RECORD OF A MEETING
265/5/
Mr. Cowan of Cowan, De Groot called on Mr. Rodgers on
20 June at his own request.
2. Mr. Cowan, a businessman who has been to China several
times, described the change he had observed in Chinese attitudes to business in the course of the last year. They had previously treated politics and trade as something apart, but recently had embarked on a policy almost of aggressive
conversion of Western businessmen. This was never coercion
but usually took the form of trying to persuade them to sing revolutionary songs and lecturing them on the Thoughts of Mao. They were, he was convinced, entirely sincere in this and genuinely offended at those who mocked at it.
3.
He went on to say that in his experience the way to deal
with the Chinese whenever difficulties arose was to make a
small concession, and to continue to repeat the truth to them until the sheer pressure forced them to understand. Applying this to Hong Kong, he suggested that the fanaticism of the Cultural Revolution had produced a situation in which we should tread very carefully if we were to maintain our position
until things returned to normal. He suggested that our con- cession should be the banning of rest and recreation facilities
for American servicemen from Vietnam in Hong Kong: we should then send to Paking a representative who could explain to the Chinese that the accounts they had given of events were not true, and that the riots had been caused by hooligans. Since Chinese attitudes were based on genuine misunderstandings,
this would resolve the situation.
4. Er. Rodgers replied that we perhaps made more concessions to the Chinese than the general public realised, and that absolutely agreed that we must do our best to sit out this round of fanaticism and lose as little ground as possible in
/our
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