TNAG-1788-FCO40-2548-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-general-1988 — Page 48

From: Colonel W H Clements

Int 39

Miss Claire Smith

Far Eastern Department

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Dear Mais

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

DEFENCE ATTACHÉ BRITISH EMBASSY

PEKING

c/o FCO

King Charles Street LONDON SW1A 2AH

c.c: Miss /Slater HKD

m fectmer of

N8|11

24 October 1988

нко

HKCD 24315:

fi.

+ PA

791

293/5

ones

28110

I was recently travelling in Guangxi Province and visited Beihai. While there I was given the opportunity of visiting a large refugee "camp"

camp on the outskirts of Beihai. The camp is really a small town of 13000 inhabitants, virtually all fishermen and their families are from the Haiphong area of Vietnam. The refugees are all Chinese who were expelled from Vietnam in 1978.

The mayor of the camp is a refugee but the majority of administrators and all the teachers and medical staff are indigenous Chinese. The camp has one nursery school with 140 pupils, one primary school and one middle school. The administrators showing us around admitted that no students from the middle school had gone on to university.

The United Nations fund the hospital clinics, an ice factory and the boatyard. Much of the fishermen's catch is frozen and then sold in other parts of China. Most of the boats were owned on a cooperative basis. Some refugees were obviously quite wealthy and building new houses but the majority looked poor and lived in government built tenement blocks. My guide admitted that most of the refugees are poorly paid and many are unemployed.

I was told that there are currently 100,000 refugees in Guangxi and 200,000 "elsewhere in China". Refugees are no longer arriving but 'many pass by on boats to Hong Kong".

You

Milash

12:

сешний