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Two more important agreements were signed in May: an agreement on investment promotion and protection and an agreement on the grant of aid loans to China worth £300 million. We in the Embassy have
seen more British businessmen than ever and have had a hand in
organising numerous trade promotion events, including an industrial seminar held on board HMY Britannia by the British Overseas Trade
Board and the Sino-British Trade Council during the State Visit.
18. As regards culture and education, 1986 was also a good year. In addition to the Royal Fellowship Scheme announced by The Queen during the State Visit, a Sino-British Friendship Scholarship Scheme, under which upwards of 400 Chinese post-graduate students will go to the United Kingdom every year for ten years from 1987, was established. Altogether, there are now about 1500 post- graduate Chinese students in the United Kingdom, as well as nearly 1000 industrial trainees. In this competition, we are pulling well ahead of the French and the Germans. The picture has been
transformed since the British Council re-established itself in China (as part of the Embassy) just 8 years ago. I salute it.
Conclusion
19.
Plenty will happen in China in 1987. There could be more surprises. But I do not belong to the school which sees the campaign against "bourgeois liberalisation" as a return to the politics of the Cultural Revolution. China is different now.
Mao Zedong was a romantic revolutionary. Deng Xiaoping is an unromantic post-revolutionary. He wants to get on with the business of making China rich and strong without stoking up internal conflict. There are limits, perhaps fairly narrow limits, to what he will tolerate politically; as I have written elsewhere, he is no political liberal. But those who want to go too far for him will not be treated as class enemies.
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