SECRET
Hong Kong telegram No.3 to Commonwealth. Offlott。
YO
**
6. At two recent staff meetings of the leading Communist newspaper Wen Wei Pao, a senior official admitted that the paper had committed errors in publishing exaggerated reports of bomb incidents and thus encouraging local compatriots' to prolong what should have been only a short term measure. He explained that there should be no more violence and that the primary task for the future was the propagation of Mao's Thoughts; the struggle against the Hong Kong Government was a secondary task. In a speech on confrontation to a joing meeting of teachers from all leading Communist schools held on 25 December, the Deputy Director of the local branch of the New China News Agency stated that a new policy should now be adopted, and that instead of violence, the aim should be to unite the masses through the study and dissemination of Mao's Thoughts. At a large meeting of the Motor Transport Workers' Union on 28 December several officials stated that the course of the struggle against the Hong Kong Government had changed from one of violence to one of reason.
7。 The new policy of non-violence has now been passed down to the rank and file in the various spheres of local Communist activity and the absence of any real bomb incidents during the last seven days indicates that this line is being followed, at least for the time being. It is clear that local Communist officials are prepared to go to considerable lengths to ensure that these instructions are obeyed and the volte-face in the leading Communist schools and one of the more militant unions, suggests that a really determined effort is being made to avoid any possibility of Government action against them. While it will take some time for a resuscitated United Front campaign to get into its stride the intensified study of Mao's Thoughts is already well under way, to prepare the rank and file for the 'political' struggle against the Hong Kong Government.
2.
The main source of concern remains the possibility of a recrudescence of trouble on the border arising from the apparently continued disturbed state of Kwangtung Province,
Foreign Office please pass routine to Washington 1 and Canberra 1.
Sir D.Trench.
FILES
H.K.D.
Int & Gen Dept.
J.I.R.D.
J.I. P.G.D.
F.E. & P.D.
F.E.D.
O.L.A.
O.P.A.
[Transmitted to Cabinet Office and
repeated as requested]
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