CO129-596-4 Hong Kong University- Apprenticeship scheme 4-2-1947 - 3-9-1947 — Page 107

106

COPY.

53611/12/44.

Dear Mr.Jenkins,

Colonial Office,

Downing Street, S.W.1.

28th September, 1944.

You were kind enough to come here and see us on the 20th September in order to discuss the suggestion made in my letter to you of the 9th August. am now writing to ask you to bring this proposal to the notice of your Director and to request that consideration should be given to the possibility of extending your scheme for the training of Chinese post-graduate engineering students so as to include Chinese students of British nationality from Hong Kong University.

These students do not number more than a dozen and probably less, and as you know they are at present in free China. They have themselves raised with the Ambassador the question of their being able to come to this country under the Federation of British Industries apprenticeship scheme. In your letter of the 22nd August (reference China 62) you said that you were in favour of this idea, providing that the selected students signed the normal undertaking to return to China to practice their profession, Quite apart from the fact that we hope these students will return to Hong Kong where there will be a great need for their services on the liberation of that Colony, we could not agree to an arrangement which would virtually debar British subjects from practising their profession in British territory, At the same time we appreciate that the object of your existing scheme is to develop trade and cultural relations with China - a foreign country -and that to withdraw this condition in the case of Hong Kong students is to modify the original conception of the scheme.

There are, however, a number of factors which I think you will agree make the inclusion of Hong Kong a development which follows on very easily from your existing scheme. The students in question are Chinese and they are at present in free China. It should therefore be possible I suggest to accept them quite naturally with other Chinese students from China, and of course we would not expect that they should be given any preferential treatment.

W. V. JENKINS, ESQ.

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