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city of Kowloon. He had been promised an early reply by Mr. Dening and his Minister- Counsellor had made a formal proposal to this effect last week. The Ambassador was told that this and other suggestions for dealing with the so-called walled city of Kowloon were being considered but that the matter must take time as we had to consult both the Government of Hong Kong.
and the Colonial Office. In any case we understood that the Governor of Hong Kong saw grave objections to the setting up of a Chinese Government building on the site of the walled city. We were anxious
Ivement however to be as helpful as we could be, but
Private Under-Secretary regretted that the
Chinese Government should see fit at this moment to raise this question of jurisdiction which had lain dormant for fifty years without doing any harm to anybody or affecting anybody's vital interests. Surely at this moment when (as the Ambassador had incautiously remarked) both our Governments had such great and dangerous problems to deal with it was unnecessary to say the least of it to raise this unimportant issue which in the hands of mischief makers or agitators might be, developed into a serious cause of disagreement and discord between our two nations at a moment when they had every reason to collaborate in dealing with the big problems with which both are faced.
3. In this connexion Permanent Under-Secretary deplored the irresponsible behaviour of the Chinese press. The Chinese Ambassador asked Permanent Under-Secretary whether he had read in the "Times" Chinese Press Attaché's letter saying there was no censorship in China.Permanent Under-Secretary said that this might technically be the case but that experience showed that the Chinese Government had other means less direct but equally efficacious for controlling the press when they thought that a newspaper was acting against the interests of the nation. Surely a newspaper would be acting against the interests of the nation when it exploited the ignorance of the masses in order to incite anti- British prejudice and hatred. The Ambassador. did not try to argue the point.
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