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Bearing in mind that an FCOSAS scholarship costs around
£15,000 per annum per student, could the MTC expect to turn
out high calibre students in sufficient numbers?
In your letter you say that participants from Hong Kong, South China and eventually Taiwan will be attending the
Centre. Do you envisage that students from places other than
Hong Kong will benefit from an HMG scholarship programme?
My own view is that we should not dilute the range and scope for Hong Kong scholarships in favour of candidates who may already have access to existing FCOSAS programmes in China,
and Taiwan.
You say that without HMG's support there is reason to suppose that the nature of the training provided by the MTC is likely to change over time in a way which dilutes or even removes its value to Britain. Bearing this in mind, do you believe that a contribution of £100,000 to a scholarship
scheme for the MTC would be enough to maintain HMG's
influence over the running of the Centre and scholarship
candidate selection?
James Smith-Laittan's letter mentioned (perhaps not as
ominously as it read!) that the Hong Kong Government had
sought "certain assurances on the financial feasibility of the
project". It is certainly not realistic to think of our scholarship budget as a major contribution to the survival of this project. On capital costs, it would be useful to know
how much of a real problem funding for bricks and mortar is
for the British Council. As you discussed with Peter Ricketts it is not possible for us to use scholarship funds (revenue) for capital costs. Is it likely that the British Council will be able to raise the necessary £250,000 from
other sources? We might think of making a token contribution
through the AUSPB as a gesture of support. But this would
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