-2-
The British Foreign Secretary, George Brown, recognised that the internal Chinese factors lay at the roots of the Hong-Kong crisis, as shown in his reference to it as a spill-over of the Cultural
Revolution.
From April 1967 onwards, the internal situation in the People's Republic deteriorated to the verge of civil war. violent outbreaks were reported from many Chinese provinces, with sections of the working class, the peasantry and the army continuing to oppose the Cultural Pevoltion. These disturbances seemed to culminate in the crisis at Wuhan, an industrial centre of vital economic and strategic importance controlling the only bridge over the yangtse for thousands of miles. During the spring and summer of 1967 fighting threatened
to reduce the province to anarchy. Peking was believed to have
Canton. dropped parachutists and to have sent gunboats into the area. This domestic chaos was an important factor explaining the Hong-Kong conflict. As was pointed out at the time, "riots end demonstrations directed against the pritish Covernment in Hong-Kong have in the pest occurred when the weaknesses of the Government of the day in China made it necessary to distract attention, or to provide a foreign focus against
2 which national feeling could unite".
The Hong-Kong riots were not unique but rather part of a general "revolutionary fervour" that was sweeping pro-Chinese Communists parties throughout Asia. Previously, on the 3rd-4th December 1966, serious rioting by Communists had provoked a crisis in the Portuguese Colony of Macao, which was eventually settled with the governor of the colony accepting all the Commmist demands, including the banning of the rationalist Chinese organisations and a public apology by the local Portuguese authorities. In several ways Macao resembled a miniature Hong-Kong and it was generally believed that Communist successes would eventually provoke similar action in Hong-Kong. In the summer of 1967
2. A.S.B. Olver "China and Hong-Kong", p223.