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10.
The Colony's sea and air approaches are very vulnerable to Chinese harassment, since the ways of approaching the Colony without infringing Chinese airspace or her claimed territorial waters are very limited. We could, however, send RAF aircraft to the Colony, although none is now based permanently there, We are also retaining for the time being in Hong Kong the minesweepers which it was originally intended to withdraw. Constant harassment by the Chinese would deter air and shipping services from calling at Kong Kong and would thus do harm to trade and tourism.
11.
The general conclusion is that, with the very large majority of the local Chinese on our side, we can hold out in Hong Kong for as long as we can contain action of the sort described above.
The police are at present
Nevertheless,
firmly in control, with British troops held in reserve. there is always the risk of a rapidly escalating scries of incidents, not necessarily ordered by Peking, producing a situation in which Peking took a positive decision to expel us.
British Responsibilities
12. There are considerable British and foreign assets in the Colony. British investments are large (although no reliable figure is available). In addition the Colony has sterling assets, of the order of £340 million,
held in the United Kingdom.
13.
Our main responsibility, however, is to our nationals and friends in the Colony. Apart from the British troops and their families, we have a responsibility to protect all British subjects and Commonwealth citizens of non-Chinese race. We have a residual responsibility for foreign nationals (other than Chinese) if their own Governments are unable to make arrangements for them. We have a responsibility towards about half of the Chinese population which havo, or are entitled to, the status of citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. The numbers involved in these
categories are
British troops and families
British subjects and Commonwealth
30,000 31,000
citizens of non-Chinese race and their
families
Foreign nationals (other than Chinese)
14,500 (of whom 4,600 are
United States citizens)
and their families
Chinese possessing, or entitled to claim, 1.9 million approximately
citizenship of the United Kingdom and
Colonies
Some of these last 1.9 million have been very closely associated with our
administration and are particularly vulnerable to Chinese communist
retaliation.
dependents.
These might amount to something over 100,000 including their
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