TNAG-0056-FCO40-92-Evacuation-plan-1967 — Page 16

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FEASIBILITY STUDY ON EVACUATION OF HONG KONG

A Meeting of the Hong Kong Ministerial Committee on 24th July

(K(67) 1st Meeting) agreed that contingency plans should be prepared for

the physical evacuation from the Colony of British subjects and other

persons for whom we had a special responsibility. The first task of the

group to be set up for this purpose should be to give a broad indication

of the physical problems of evacuation. Stress was laid on the need for

the strictest secrecy about this planning, as any leak would cal public

confidence in Hong Kong a shattering blow. The Defence and Oversea Policy

Committee confirmed that contingency planning should proceed and emphasised

that knowledge of the exercise should be limited in Hong Kong to the

Governor and the Commander, British Forces.

2.

In a letter to the Commonwealth Secretary, the Minister of Defence

suggested that officials should prepare "as rapidly as possible, a general

appreciation of the potential scope and also the security risks of evacua-

tion planning relating to Hong Kong ... the appreciation should include a

summary of the existing and strictly limited evacuation arrangements for

specially selected personnel; the problems that would be presented by

any wide form of evacuation planning; and the way in which we might expect

to set about coping with any evacuation scheme if an emergency situation

demanded it". The Commonwealth Secretary agreed with those suggestions and

they have been taken as the basis for this report.

3.

In considering the Report the following factors are relevant

(a) The paper is confined to the immediate problem of essential evacuation

from the Colony in the event of a sudden emergency. The Working Party will

consider in future papors the problems presented by a Chinese policy of

prolonged attrition directed against the Government of Hong Kong, and the

situation as the end of the lease of the New Territories in 1997 draws near.

(b) As regards the problem considered in the present paper, the Working

Party recognised that evacuation might have to take place as the result

of a situation either where the local authorities could not maintain control

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