suggestion made by the Consul-General at Canton in No.83 which, if adopted, would involve the regularisation of the position of the representa- tive of the Chinese Government in Hong Kong.
I submit a draft letter to the Foreign Office with a draft telegram to Hong Kong, for their concurrence, on this basis.
6. Obviously, the most important thing is to achieve a settlement of this vexed question of the Chinese claim to jurisdiction within the Walled City of Kowloon, so that it cannot be used as a pretext for further incidents in the future. On this point we have the statement made by the Government of Hong Kong on the 12th January, that it is their intention to turn Kowloon City into a park, with the suggestion put forward by the Chinese Government both here and in Nanking that the park should be placed under the charge of the local Office of the Chinese Special Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, who shall be located in the park. There is also the alternative suggestion put forward by the Consul-General at Canton (No.83) that the area should be given to the Chinese Government as a site for their consulate-general. The Governor has now telegraphed (No.87) opposing the Chinese Government's suggestion on the ground that its adoption would be interpreted locally as an admission that the Hong Kong Government was in the wrong and would be regarded as a face-saving gesture on our part. I think we should press the Foreign Office to this view. I have adopted this course in the draft letter to Mr. Scarlett. The Governor also opposes the Consul-General's suggestion (see his telegram at No.88), but
I think we had better discuss this further with the Foreign Office.*
7. As part of the Long-term settlement we should, I think, bear in mind the desirability of stopping Chinese officials from over the frontier from visiting the "Walled City". We asked the Governor, with Foreign Office concurrence, whether it would help if we made an immediate request to the Chinese Government to stop visits of this description, but the Governor replied (No.73) that the "Kowloon City squatters" appeared to be tiring of their role of national martyrs and quarrelling among themselves, and that he was reluctant to see the sponsors of the movement rescued from this possibly embarrassing position by any official prohibition made at the request of His Majesty's Government. This is not necessarily an argument against taking action to stop these officials from visiting the Walled City once the present incident is over.
8.1.48.
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