Printed for the Cabinet. May 1951
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CONFIDENTIAL
C.P. (51) 123
3rd May, 1951
CABINET
Copy No. 31
BRITISH INTERESTS IN CHINA
MEMORANDUM BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
I circulate, for the information of my colleagues, the annexed memorandum on the "Treatment of British Interests in China by the Central People's Govern- ment." It tells a distressing story of the progressive decline of our once flourishing interests in China.
2. The conclusion reached in paragraph 18 of the memorandum suggests that we are faced in Communist China with a deliberate policy of squeezing out by degrees those British and Western interests which are not of practical use and assistance to the Chinese. This policy, including the gradual exclusion of foreign Consuls, is in many ways similar to that which was applied in Soviet Russia after the Revolution.
3. Despite this I am convinced that our decision to recognise the Central People's Government of China in January 1950 was right and the only possible policy to adopt in the circumstances. But I think it is important that we should be fully alive to the likelihood that, for some time to come at any rate, the Chinese Communists may continue to follow the course they now appear to have set them- selves and that this will mean a continuation of measures against British and other Western interests, including the probable elimination of most traces of Western ideas and influence.
Foreign Office, S.W. 1,
3rd May, 1951.
H. M:
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