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e.g. a quotation from a "Daily Worker" leader or a speech by Zilliacus. For this reason, I would like to suggest to you for possible suggestion to the Governor that the criterion should be subversive action of any kind i.e. the undertaking of tasks by members of the New China News Agency which clearly have nothing to do with their journalistic activities. At a guess I would not suppose that such actions would if .necessary be much harder to find than subversive articles. The advantage would be that, if we proceeded on grounds of action only, the cry of freedom of the press would not be raised and the undesirable results envisaged by the Ambassador in his paragraph 3 would not ensue. We should also regret the closing down of the Agency for the very relevant reason advanced by the Ambassador in his final sentence. I should have thought that the authorities in Hong Kong too would find the Agency's reports as irreplacable a source of informat tion as the Ambassador and we do and will continue to do as long as we lack diplomatic posts in Communist China.

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(P.W. Scarlett)

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