BACKGROUND
The general background to the Scheme is described in the attached brief which
was provided for the reception on 17 September for the first students to
arrive. The Minister proposes to present Sir Y K Pao with a photograph in
recognition of the fact that the reception was initially proposed by Sir Y K
Pao as Chairman of the SBFSS Commission.
2.
Although we have no certain information it seems most likely that Sir
Y.K. Pao particularly wishes to call on the Minister at this point to discuss
his proposal that a Foundation official, Mr William Lee, should be appointed
as Honorary Secretary to the Commission which supervises the Scheme.
3. We first encountered this proposal in the draft minutes of the
Commission's second meeting, which took place in Hong Kong on 2 June. The
draft minutes, which were prepared by the Foundation, said that the Commission had agreed to the proposal by the Chairman (Sir Y.K. Pao) that Mr William Lee.
should be appointed Honorary Secretary and that his travel expenses should be
met by the Scheme.
4.
In any
We have objected to the Foundation that our representative at the
meeting, Dr Iredale (who, with Mr Caines, is one of the two British
Commissioners) did not recall this point having been raised at all.
case, if it had been (and it should certainly have been circulated on paper
beforehand) we would have had to object to it because the Memorandum of
Understanding establishing the Scheme makes no provision for any Secretariat.
This was not an oversight: the subject was discussed fully during negotiations
with Sir Y.K. Pao's London representative, Mr Stephen Pan, as well as the
Chinese State Education Commission (SEDC). All parties were agreed then that
the Commission was intended to exercise only a general supervisory role and
that all day-to-day management of the Scheme would be carried out by the
British Council/ODA and the SEDC. Since then, the Commission has approved
mechanisms for reaching decisions (for example, between meetings) without any
Secretariat to circulate papers and keep records, and these have worked well.
5.
We also objected particularly to the suggestion that the Scheme should
pay for some of Mr Lee's expenses, because when the MOU was negotiated we had
to concede that the British Council's administration costs (about £0.25m p.a)