is not slow to exploit.
4.
These circumstances have not changed in recent
•
months and until it is possible to regularise the position of
China's diplomatic representative in Hong Kong I see little
advantage in working to improve the relationship between
that representative and the local head of the Kuomintang.
2. I am reluctant also to risk dignifying the Hong
Kong Kuomintang by making the person of their representative
in the Colony the subject of an official approach. I have
so far accorded him the barest minimum of recognition and
he is allotted no part in any official ent ertainment or
ceremony. There is perhaps some advantage in maintaining
the position that the identity of the local Kuomintang
representative is not a matter of great importance to this
Goverment provided only that he keeps within the limits of
acceptable conduct, in default of which the official response
is to request his recall.
6.
It is true that the present representative is by
On the other hand,
no means to be regarded as satisfactory.
from what I have seen of the gentlemen of the Kuomintang
and from what is reported to me almost daily regarding their
aims and activities, I have some doubt whether there is any
real prospect of obtaining a satisfactory representative in
his place. I fear the dilemma must be faced that a
representative who is satisfactory to us is necessarily
unsatisfactory to the Kuomintang and vice versu. I recall
in this connection the terms of Sir Ralph Stevenson's secret
telegram No. 126 addressed to me, repeated to the Foreign
Office as No. 857, of December 7th, 1946.
17
I am uisposed in these circumstances to pursue
a longer-term objective than the mere changing of individual
local leaders from vime to time as they become successively