TNAG-0067-FCO40-103-Governors--reports-1968 — Page 40

CONFIDENTIAL

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3.

I do not dissent from the conclusions in paragraph35

of your despatch concerning internal developments in

China, but my advisers and I doubt whether Mao Tse-tung

and the extremists would be allowed by the more moderate eoples' Liberation

2

elements or by the Chinese Peoples Army to mount another

campaign similar to that of last year, even if they

1

wished to do so. The present disturbances in certain

though Considerable areas of China, including the Kwangtung Province.

seem

火

to be less violent than those which took place last

year; and although it may be some considerable time

before order and stability can be completely restored,

they appear unlikely to influence Chinese policy

adversely so far as Hong Kong is concerned.

4. However, the fact that, apart from isolated

incidents, the local Communists have now abandoned

the use of violence to achieve their ends in the Colony

misappriciousins.

must leave us under no illusions.

There is, perhaps, a

danger that the efficiency and effectiveness with which

the Communist challenge last year was met and overcome,

coupled with the remarkable resilience displayed by the

Hong Kong economy, may create the impression that the

danger is past and that our vigilance can be relaxed. I

wish to assure you that I and my ministerial colleagues,

to whom copies of this exchange of despatches are being

circulated, are under no illusions on the subject.

We are

fully alive to the fact that the Communist threat to

Hong Kong remains very real and will continue unabated,

albeit in a different form, and that there are no grounds

whatever for complacency on our part.

CONFIDENTIAL

15.

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