CO537-2192 — Page 73

is not slow to exploit.

4.

These circumstances have not changed in recent

•

months and until it is possible to regularise the position of

China's diplomatic representative in Hong Kong I see little

advantage in working to improve the relationship between

that representative and the local head of the Kuomintang.

2. I am reluctant also to risk dignifying the Hong

Kong Kuomintang by making the person of their representative

in the Colony the subject of an official approach. I have

so far accorded him the barest minimum of recognition and

he is allotted no part in any official ent ertainment or

ceremony. There is perhaps some advantage in maintaining

the position that the identity of the local Kuomintang

representative is not a matter of great importance to this

Goverment provided only that he keeps within the limits of

acceptable conduct, in default of which the official response

is to request his recall.

6.

It is true that the present representative is by

On the other hand,

no means to be regarded as satisfactory.

from what I have seen of the gentlemen of the Kuomintang

and from what is reported to me almost daily regarding their

aims and activities, I have some doubt whether there is any

real prospect of obtaining a satisfactory representative in

his place. I fear the dilemma must be faced that a

representative who is satisfactory to us is necessarily

unsatisfactory to the Kuomintang and vice versu. I recall

in this connection the terms of Sir Ralph Stevenson's secret

telegram No. 126 addressed to me, repeated to the Foreign

Office as No. 857, of December 7th, 1946.

17

I am uisposed in these circumstances to pursue

a longer-term objective than the mere changing of individual

local leaders from vime to time as they become successively