CONFIDENTIAL
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7.
correspondence.
It is necessary that all interested parties inside the Office should be kept informed of the progress of the monitoring. Most of this will, of course, be ensured by adequate copying of
However, I recommend that a small Standing Committee, to include representatives from the Economists, the Overseas Labour Adviser, Legal Advisers and the geographical department, should be set up under the Chairmanship of a superintending Under- Secretary. Such a Committee might meet quarterly or half-yearly.
8. It will, of course, be necessary also to keep the "China dimension" constantly in mind, to monitor the signals coming from Peking or Canton in parallel with the programme itself and to bring the Embassy in Peking and Far Eastern Department into all
discussions.
in some
9.
paradoxically One of the biggest problems is that ways we are worse served on information of developments in Hong Kong
In than we are in foreign and independent Commonwealth countries. countries where we maintain diplomatic missions there is a staff, centred about the Head of Chancery, whose task it is to analyse and report all significant developments in the country to which they are appointed. In Hong Kong there is no such staff or appointment other than perhaps the Governor; whose job is to govern
We the colony and only incidentally to report on developments. in the Office need a Head of Chancery in Hong Kong. several possibilities.
There are
a) That the Governor designate a member of his staff to report significant developments in Hong Kong to the Office. The problems here are obvious. Such an officer would be unlikely to report what we most want to hear.
Further,
even given the best will in the world, such a job would inevitably be regarded by a Hong Kong officer as an irritating
chore.
b)
That a member of the Senior British Trade Commissioner's (SBTC) staff be appointed to do Chancery reporting. The problems here are that the staff of the SBTC do not have the access to the sort of information that we need. Normally they would not even have access to the sort of information
Necessarily, that a member of a normal Chancery would have.
an appointment of this sort to the SBTC staff would, to some
3 CONFIDENTIAL
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