CO537-5142 — Page 41

CO537 Colonial Confidential Records 理藩院機密檔案 All

8. The Foreign Office favours a medium-frequency service because, it avers, Chinese criticism could. · be met with the rejoinder that the service is basically the Hong Kong domestic service using a little extra power. It dislikes the idea of a high- frequency service because there could be no pretence that such a service was intended for any other than its real purpose to address the Chinese. It als maintains that the projection of the Commonwealth by high frequencies to the Far East is already catered for through the British Far Eastern Broadcasting Station in Singapore, and what is needed is a complementary service on medium frequencies.

9.

We asked the Foreign Office, when considering the abandonment of the Hong Kong claim to high frequencies, whether it could foresee any likelihood of a desire or approval by the Foreign Office for a high-frequency service from Hongkong to China, either to supplement a medium-frequency service from Hongkong, or, if the plan for a medium-frequency service were to fall through, instead of it. The answer was "no" in both cases and without qualifica- tion.

10. It appeared to us extremely unlikely in these circumstances that a high-frequency service would be undertaken in Hongkong in the foreseeable future, in the teeth of Foreign office opposition. It would be of questionable justice to keep inviolate a claim for Hongkong, which we had to confess seemed unlikely to have any close practical value, at the expense of other Colonies' claims, most of them for existing or more probable services, which would have consequently and proportionately to be the more severely reduced. It would, also be difficult, even it were just, for the Colonial Office to continue to maintain such a claim against the Foreign Office within the United Kingdom delegation for the United Kingdom delegation to maintain it at Mexico City against other nations.

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