SECRET AND PERSONAL
may well be over-sanguine. Such hope as there is of obtaining the early release of Grey and other British subjects would, I am sure, be extinguished if in 1969, one year and a half after the end of violent confrontation in Hong Kong, a communist sympathiser was imprisoned for an offence involving a breach of the Education Ordinance entailing visits to a school, the premises of which he owns.
4.
There have in the past been differences between this post and the Governor of Hong Kong about the extent to which concessions should be made in the Colony in the interests of better Sino/British relations and in particular detained British subjects. I am certainly not an advocate of indiscriminate concessions as I accept that the degree of improvement we can expect in Sino /British relations under the present Chinese Government is limited. In any case we would not wish to buy an improvement at the price of any real risk to the authority of the Hong Kong Government. On the other hand, it seems to me that we should try to balance the effects on Sino/British relations, particularly the position of detained British subjects, against a realistic assessment of the degree of risk which would result from any particular course of action. We should also weigh the considerations referred to at the beginning of paragraph 2 above. In this particular case, I must confess that apart from the general undesirability of the law being flouted, I do not find very convincing the other argument for judicial action i.e. that Wang's visiting the Yu Hua School casts doubt on its existence as a school separate from Chung Hua, especially as we are willing to let him continue to do so provided permission is obtained.
5.
I have written at some length because I consider this case might be of crucial importance to progress in our problems with the Chinese. I hope that in the light of what I have said you will consider asking the Governor of Hong Kong to look at it again and see whether there is not some way in which judicial action can be avoided.
Yours ever, Jom
(J.B. Denson)
2
SECRET AND PERSONAL
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.