SECRET.
96
1.
BROADCASTING TO CHINA FROM HONG KONG
for a meeting
(Note for the Secretary of State for a with the Foreign Secretary on 6 July.)
The present broadcasting service in Hong Kong has a power of 21 kilowatta and uses medium waves. As the Secretary of State said in reply to a question in the House on the 16th February, this power is not enough to ensure effective reception throughout the new teritories. It is, therefore, a purely destic service. Πο immediate increase in power of transmission, «jut from anything which may be a bi-product of a Foreign Office project, for broadcasts info China,is contemplated by the Hong Kong Government.
2. The Government of Hong Kong has for some years favoured the idea of broadcasting a sŭort-wave service in appropriate languages to cover China south of the Yangtse. The first object of such a service would be the projection of Hong Kong as an entrepôt centre. Its second object would be the general projection of Eritish information and ideas to China, for which the Colonial Government has never conceded that a station in Singapore can be politically and culturally aqually well qualified. A short-wave service has been favoured mainly because to reach an equal area by medium-wave transmission would involve a much greater power and therefore a much higher cost.
3. During the years 1946-8 this suggestion was considered by the Colonial Office in some detail. Consultation with the Foreigh Office revealed, however, that the latter was firmly opposed on technical and political grounds to the use of short-waves for a broad- casting service from Hong Kong to China; nor did it feel able to support any application to Treasury for the use of Imperial funds, without which the much greater cost of a medium-wave service could not be contemplated by the Colonial Gover:ment. No action was therefore taken. Meanwhile the Hong Kong Government has transmitted occasionally during this periou on a short wavelength, registered internationally in its name, in order to reinforce its claim to use the wavelength later. It also submitted a claim for a substantial allocation of broadcasting time on short wavelengths to the international broadcasting conference recently concluded in Mexico City. The whole of this claim was abandoned before the end of the Conference as part of widespread reductions in Colonial claims and after the Foreign Office had re- affirmed its view that, even if a medium-wave service from Bong Kong to China were eventually to prove impracticable, it would still not favour a short-wave service.
The present proposal for medium-wave broadcasting from Hong Kong to China began as one of several suggestions submitted by the Foreign office to the Commissioner-General's conference with the Heads of Missions and Governors in November 1948. The essence of the proposal is that the power of Hong Kong's existing domestic medium-wave broad- casting service in Chinese and English should be increased and its programme output appropriately expanded and adapted. The Commissioner- General's conference endorsed this plan.
5. The quickest and simplest way to achieve this increase in power would be to convert for medium-wave transmission and transfer to Hong Kong several 7į kilowatt short-wave transmitters belonging to the
/Foreign