CONFIDENTIAL
BY BAG
H:
82
SCR 14/951/59 II
J T MASEFIELD ESQ
FAR EASTERN DEPARTMENT
FCO
PA
SEARCH AND RESCUE EXERCISE IN HONG LONG
AND CHINESE TERRITORIAL WATERS
2 August 1978
See (106
HKK 020/10.51
INDLA
- 8 AUG 1978
CLE
No
4
David Wilson vrote to you on 12 January about a small-scale search and rescue exercise
AREX) which was carried out successfully on January following difficulties which we had had over a major JARE A in kovember/December 1977 because of Chinese plans to operate training flights at the same time in the same area. A full-scale exercise, involving both long and short-range searches within the long song Flight information Region, vas carried out on 27/28 june. However, you will wish to know of a new angle concerning Chinese territorial waters which arose in making arrangements for the exercise.
2.
The area originally chosen for the short- range part of the exercise vas outside what we and Civil Aviation Department had understood were the boundaries of China's claimed 12-pile territorial waters. However, it was an area in which China had been carrying out an extended series of lov- level training flights. (Since January the Canton authorities have regularly notified height and route details of these flights to Civil Aviation Department,} There are flow at a level too low for effective radar monitoring. it would therefore have been impossible for this part of the exercise, which included low-level helicopter flights, to be carried out successfully unless we could be certain that there would be no
CONFIDENTIAL
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