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whether Hong Kong would agree to a reopening of the question of a
Customs Agreement and that an affirmative reply had been sent. I
last have addressed you on this/subject in a separate despatch. The
Generalissimo then expressed complete agreement as to the need for
understanding and co-operation and said that he would let it be
known that it was his desire that Canton business men should respond
to any invitation to visit Hong Kong. There was local opposition
to the linking of the Hankow and Kowloon railways (I had not
mentioned this project but ever since the broadcasting by the
Chinese Press of Sir Cecil Clementi's speech at the Royal Empire
Society last December every Chinese official that one meets thinks
that one is trying to get at him over this loop line) but he had
ordered the completion within seven months of an extension of the
Hankow railway to Whampoa. That extension would cross the Kowloon
railway on the level, and their connection would follow as a matter
of course but without advertisement. The Generalissimo had never
heard of the draft Hong Kong-China Customs Agreement of 1930 and
consequently did not evince much interest in it. The conversation
thereafter became general and Madame Chiang Kai Shek, who is General Secretary to the Chinese Aviation Commissioners, told me
that she was thinking of sending South China air cadets to the Far
Eastern Aviation School at Kowloon for private preliminary
training; if this idea should eventuate it would of course assure
the future of the School, introduce a pro-British element into the
Chinese Air Force and foster a demand for British planes. I
therefore listened most sympathetically. Nothing was said at
Whampoa about Japan or the Japanese, except that the Generalissimo
in the course of general enquiries about Hong Kong and Malaya
asked me how many of them there were in either place. During the
whole of the evening Madame Chiang Kai Shek was suffering from
severe pain and irritation caused by acute dermatitis, and in
bidding her good-bye I expressed my admiration of her pluck in
remaining at Whampoa to be our hostess and interpreter when her
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