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INWARD TELEGRAM
This document must be paraphrased if the communication of its contents to any person outside Government Service is authorised.
TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES
JOPY FOR REGISTRATION
FROM HONG KONG (Sir A. Grantham)
D. 12th April, 1950 R. 12th !!
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12.30 hrs.
118 Ap '13
19
-file to
PRIORITY
No. 381
Addressed to Peking No. 35 Repeated to Tientsin No. 8
#1
"Secretary of State
"Tamsui by savingram (Secretary of State please
pass to Peking and Tientsin).
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Nationalist Soldiers.
We are faced with urgent problem in accommodating 4,000 nationalist soldiers who have entered Colony in small batches. About 30 more enter Colony each day, mainly from Macau. half are able bodied and some 70% are Northerners. several hundred women and children comprising their families.
More than Total includes
2. They are at present housed in former military location on this Island, in conditions of squalor, in order to prevent them roaming around town. Feeding them is costing something like $100,000 per month.
Health Authorities take very serious view of their continued presence here.
3. It is (? not omitted) desirable to build special camp for them since they would then be better housed than many people already in Hong Kong and it would merely attract more None have found work locally and they seem disinclined for work. There is in any case surplus of labour.
D
4. Secretary of State telegram No. 400 to me states that they should not be sent to Formosa since this might be regarded as interventio in civil war. I am therefore wondering whether it would be possible to send them by ship to North China, e.g. Tientsin or Tsingtao. them would probably be glad to return to their homes.
Most of be given Hong Kong 10 to help them to their final destination.
Each adult would Northerners would be sent.
Only
5. Efforts to send some back across border were unsuccessful since communist authorities turned them back on grounds that they were nationalist agents. In fact, most of them are nationalist soldiers who threw away their arms as communists advanced and have since wandered around Kwantung. They would seem to be communist responsibility. I should be glad for your views as to feasibility of sending them to North China and in meantime I intend as an experiment to send few small batches of say 20 by British ships to Tsingtao or Tientsin, leaving them to find their own way. Passages would be paid and they would each be given Hong Kong $10.
(Copies sent to Foreign Office for transmission to Peking and Tientsin)
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MAAE Franklin)