CODE 18-77
ED. 12/76
CONFIDENTIAL
Mr Ling
Hong Kong and General Department
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Virit
Reference
file_HKK 006/3
Goo'r's China file
to
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INDEX
17 APR 1979
PA
RO.
No 723.4L
VISITS TO CHINA BY SIR ALEXANDER GRANTHAM (GOVERNOR OF HONG KONG, 1947-1957)
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waken
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1. One or two interesting details have come to light from my reading ofɔ Sir Alexander Grantham's book "Via Ports: From Hong Kong to Hong Kong" (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 1965).
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Sir Alexander's account makes it clear that, as Governor of Hong Kong from July 1947, he made several visits to China [Guangzhou (Canton), Nanjing (Nanking) and Peking) before the inauguration of the People's Republic in October 1949. As we concluded earlier, however, it is quite true to say that, apart from one occasion in 1955, Sir Murray MacLehose is the first Governor of Hong Kong to visit China officially to meet representatives of the Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese People's Government.
3. Sir Alexander recalls that one of his first official calls as Governor was on General Zhang Fakui (Chang Fa-k'uei), the Nationalist Governor of Guangzhou (Canton). A few months later, Dr T V Soong [Song Ziwen (Sung Tse-wen)] was appointed to Guangzhou as Governor of Guangdong with authority over all South China.
Sir Alexander paid the first call on his new opposite number at Guangzhou and comments "we saw a good deal of the Soongs during the time they were in Canton, which was until the latter part of 1949 when the city fell to the communists. wife were fairly frequent visitors to Hong Kong."
He and his
4. Another in the Governor's first round of calls was to HM Ambassador, Sir Ralph Stevenson, in Nanjing (Nanking), then the Nationalist Chinese capital. On that visit the Governor also paid a call on the Nationalist leader, General Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek).
5. In September 1948 the Governor and his wife paid what he describes as a "sentimental visit" to Peking (their last visit to Peking, where they had first met at the home of Sir Alexander's mother and stepfather, was in 1932). The visit in 1948 was before the communist forces had captured Peking, although Sir Alexander notes that gun fire could be heard in the distance (Peking was taken in January 1949).
6. The Governor of Hong Kong did not visit China again until October 1955, when he and his wife stayed at the British Embassy as the private guests of the Chargé d'Affaires and his wife. The Governor had sought and obtained permission from the Foreign and Colonial Offices for the visit. The Chargé, Mr O'Neill, gained the agreement of the Chinese authorities, with the understanding that the visit should be entirely private and that Sir Alexander should pay all his own expenses. Although on a private visit, the Governor accompanied by Mr O'Neill paid a courtesy call on the Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Zhang Hanfu (Chang Han-fu). In the course of that conversation, Zhang extended an invitation to Sir Alexander, the Chargé and their respective wives to lunch with the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai). The invitation was accepted.
7. In his account of the discussions which followed and which were attended by the Governor, Mr O'Neill, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Hanfu and an interpreter, Sir Alexander recalls that he tried to keep the talk away from Hong Kong matters. He asked the
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