Secretariat file 6/2911/46S.
No. 69.
Sir,
temat
(3)
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
th
HONG KONG.
19 April, 1949.
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(16) on '47
(40) on 45213/50A/48
I have the honour to address you on the subject of the proposed grant to the United States Government of a lease for a site to be used for the United States Consulate General, to which correspondence ending with your savingram No.725 of 4th October, 1947, refers.
2.
Negotiations have been proceeding for the sale by private treaty of a lease for 75 years renewable for a further 75 years, crown rent for the first 75 years to be capitalised and paid in one sum. In the course of these negotiations the United States Government has requested that the site be sold to them in fee simple instead of as a leasehold or that provision be made in the leasehold agreement for later conversion into fee simple. This request is based on the proposed Consular Convention under negotiation between the Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States. In this connection your attention is invited to paragraph 2 of my telegram No.1121 of 4th December, 1948. The United States Consul General has, on instructions from his Government, enquired the cost of converting the proposed leasehold into fee simple, and has suggested that in order to avoid delaying development of the site until general agreement is reached providing for acquisition of the fee simple under the proposed Consular Convention, a leasehold agreement be made incorporating a condition in the following sense:
3.
"Provided that the Crown Lease may be converted
into fee ownership to the United States of America any time in the future during the life of the lease".
I am naturally anxious to assist the United States Government in any way that I can over this matter, but the proposal for fee simple ownership raises a number of important points, which I feel must be carefully considered before such a radical departure is permitted from the established law and practice relating to land tenure in this Colony.
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As
I have pointed out in my telegram No.1121 of 4th December, 1948, no ordinance or regulation of this Colony contains any impediment to the acquisition of land either in fee simple or on lease by a foreign government, but instructions issued by your predecessors forbid the grant of land in fee simple and Article XIII of the Letters Patent provide that land may only be granted in conformity with instructions received through you or with a law in force in the Colony. While it would presumably be possible to issue a new instruction permitting the sale of land in fee simple either in general or in special cases, there are a number of reasons why I do not advise such action.
15. In the first ....
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
ARTHUR CREECH JONES, M.P.
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