TNAG-1176-FCO40-1478-Air-services-between-the-UK--China-and-Hong-Kong-1982 — Page 83

CONFIDENTIAL

PRIORITY PEKING

COPY HONG KONG GOVERNOR

Your Tel 411: UK/PRC Air Services

Please pass following message from Stevens to Lu Ruiling.

"Thank you for your letter of 27 July.

I am glad we shall be able to meet in

the Autumn to discuss matters of mutual

Unfortunately dates at the

concern.

end of August or in early September

are not possible because of summer

holidays. A meeting towards the end

of October has the advantage that it

will enable us to review the development

of traffic during the peak summer months.

I hope therefore that you will be able

to come to London at that time and I

look forward to hearing whether the dates

proposed in the week commencing 25 October

will be convenient to you.

2

For your own information we are keen to hold talks

as near as possible to end of current season on 31 October:

(i) because we would like to force Chinese to show

their hand in applying for new permits and

before we meet

filing winter schedules in March they

argued steadily that additional capacity was

not required but afterwards increased their

Canton services from 3 to 4 a day, doubled