territories of docks, industrial and commercial buildings
and residential extensions of the urban area of Kowloon.
3. In the course of the negotiations which preceded
the conclusion, in 1943, of the treaty providing for the
abolition of extraterritoriality in China, the Chinese
Government made a request for the rendition of the New
น่
Territories. His Majesty's Government refused to
* 2
consider this question in connexion with extraterritoriality,
but intimated that, if the Chinese Government desired
j
that the question of the lease of these territories should
be reconsidered, that was a matter which, in the opinion
of His Majesty's Government, should be discussed when
4.
victory was won. The Chinese Government thereupon
reserved their right to raise the question later.
4. In June and July of 1946 Generalissimo Chiang
Kai Shek and Dr. Wellington Koo referred to the
"Hong Kong problem" and the desirability of finding
an early solution, in the course of conversations
with Sir Horace Seymour and the Minister of State
respectively. Copies of the two documents reporting
these conversations are attached (Annex III). Later on
that year there was some Press agitation in China and
Hong Kong on the particular question of the resumption
of Chinese jurisdiction within the Walled City of Kowloon.
5. These events, linked with other indications of
the resurgence of Chinese national feeling regarding
*
Hong Kong, and the possibility that the informal approaches
referred to above will be followed by a formal request
for the opening of negotiations, make it desirable to
examine the line that we should take in the event of
negotiations with the Chinese.
6. We are virtually committed to discuss the New
Territories, and the Chinese Government may take the
ries,
opportunity to put forward a claim to the return of the
ceded area of Hong Kong. Such a claim, if made, might
receive some support from other countries, though
this