will
See pp ending
4519/26 when afte
1. Gov Fel
27 All 3
The question of providing assistance for
the anti-Bolsheviks in China, is one which keeps on
cropping up. Lately such appeals have been confined
to the Northerners, but in the early days of the
boycott Hong Kong was bristling with schemes for
proposal Kelp Chen Kwing, assisting the moderate elements in Kwangtung."
Ming Lad been discouraged los made a detrained
effort biscum amistance
for Admiral Li Ching. Ls,
·
+
The
Foreign Office policy throughout has been "No
interference. Give the Bolsheviks sufficient rope
and they will hang themselves" Hence all requests
of this nature have been consistently turned down.
The present proposal, like its predecessors, raises
two issues of major importance:-
(1) Withdrawal from the Arms Embargo Agreement.
(2) Departure from our policy of neutrality.
There is a lot to be said for (1) which
The has been advocated by Hong Kong for some time.
object of the embargo was to prevent China from being
flooded with arms and to bring about an end of the
civil war from mere lack of munitions. This object
has not yet been realised. The Nationalist Govern-
ment has succeeded in obtaining a steady supply of
arms from Russia, while their opponents have dis- covered Powers less scrupulous than ours in fulfill-
ing their obligations and have had comparatively
little difficulty in obtaining supplies from European
So far, therefore, from bringing the civil
war to an end, the only achievement of the embargo
has been to place obstacles in the way of the anti-
Bolsheviks in their resistance to the Russian
directed campaign. On the other hand it has to
be remembered that our policy of standing by the agreement has prevented us from becoming identified with any particular party or individual in China,
and has also saved us from falling into the trap of
supplying
sources.
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