14-JUL-1993 16:32
JAMES LEE
0494536249
P.12
TRANSCRIPT B
COMMITTEE
MR. ALASTAIR GOODLAD
14 JULY 1993
FOREIGN AFFAIRS SELECT
11
SIR ROBERT MCLAREN;
MI.
Jopling, first I think I would just like a word in defence of my predecessor and the embassy at that time because I was in London at the time as the Under-Secretary concerned and I was reading all the reports that the embassy was sending and they were by no means complacent or dismissive about the already quite extraordinary scale of demonstrations which were taking place. I don't know what they said to you, of course, but what they were saying to us was that these were very significant developments.
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they were well
I would however say that there are considerable limits on what any embassy is able to learn about what is really going in a society like that of China today. The difficulties of understanding how communist regimes work are well known
demonstrated in the case of the old Soviet Union. China has been
and is still a bit like that in terms of trying to understand it. You have the feeling that there is a kind of lake with rather
black waters but underneath the surface all kinds of currents are
running which you can only have a feeling about, you can't really
see them. So I would not say that we as an embassy are going to be able to give you the impression when you come next time that we know all about it because we won't and we don't.
What we do do is devote considerable effort to understanding what is going on to the best of our ability. We have in our Political Section somebody who is dedicated specifically to the study of the internal scene who is a considerable expert. Others of us like to