TNAG-0012-FCO40-48-Kowloon-disturbances-1967 — Page 103

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QUESTION: What is their circulation?

SIR DAVID TRENCH: It boomed at first because every-

Now it has dropped

borg wanted to know what they were saying.

back down again. They are just handed out, not sold.

QUESTION: Do they get information as to what is

going on inside your office, as far as you can tell?

SIR DAVID TRENCH: No, I think our security is

pretty good.

QUESTION: Is this largely, or in fact totally,

that they give away their copies?

SIR DAVID TRENCH: Not totally.

They sell them to

the faithful and try and force them on other people.

QUESTION:

They go through the motions of charging

and behaving like anormal paper?

L

SIR DAVID TRENCH:

Yes.

QUESTION: About the subsidy that goes into that,

presumably simple accounts are kept by mainland China?

SIR DAVID TRENCH: I could not tell you how their

I should think they

finances work. We have no information.

are pretty well self-supporting

<

I mean, before they started

giving them away.

QUESTION: Sir David, are you saying about 2-per

cent of the population of Hong Kong is communist?

SIR DAVID TRENCH: Hard core communist, but this is

the kind of wild figure one gives when Pressmen ask you this

kind of question. It is very small anyway.

QUESTION: I was not trying to press you to a figure.

There have been times when it looked as if there were more,

a considerable body of sympathisers.

SIR DAVID TRENCH: Rather, you have all the member-

ship of the left-wing unions and you have very much bigger

figures, and then if you say, all their wives and children

have to be counted, you get a very much higher figure again,

but I am talking about the hard core.

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