54145/76/48 Part II
Cypher (0.T.P.)
OUTWARD TELEGRAM
TO HONG KONG (Sir A. Grantham)
FROM S, OF S.. COLONIES.
Sent 11th March, 1948. 20.15 hrs.
IMMEDIATE
No. 344 Secret.
Addressed to Governor, Hong Kong. Repeated to Ambassador, Napking.
197
Ansard
dt (201)
1x
Kowloon City.
You have presumably received your copies of Banking telegrams Nos. 229 and 231.
2. It seems quite clear from latter telegram that nothing short of actual exercise of jurisdiction will be acceptable to Chinese, In these circumstances, if it were decided, in spite of the Chinese uncompromising attitude, to make a further effort and put forward the Consulate compound idea, the Chinese are not likely to give us the assurance, for which we should certainly have to see, that ask/ they would not claim that this solution was au admission of their claim to jurisdiction and their right to exercise ite In the circumstances you will probably agree that proposal for a Consulate compound hardly seems worth pursuing.
3.
让。
The alternative courses open to us seem to be
(a) to leave things as they are,
to proceed with the proposal for a park,
to proceed with the proposal for a Garden of
Remembrance.
Whichever of the above alternatives is adoptod, question arises whether we should indicate to the Chinese that if they wished to take their claim to jurisdiction to the International Court at The Hague, we should be agreeable, on the understanding that they would accept the necessity for any administrative measures on the part of the Hong Kong Government that might be necessary within the area pending submission of the question to the International Court an would take active steps to ensure that such measures were not made the subject of public agitation in China.
*
5 The possible objections to our mentioning the International Court to the Chinese are doubts as to the strength of our case on purely legal grounds and the possibility that the Chinese might adopt the same line as the Guatemalans have done over the case of British Honduras,
/and