TNAG-0028-FCO40-64-Relations-with-China-1968 — Page 213

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Mr.Godden

Your imate belows.

It is certainly true that at an earlier stage the Foreign Office were reluctant to suggest any move towards making a face-saving gesture. This was evident in October when we were considering (shortly before the Minister's visit to Hong Kong) the question of an amnesty for minor offenders, and Foreign Office reluctance was then shared by the Governor who, as Peking telegram No. 22 recalls, did not consider that the time was right (H.K. Tel. No. 1501).

2.

I have not encountered any reluctance in the Foreign Office to consider Sir Donald Hopson's recent proposal of "a substantial act of clemency" only a commendable inclination to await the Governor's comments before expressing a view. The latter's preliminary views are set out in H.K. Telegram No.50, received yesterday.

3. . Nevertheless, I think the Foreign Office will

incline to caution an attitude which I would share. You may recall that when commenting on Sir Donald Hopson's view (Peking telegram No. 322) that we must expect the Chinese to look to us to provide something they could claim as a "victory", we said (our Tel.

Flag 2/0 No. 2579 of 18 December):

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"At some stage it may be useful to help them find

a face-saving formula - but we should want to be pretty sure that it would achieve the desired result. In any case this stage has not yet come. If it does, the Chinese will probably give us an indication themselves of what they would expect. If we help them in this prematurely we are probably likely to encourage the extremists' rather than the 'moderates'.

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Our fear is that premature gestures will be treated as signs of weakness rather than attempts to hold out the olive branch. In the tit-for-tat attitude that appears to dominate Chinese actions, unilateral gestures that are not clearly signalled as being welcome to the Chinese are largely wasted and might be misinterpreted. This is what the Governor me ans when he says in his Tel. No. 50 "the major question is whether the making of such gestures is likely to be productive or counter-productive".

4. However, an amnesty for prisoners is, perhaps, a special case, since one of the "five demands" was for the release of prisoners and this demand has been emphasised in discussions with the M.F.A. in Peking (Peking Tel. No. 272). We know therefore that this is something that the Chinese might want and may be able to use as a "victory" On the other hand, as the Governor pointed out in paragraph 3 of his Tel. No. 1501, there is some doubt whether the release of minor offenders would really interest Peking. Contrary to Sir Donald's proposals, any major act of clemency would probably have to embrace the big offenders in order to interest Peking. too we have been examining (H.K. Tel. No. 1820), (F.0. Tel. No. 1069 to Peking, H.K. Tel. No. 1863). In this connection the Minister may like to see the Hong Kong paper at (238).

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