SECRET
The Church House,
Great mith Street,
London, S.W.1.
25th March, 1949.
I expect you will have heard that at a talk the other day the Foreign Secretary and my secretary of State agreed that the time had come when Ministers should review the whole position of Hong Kong. They accordingly agreed that there should be dis- cussions at the official level between the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office with the object of preparing a full analysis of the situation which Mr. Bevin would consider on his return from the United States. I understand that the Foreign secretary might then wish to consult the Prime Minister on the matter before taking it to his colleagues generally.
In the minute which I have received from the Private Secretary here, we are asked to "review the whole situation of the Colony both as regards internal political policy and the defence aspect, in the light of the present and probably future developments in China".
A
As you are aware, we went fairly fully into the short term view of the defence aspects in the Colonial Office Cabinet Paper C.P(49)52 of the 5th March. I imagine that in the paper which we are now directed to prepare, we shall have to say something about the defensibility of Hong Kong, on a long term view (which wee excluded from the
M.S. Dening, C.H.G., 0.3.Ê.
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