus we approach the end
In
of our first year of detention as political hostages.
Hong Kong violence has ceased and tension both in the colony
and along the frontier has receded, but the Communists
continue to show an attitude of open and militant hostility
towards the Hong Kong Government.
Origins of the Crisis
3. Before proceeding to explore possible ways and means
of attaining that "early improvement" in Sino-British
relations
which we have told the Chinese we desire, it would
be salutary to ask ourselves why and how they have reached
their present pass. This phase in our relations is
sometimes described as "confrontation", which is a not
inconvenient term, providing we realise that there will always
be, oven at the best of times, a persisting clash of interests
between Poking and Hong Kong, as the former strives to improve
its position within the colony at our expense. It is most
unlikely that in the foreseeable future our relations with
China will ever be characterised as "good". "Confrontation"
should, therefore, be understood in this paper to mean the
state of abnormal tension in our relations which has obtained
/since
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