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over-run, could not be entirely excluded if shipping could be made available, but it seems most improbable. Should it not prove
possible to extricate our troops, they would of course add significantly to the number of hostages who could be used by the Chinese for bargaining purposes.
(a) As indicated above, knowledge that evacuation planning is in progress would deal a severe blow to public confidence in the Colony. The strictest precautions to avoid any leak are therefore necessary.
(e) The paper does not take into account the possible effects on opinion in the Colony, and hence on our possible plans for evacuation, of action by other nations, in particular the United States, if the
situation in the Colony worsened. Such action for example, the evacuation of dependants might inspire lack of confidence in our own intentions; in such a case we might have to undertake more overt
planning ourselves in concert with other Governments concerned. This
however would accentuate any crisis of confidence and would be liable
to result in our losing control of the situation. It is not possible to
speculate usefully on the likelihood of the United States taking
premature action to evacuate dependants, or planning to do so see also paragraph 8 below. During the disturbances in Macao they held on till the last moment, but in Nigeria and Libya they seemed unduly
alarmist. If the Americans did evacuate their own dependants, this
would be likely to enable us to evacuate larger numbers than would
otherwise be possible, by taking advantage of American transport facilities.
J
(f) The Working Party has examined the possibility of action in the
financial and economic fields in the event of a forced evacuation from
Hong Kong. The outcome of this consideration is attached as Annex A.
New Paragraph 4 (old paragraph 3)
40 This paper considers the problem on the following basis
(a) Large-scale evacuation: etc.
e-number references to paragraphs as appropriate/
(a) Plan "DIGIT"
(paragraphs 11 and 12)
New Paragraph 5
(old paragraph 4)
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