CONFIDENTIAL
CODFORNITIAL
You
SECRETARY
OF STATE
were out of line with the new policy of liberalisation. A similar influx from the countryside was happening in Peking and Shanghai. Representations had been made at various levels to the Chinese, who had said that it would take time to correct the situation. A further cause was the departure of the Chinese 42nd Army from Kwangtung Province to the Vietnam border: there seemed little prospect of this formation returning for some time. The peak of illegal immigration occurred in the summer when travel was easier, but he hoped that in the autumn the Chinese would begin to re-establish control, especially if they saw that the Hong Kong Government were taking vigorous steps to deal with it. It was therefore important to intercept as many immigrants as possible. deterred people from trying. He hoped that the situation could be stabilised during the winter.
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3. The Secretary of State did not doubt the seriousness of the problem in Hong Kong but the Government had inherited a situation in which the Forces were seriously undermanned. They intended to put it right, but time was needed. In recent years they had been increasingly concerned at the weakening of the will of NATO and the massive build-up in the Warsaw Pact. The new Government in Britain had taken a totally different view of this problem to that of the previous Government, and its actions and words had already had an effect on NATO. Therefore, he had to weigh most carefully the consequences of any assistance to Hong Kong on NATO. The overstretch in the British Forces arose from their commitments being greater than their resources; for example, the situation in Northern Ireland was in some respects worse than it had been in 1973/4. We were particularly short of helicopters and crews, and there was no way in which we could plug the gap in the short term. Our problems in NATO would be even more serious if it turned out that the Hong Kong problem was not a temporary one. He wondered, therefore, whether a more limited scale of reinforcement might be adequate. He accepted that it was not possible to continue to deploy all four Battalions of the Garrison unless reinforcements were provided: either reinforcements should be provided or the scale of deployment reduced. A possible source of reinforcement was the Gurkha Battalion in Brunei on a temporary basis. Then in six or nine months time it would be possible to add to the number of Gurkhas in Hong Kong by recruiting more, eventually leading to the formation of an additional Battalion.
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