TNAG-0905-FCO40-1115-Immigration-from-China-to-Hong-Kong-1979 — Page 130

SCR 1/4731/49

NOTE FOR THE RECORD

CONFIDENTAL

HKK 341

RECEIVED IN...

3 1 MAY 1979

OFFICER

PA

I asked Mr Li Jusheng, the Second Diretor of 1.6 the NCNA, to call today to talk about immigration. told him that, although the number of legal arrivals in Hong Kong had gone down slightly over the last three weeks, the daily average was still 208 for this month so far. This was far too high. Since the beginning of the year over 33,000 people had arrived from China. This compared with about 67,500 for the whole of the previous year. The Governor had spoken about this problem on several occasions in China. Vice-Premier Deng had said that the Chinese would take further steps to deal with it, The Governor had suggested while in China, and since returning, that we should have direct discussions about the problem as soon as possible. I asked Mr Li what news he had about the proposal.

2.

In addition, I said that I was also seriously concerned about the large number of illegal immigrants. More than 24,000 had been repatriated since the beginning of the year, compared with just over 8,000 for the whole of 1978. I had just been told that, over the previous 24 hours, over 800 illegal immigrants had been arrested.

3.

Mr Li said that they had reported to Peking on the need to hold a meeting about immigration. The authorities there were also concerned about the problem. They and the NCNA were well aware of the fact that present numbers were too great. However, the authorities in China wished to complete some "preliminary work" before holding a meeting. They wanted to understand the nature of the problem and work out how to deal with it. Otherwise the talks would be without basis. On illegals Mr Li said that they were also concerned about this phenomenon. The number of patrols on their side of the border had recently been increased. In answer to a question, he said that the troops sent to Vietnam from Guangdong were now returning. He explained the rise in the number of illegals by saying that it was partly connected with measures to curb legal emigration. There was also a great deal of confusion in

some areas.

4.

I asked Mr Li how long he thought it would take for the Chinese authorities to do their preparatory work before holding a meeting. He said he thought it might be several weeks. I urged him to ensure that a meeting was held much sooner than this. There was no point in waiting for everything to be sorted out before holding a meeting. We needed an urgent meeting to discuss how we could both deal with the problem. If there was no meeting soon, and if the numbers did not come down, this left us only with

/contą..

NO. 51

REISTRY Action Taken

BP

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**P! མྤཱ, -ནུLhe༩༥༩#RF* ?N** ?

''ཎཱ ཝཱ, ཙནཀྑཏཱ ཉྙམ ཉྙ

CONFIDENTIAL