CO537-3708 — Page 7

Copy

(F122/154/10)

Confidential

FOREIGN OFFICE, S.W.1.

22nd January, 1948.

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Dear Spicer,

The author of the telegram contained in your letter of the 14th January holds the post of political Vice Minister for Education in the present Chinese Government and his action in telegraphing to the Chancellor without reference to his Government on a matter of this sort seems to us highly irregular.

The Colonial Office will no doubt be giving the Chancellor the background of this trouble since it arose from a normal measure of hygiene taken in the interests of the inhabitants of Kowloon as a whole, entailing the removal of a squatter settlement from the so-called walled city. This is a derelict area of only 62 acres on the jurisdiction of which His Majesty's Government and the Chinese Government hold divergent views. Nevertheless, except for the period of Japanese occupation from December 1941 to September 1945, the Hong Kong Government have exercised sole jurisdiction over it from 1899 down to the present

day.

This administrative action led to a series of protests in Nanking and by the Chinese Ambassador in London based on the argument that since the walled city was Chinese territory any administrative action by the Hongkong, authorities was ultra vires. At the same time, exaggerated misrepresentations were permitted to appear in the Chinese language Press

J.C.P. Spicer, Esq.,

Private Secretary,

to the Chancellor to the Exchequer.

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