TNAG-0034-FCO40-70-Relations-with-China-1968 — Page 149

FCO40 Hong Kong Department Records 聯邦事務部香港部檔案 All

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the Chinese have not met our request to supply additional

water from Kwantung the supply of foodstuffs continues more

or less normally.

3. I think therefore that as long as we maintain the firm

attitude towards incidents of insurrection and incitement

within the Colony (and the Aoting Governor, Mr. Gasa, ia

doing remarkably well in this respect) we are going to win

the present round, as we did the first.

The

I have no

They

4.

This, however, does not solve the long-term problem

how we eventually extricate ourselves from Hong Kong.

Governor's view when he reached London at the end of June was

that there was no hope for us at all: that the Chinese would

keep us there on suffrance as long as they onose and then

evict us with the greatest possible humiliation.

doing that this is what some Chinese would like to do but I

feel more and more doubtful about their ability to do it.

They are unable to control the situation inside China.

have warned the Hong Kong dissidents not to expect any

material help. I cannot say whether at the outset they

expected us to collapse as quickly and completely as did the

Portuguese in Macao but I think there is no doubt that they

now realise that this is not going to happen.

noted that we have not even bothered to take seriously their

90-called "five just demands" and in particular that the

facilities we grant to United States warships in Hong Kong

have not diminished as a result of their threats but have, if

anything, increased.

They have duly

5. But, if Peking now realise that they are not going to be

able to humiliate us to the extent they hoped, there is in my

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