CONFIDENTIAL
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(d) On China he felt that Mao Tse-tung was
still directing affairs in China and that the current troubles were the result of a desperate attempt by the old man to break the intellectual patterns laid by four
(e)
· thousand years of civilisation before he died. But he did not think that Mao could succeed in this: he thought that the bureaucrats and scientists and other intellectuals would inevitably inherit too much, through language and otherwise, to make it possible for the Mao Tse-tung pattern of life and thought to survive. He said that the Singapore Government's contacts in China were mostly with the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung. There was still a considerable coming and going amongst the ordinary people, and the Singapore Government reckoned to debrief every third returning traveller. The general picture was of rival factions all trying to climb on to the band-wagon and each shouting louder than the other. But the Central Government was still basically in control. At the centre, he agreed that the struggle for the succession played a considerable part in fomenting the excesses of the Red Guard movements. At the same time, he said that it was clear that while Lui Shao-Chi and some others of the old guard were out, the extremists had not been able to deprive the moderates of their place in the conduct of affairs.
In Hong Kong he said that the British had handled the riots too well. The trouble was that Peking's face had become involved and had then been defeated by its inability to sustain a mass movement in Hong Kong against the Colonial Government, This was a setback which Peking could not afford. They were bound to make scape-goats of the current leaders in Hong Kong and replace them with fresh ones in an attempt to regain face. They would certainly try to create further trouble. Mr. John Wilson said that a Chinese businessman friend of his had argued that the British mistake lay in allowing what began as a local movement to build up to a point where Peking's face had become involved: if the propaganda had been cut off short the Peking Government could safely have ignored the matter. Lee dismissed this argument. His only criticism remained that the victory of the Colonial authorities had been too complete. He felt that he himself would have deliberately allowed a final pro-Maoist demonstration as a put-up job, which would have enabled the Peking Government to claim that it still had the support of the Hong Kong masses. To demonstrate so conclusively that it did not have this support created a situation which the Peking Government could not allow to remain where it was,
(F. Mills) 20 June, 1967
CONFIDENTIAL
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