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(4. contd)
For public relations reasons alone, we clearly would not wish to institute Chinese-style restrictions on foreign guests, particularly if they discriminated against some foreigners but not others. The case of the Soviet marine superintendents has exposed our limitations only too clearly.
5.
Secondly, the Chinese are not interested in doing our job for us. Their view, I would say, is that they consider us as useful "occupants" of Hong Kong whom they can trust to make sure that their interests are protected. (Chinese maps show Hong Kong with the legend "Xiang gang ying zhan7" "Hong Kong English occupied/".) If The Chinese are going to have to spend their own time and resources on tracking down possible subversive elements in themselves, then why bother to have us administering or maladministering the place? Equally, we do not want to be in the position of having to be told by the Chinese what our job is, especially where it involves a relationship with a third country. I suspect that if we were to consult the Chinese directly about this problem, they would simply say: "Your Secretary of State gave his undertaking in May 1976 that you would keep subversives out of Hong Kong and now we hope you will abide by that undertaking". That does not exclude us telling the Chinese when we decide to take a risk, e.g. allowing a fifth Vietnamese trade representative, and we would certainly report anything they had to say about the matter. But it is, I fear, unrealistic to suppose that we could operate a sort of joint Chinese/British surveillance operation of the sort you suggest without running slap up against the problem of Hong Kong's exact status and our position in relation to it.
6.
One last point: because of the complexity of this of this problem and the tripartite interests involved, Britain, China and Vietnam, we are bound to treat every visa application with caution. This tends inevitably to militate against the flexibility and speed which you would prefer. I hope that after all our ponderings, we do come up with the most satisfactory possible compromise in the end. But we need time to think carefully in order to get the balance between security and economics right.
CC
A K Goldsmith Esq
SEAD, F CO
NM Fenn Esq Peking
(CDS Drace-Francis)
JA B Stewart Esq OBE HK&G D, F CO
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