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Indo-
discussions with the Commissioner General recently the Commissioner General had pointed out that in the not too distant future only Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong would not have self-government all the other territories in South East Asia would have it China, Indonesia etc. We therefore did not have very much time in which to plan the future of these territories. Mr. Paskin pointed out that this was quite all right in the case of Malaya which could be made into a viable country but that Hong Kong had no future as an independent state. It must either remain (1) a British colony or (2) become absorbed into China. It could not maintain an independent existence as a city state. Sir A. Grantham said that Hong Kong would eventually go back to China and that this would probably occur when the lease of the New Territories expired i.e. in 1998. The Secretary of State suggested that the one chance of retaining Hong Kong was to make the population want to stay within the Empire. Mr. Paskin suggested that this was not quite the same as in Singapore where the Chinese population might be made to think that it was their home. Hong Kong was too close to China. Our only hope of staying in Hong Kong was to show that our Government there was of use to the people, to China and the world.
3. The Secretary of State thought that we should wait until the position in the Far East was clearer, say in six months time, and then decide what could be done about Hong Kong. He could not reject the proposals made in the 1949 despatch without consulting his colleagues and would prefer to defer a reply to that despatch for the time being. Mr. Paskin said that the difficulty in giving a plausible reply to the 1949 despatch had been discussed with the Governor and the only device which we had been able to think of was the one about the narrowness of the franchise. There was a danger in employing this as it would go on record and if at some later date the Governor wished to introduce direct election it might be difficult to restrict this to British subjects. Sir A. Grantham pointed out that the present proposals go further than the Young proposals in that they do in fact give the unofficials bigger control than the Young proposals did.
4. At this stage the Secretary of State had to leave for a further meeting and it was decided that the constitutional reform should be discussed again at further meetings. A further meeting would be held in Sir Charles Jeffries' room at 10.30 on the 13th of July to be followed by another meeting with the Secretary of State at 11.30 on the 19th July.
H. P. Hall.
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