CO129-604-6 Immigration- control over entry from China 1-1-1947 - 4-1-1950 — Page 59

Au

54064/3/49.

SECRET

Dear Coates,

Colonial Office,

The Church House,

See (73)

Great Smith Street,

S. W. 1. S.W.

7th December, 1949.

66

59

I attach copies of the Governor of Hong Kong's savingrams Nos. 132 and 140 in which he asks us to consider the point made in an Aide Memoire from Mr. Kwok, the Chinese Special Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, that under the Peking Convention of 1898 Chinese can enter Hong Kong freely.

2. It is obvious that Mr, Kwok bases himself upon the sentence of paragraph 2 of the Peking Convention which reads:-

"Chinese officials and people shall be allowed as heretofore to use the road from Kowloon to Hsin-an"

In their savingram No. 140, Hong Kong express the view that this sentence does not give the Chinese

a free right of entry since it related only to Kowloon City in the special circumstances envisaged in the Convention which have of course since been abrogated.

3. Our Legal Adviser's view is that the effective words in the sentence quoted above are "as heretofore"; that the right given is simply one of use and not of access and conveys to the Chinese no right of user other than that already held by them in the exercise of any right of access they might possess.

The

P.D. COATES, ESQ.

position