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21 February, 1967
2012
3)
Thank you for sending me a copy of the Governor of Hong Kong's despatch No. 2879 of 15 December last. We found it very interesting.
2. We have no particular comments on it, except to say that as you will realise, there is clearly some confusion in paragraph 11 about official Chinese protests at United States activities in Hong Kong. There were two official
protests during the period under review: the first in September 1965, following the aircraft incident referred to in paragraph 10, and the second in February 1966.
The reason for the second was the presence of a considerable number of United States naval vessels. There have been other "complaints" in the Hong Kong left-wing press since then, which havebeen taken up in the mainland press, but no further official protests.
3. Since the despatch was written, there have of course been some important developments in the external field having a bearing on Hong Kong, to which you might wish to draw attention in your formal reply to the Governor. These are the Chinese campaign against Macao and the intensification of the Cultural Revolution which took place when it was extended to industry. This began in late December 1966. Having extracted the maximum concessions from the Portuguese, the Chinese stopped short at actual occupation of Macao. There is some reason to believe that a contributory factor in the Chinese decision may have been their assessment that such action would affect confidence in Hong Kong, which is valuable to them economically and for intelligence purposes. We have no evidence to suggest that there has been a change in the basic Chinese policy of
/maintaining
7. S. Carter, Esq., C.V.O.,
Hong Kong and West Indian Department 'C',
Dependent Territories Division,
Commonwealth Office.
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