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view no prospect at all that they will be prepared to sit
round the table and talk over the future of Hong Kong with
us in a sensible and businesslike manner. Even if they were,
I would seriously question the wisdom of our attempting to
do business over Hong Kong with them. What, in my view, we
should rather be doing is to attempt to identify a body of
Chinese opinion which has the prospect of forming an
alternative Chinese Government.
I do not think that this is
by any means as fanciful as it may sound.
All recent events
in China show that there is a strong and stubborn opposition
to Peking. It does not follow that all Chinese who are
opposed to Mao will be friendly to us, but there are still
evidently plenty of people in China, not without influence,
who want a sensible and orderly relationship with the outside
world, and who know that this is essential to China's own
economic development.
6. We do not know enough about the internal situation in
detail to be able to say with assurance where what for con-
venience I call the liberal element in Chinese opinion lies.
But it is a fair assumption that it is strongest in those
parts of China which have experience of contacts and of
trading with the outside world. This means the eastern
seaboard and I would say that it means in particular Kwantung
Province where contacts with the outside world through Hong
Kong have never been seriously interrupted during the last
twenty years of communist rule. We should not forget that
a large part of Kwantung Province gets its livelihood one way
or another from Hong Kong, whether in the production of
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