CO129-592-6 Reports on current situation- including weekly intelligence reports 18-9-1945 - 20-12-1945 — Page 26

CO129 Colonial Office Hong Kong Records 理藩院香港檔案 All

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wart

"e are also gradually meking contacts

ith the Chinese outside the Colony, i. e. Canton, Chungking, Amoy and various other places, and endeavouring to build up con i ence that our object here in Hong Kong is to use our facilities to

aid China, recognising that in doing this we shall benefit ourselves from the trade which is bound to accrue.

"e have not a creat deal of the essential services of the Colony goin: no. The harves and unloding facilities are mostly in good condition and e have improv a them considerably. "e have also got four dry docks going and they are no in use. All this is to the credit side. hat

e lack are supplies of every sort. We have never had more then about 14 days rice in the Colony. "e lack coal, but that is better no". "e lack entirely everything that ill really start to get trade going.

We are also very short of civilian etano

on the Administration, hundreds of whom seem to be hung up in India owing to lack of transport. However, there is progress in nearly every quarter, even though the progress is clo". "e hope roon to get some business men back in the Colony and stert normal trade and thus become an asset instead of a liability to the British tax payer.

"e have quite number of American chins here in connection with the movement of Chinese armies through to North China. They have all been mort co-operative and relations between us are very happy. There were some light misunderstandings to start with due chiefly to the hold up in American communications, which seem to be still even more chaotic then the state that ours were in for a short time a ter the collapse of Jegen. I am hoping that in the years to come flong Kong ill be one o the places of the world where American and British Flests may meet and continue the hey relations which have existed throughout the war.

One of the few pieces of constructive "ork the Japanese did was to rebuild the old Government floure, hich was fellin down. They made an extremely good job of it.

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With every good ish,

Yours very sincerely,

Cecil Harcourt.

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