Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
2 March 1990
HE Mr Ji Chaozhu
Embassy of the People's Republic of China
49-51 Portland Place,
London W1
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RECEIVED IN RECISTRY
DESK
INDEX
17 MAR 1990
.n
BONSTRY
Dear Ambassain,
I undertook to pass on to you information which has been
collected in Hong Kong about routes taken by Vietnamese
who have recently arrived in the territory. I now attach a quantity of material which we have received from
Hong Kong authorities and which has already been passed
to the Chinese authorities by the Hong Kong Government.
From this you will see that the term 'boat people', which has traditionally been applied to those reaching places of first asylum, is now something of a misnomer: the great majority of those who have arrived this year have come by way of the Chinese mainland after crossing the
land border with Vietnam.
The problem of the Vietnamese boat people, or 'bus
people' as we might now call them, has posed a severe
burden on Hong Kong for a number of years. As you know,
on 12 December last year we returned to Vietnam a first
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