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Mr Leahy
Mr Cortazzi
PS/Mr Luard
PS/Lord Goronwy-Roberts
Private Secretary
CONFIDENTIAL
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Жек cooli
RECEIVED MA
16 MAR 1979 M. furni
014/3
INDEX
no 1 J19.3
Harf 15.5 N
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SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS
1. In his minute to the Prime Minister of 30 August 1978 the Secretary of State set out plans to put more impetus into our relations with China. These included help for the expanded Chinese student and language training programmes, the additional spending to be found from within the British Council's existing
resources in the first instance. Mrs Williams followed up this
initiative, giving some details of what we were doing in this field, in her minute to the Prime Minister of 11 October 1978. In that minute she expressed the hope that, if necessary, extra
resources on a modest scale could be made available to the Council.
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2. By making cuts elsewhere the British Council were able to find extra money for China, including the cost of reinforcing the
Embassy in Peking. The Chinese have been slow to respond to our proposals aimed at meeting their requests for expanded educational exchanges; and they have now told us that they cannot meet the full economic costs of the programme. In reporting this development our Ambassador in Peking recommends that we should provide a subsidy to cover the cost of placing Chinese students in the UK and sending British lecturers and teachers to China.
3. We have carefully weighed matters and have concluded that it
is in our wider interests to provide a subsidy for the expanded programme of educational exchanges with China. This case was put by Lord Goronwy-Roberts when he followed up the Secretary of State's
comment on Mrs Hart's expression of concern about the implications of an expanded educational programme for the ODM's commitments.
/Lord Goronwy-Roberts
CONFIDENTIAL