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Hongkong's rich refugees go back to Red China

HONGKONG, Sunday.

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ASILY the most significant de- velopment in China since the collapse of Canton has been almost overlooked through concen- tration all the week on events along the short Sino- British border, where today everything is as quiet as it has ever been.

The rich, shrewd Chinese are returning to the mainland cities from the safety they sought in Hongkong.

Many of these Chinese, who are among some of the best industrial and financial brains in modern China, have sat here for six months watching how the wind was blowing across their vast, troubled homeland.

Taking a chance

RE

ECENTLY they have noted more warmth towards their class, so they are now taking a chance and going home to cities like Tientsin and Shanghai.

Ask them why this sudden con- fidence in a Communist Adminis- tration they so obviously feared and distrusted until the past few days, and you get an answer like this: "After all, we are Chinese and China is our country."

That is only part of the reason,

Cable from

LACHIE MCDONALD

however.

They have written off the Nationalists, and it is believed here that runners from the main- land have just brought a verbal

You'll be safe" assurance from the leading Reds in Peking, who badly need all the brains and ad- ministrative experience obtainable from their own people.

Against the prospect of а reasonably normal life in the new China, these refugees have balanced and found wanting the only future offered by further sup- port for Chiang Kai

shek's cause-a crumbling Nationalist life of exile.

-

are

Make no mistake. There can- not be a Nationalist resurrection. Chiang Kai-shek's remaining Government departments scattered from Chungking, in the mountainous west, to Formosa and Hainan, off the eastern coast. Key men daily desert his dis- credited banner.

Chinese capitalists here, where they have waited comfortably for a decision on the mainland, have now no faith in Chiang Kai- shek's ability to hold Formosa and Hainan.

From American sources comes the report that Chiang Kai-shek

has only enough money left to last three months.

I have just had long talks with several foreign Ambassadors among those who arrived in Hongkong last Friday from Nan- king, where I first met them. None is directly quotable.

Privately, several of them gave the frankest opinions of the new China. These were generally favourable,

They praised the Communists' respect for the rights of Wes- terners, even for the rights of former Chinese Nationalists.

Thought out

ONE Ambassador, represent- ing a non-British anti- Communist country, dismissed as nonsense the idea that the Cen- tral Government in Peking would not be able to maintain adminis- trative discipline once Communist rule extended to the distant provinces.

He said: "So far, their every move has been thought out most carefully. They have established the steel framework of a clean, workable administration. I think party discipline will keep it so, even when they build on the pre- sent framework."

This Ambassador added: "Don't be misled into thinking that Peking will wait for Russian aid or Anglo-American trade goods. The leaders of Red China prob- ably would like both; but they will not stand still meantime."

What of future?

THE impression I received

in

from the Ambassadors I saw is that each will recommend most strongly the earliest possible recognition of the new régime.

That is the overall scene China today. What the future holds for the rich Chinese now going home, or for the long-range trading prospects of Hongkong itself, is debatable.

Red China may suck the brains of the former and then scrap them, just as it may adopt friendly practical relations with Hongkong simply until it feels strong enough to start quibbling over the border issue and spon- soring internal unrest.

For both the rich Chinese and wealthy Hongkong that is chance that must be taken, a possibility that must be guarded against as best we can.

C.

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