TNAG-0123-FCO40-159-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1971 — Page 13

NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN

W(B)L 51-7406

TOP SECRET

3.

Responsibility for implementing these

instructions was assumed by the Cabinet

Office and carried out by a small group of

the Defence Review Working Party. The

Working Party's report, although

substantially the work of departments of

the former Commonwealth Office and Foreign

Office, is therefore an interdepartmentally

agreed study. It was prepared in

consultation (as opportunity offered) with

the Governor of Hong Kong and Sir Donald

Hopson, former Chargé d'Affaires in Peking.

For security reasons no copy of the report

(or of earlier drafts) is held by anyone

outside Whitehall. The outcome represents

many months work, hampered by the

uncertainty surrounding Chinese attitudes

and intentions towards the Colony at the

height of the Cultural Revolution and the

difficulty of assessing what effects the

turmoil in China might have on that country's

policy towards Hong Kong in the long term.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

28 March 1969.

M. S.