Copy
(F2382/1147/10)
SECRET.
20
HONG KONG.
119
Factual Background.
1. Hong Kong at the time of its cession to Great Britain by the Treaty of Nanking a hundred years ago, was a desolate island with no inhabitants except a few groups of fishermen. It has grown under the direction of the British Government to be one of the great sea ports of the world based upon British law and order and on the enterprise of all peoples and nations alike.
2. The British policy has been and will continue to be that Hong Kong should be a free port for the services of all trade and commerce in the Far East. Hong Kong is the depôt for an incessant flow of people and goods in and out of China. Of the population of nearly a million residents which it had attained, all had freely come in of their own choice or were the children of immigrants who had done so. If any prefer to live under Chinese rule there is no let or hindrance to their moving over the border for the purpose.
3. It was a centre of settled and orderly conditions for the benefit of all countries having relations with China throughout the prolonged era of revolutions disturbance
South China.
4. When the Japanese overran Shanghai and South China the Colony was for three years up to December 1941 able to serve as a channel of supplies to China and a refuge for hundreds of thousands of displaced and largely destitute Chinese people, and for numbers of foreign nationals in China.
5. Immediately after the war the conditions of law and order and the well-developed mercantile services which Hong Kong will provide for all alike will make a very special contribution to the development of settled conditions in the Far East and to the re-opening of world trade with China.
6. His Majesty's Government bear a continuing responsibility for the restoration of Hong Kong as a territory of the British Commonwealth and all the more so since it has been the victim of the full rigours of the enemy's aggression.
Attitude in conversations with Americans about Hong Kong.
7. No initiative on our side should be taken in raising the question of Hong Kong. If the Americans on their side express concern on this question it will be best to reply to a challenging note and to ask whether that concern is based
to/
*The following an extract from the Colonial Office list: "Hong Kong is a free port except for an import tariff on all intoxicating liquors, on spirituous liquors containing more than 2% of pure alcohol by weight, on tobacco, and on hydro-carbon oils (including motor spirit), and on motor vehicles not of British Empire origin. There is no export, tariff".
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