BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING
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looks towards the future it was a welcome move. By the 1950's the old British Legation had come to occupy an invidious position in the heart of Peking. It was too big and imposing for a foreign embassy. It was too closely linked in the minds of the Chinese people with a long legacy of dislike of the foreigner, connected as it was in their minds with two captures of Peking in 1860 and again in 1900. Moreover, it was in the nature of a box inside which a few British diplomats were the easy target of mass demonstrations. In the long run it was better to be rid of such a prominent place and instead to form part of a new diplomatic quarter on a site chosen by the government of the Chinese Peoples' Republic itself. Certainly, from the Chinese point of view, by 1959 the large space occupied by the old Foreign Legation Quarter in the centre of Peking was too valuable to be inhabited by a small number of foreign diplomats. It was an obvious site for the new government offices which were needed. Thus in 1959 a symbol of the far off days of the so called 'unequal treaties' disappeared, and with its disappearance the prospect of better relations between Great Britain and the Chinese Peoples' Republic was, perhaps, imperceptibly enhanced.