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Mr Bante
From:
Date:
CO Hum
ra
Huggy tits
7 October 1993
23
دا
CC:
Mr Ricketts, HKD
fax:
Sir R McLaren KCMG,
PEKING
Sir J Boyd KCMG, TOKYO Mr M Dinham, Government
House, HONG KONG
Mr Fry, FED
SIR SIGMUND STERNBERG
1. Sir Sigmund and Lady Sternberg called on me yesterday afternoon. He had been given my name by Sir R McLaren as a source of briefing in advance of his visit next month to Hong Kong, China and Japan.
China
2. Sir Sigmund was particularly concerned to discuss his visit to China. He was not very clear about what he hoped to achieve. He said he had got to know the Chinese Ambassador, who had visited him at the International Council of Christians and Jews and at the Sternberg Centre for Judaism. He had found Ambassador Ma an interested and sophisticated interlocutor. Ma had been particularly interested (no doubt on a personal basis) by two questions:
3.
(i) how the Jewish diaspora was organised to give support to Israel, when the Chinese diaspora, according to Ma, was much less inclined to support China;
(ii)
how international support for Israel was so considerable, compared with China's low international image.
The initiative for the visit to China appears to have come from Sir Sigmund, although the Chinese Government had issued an invitation through the Ambassador and would be meeting some of the costs. Sir Sigmund hoped to meet religious leaders and government officials responsible for policy on religion. He was anxious to spread the word about the Rotary movement, which was making great inroads in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He would be promoting the interests of the software company ISYS, of which he remained a director. Finally he had an interest in the situation in Tibet, having met the Dalai Lama on a number of occasions, and hoped to pursue this with the
Chinese.
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