AKK 341
08 MAY 1980
5. 51
Ho f INDEX. HMA
CONFIDENTIA
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REGISTRY Action Taken
MEETING WITH GUANGDONG PROVINCIAL OFFICIALS
On the morning of 12 April, during my recent visit to Guangzhou, I met with Mr Fu Fen, head of the Consular Section of the Guangdong Provincial Foreign Affairs Bureau. Most aspects of the relationship between Guangdong and Hong Kong were referred to, but the questions discussed in detail were those involving
across the border between the two territories.
moveme, the
2.
On legal immigration, I mentioned our continued concern about the volume of emigrants and overstayers being added to Hong Kong's population, and raised the specific points about the numbers travelling on reentry permits valid for twelve months or more and those travelling on passports without the ability or intention of
eaving Hong Kong for their stated destination. I referred to conversations between the Governor and Foreign Minister Huang Hua in March, and quoted the most recent statistics provided by Immigration Department. Mr Fu said that Hong Kong's difficulties were understood and that there was no intention to make them worse. There was a huge backlog of people who had been unable to travel to Hong Kong after the Cultural Revolution who had in the past two or three years eventually been given permission. But the numbers had been brought down successively, from over 300 a day, to 200, to 150, and were now coming down "towards 100" When I mentioned that after reaching 180 in the autumn of last year the numbers had not dropped further he insisted that they would do so.
In
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3. Mr Fu confessed to not fully understanding how a reduction in the length of validity of permits issued would help the situation, but said that our request had been passed on to the local permit-issuing offices, but would take a little time before being implemented. principe there was no disagreement on the question of travellers through Hong Kong to onward destinations the Chinese side had themselves stopped many crossing the border without adequate documentation and had accepted back others who had slipped through. He was not aware that since 22 March certain passport holders had no longer been accepted back, but would look into it. He though t the simplest method would be to insist on all such travellers obtaining Hong Kong transit visas from our Embassy first, but accepted the reason why this was at present impossible. In the meantime, Mr Fu said that it would be useful if we could provide a detailed list of the criteria for permitting a passport holder to enter Hong Kong, in addition to the valid visa for onward destination. (I have asked Immigration Dept to provide the relevant information to be passed on in connection with our plan to suspend the issue of transit visas to nearly all private travellers from the PRC.)
CONFIDENTIAL
14.