PA
CONFIDENTIAL
Professor Paul Lin
As requested, I asked the Political First Secretary at the Canadian Commission, Mr. Loignon, for any background that the Canadians might have on Professor Lin. The Canadian Commissioner, Nr. Kilpatrick, rang back and gave me some useful information. I have also spoken to Special Branch who apparently have a zair amount of detailed material on Professor Lin on old files which will take them a day or two to collate.
2.
According to Mr. Kilpatrick, Lin was born in Canada and went to China in 1949 or 1950 where he stayed for 15 years working mostly as a teacher and a translator/interpreter. He was Zhou Enlai's interpreter for a short time. He loft China in about 1965 and returned to Canada where he started teaching at MacGill University. Before the Canadian Government recognised PRC, in became an adviser on China policy to the Conservative Party. This led to some public controversy. The media criticized the then leader of the Conservative Party, Mr. Diefenbeiker, for being too closely associated with someone who was at least a fellow traveller if not worse. This criticism subsided following normalisation of relations between Canada and the FRC and Lin once again became politically respectable, although T. Kilpatrick believed that his academic reputation was never particularly high. In recent years, Lin has been involved with the Canada China Trade Council and has been a fairly frequent visitor to China. According to the Canadian Exbassy in Peking he has quite good gontacts in the Chinese administration, although Mr.Kilpatrick could not say at what level.
3.
As for the speech given by Professor Lin, Mr. Kilpatrick said that this had been inaccurately reported. Mr. Filpatrick had been present and took the view that Professor in had said nothing of any significance.' . Kilpatrick also attended a
private dinner last night at which Professor Lin was also present. bin had taken the line that the British should have adopted an entirely different approach to the Hong Kong problem! the correct approach would be to apologise for the wrong doings of the 19th century and concede that sovereignty belonged to China. The Chinese would then be happy to agree to any arrangements for Hong Kong's continuing administration which the British might care to suggest.
4.
I asked Mr. Kilaatrick whether he though Professor Lin had been put up to saying these things. Mr. Kilpatrick said that he could not be sure. We found Professor Lin naive and unimpressive, It was possible that he was functioning as a mouth-piece, but without knowing exactly who his contacts were in China, it was difficult to be sure.
Comment:
5.
I gained the distinct impression that Mr. Kilpatrick did not believe that Professor Lin was being deliberately used.
CONFIDER
(RP_Margolis)
DPA 15-70-82