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although all were part of
by having one set of passports split off from another (to allow fee collection etc), the same delegation.
arises from the nature of
Since so much in China
4. The problem, if it be such, the People's Republic of China. is ran by the state - still so despite the changes since. 1978 - people who in the UK would be private individuals are here state employees, or public servants of some sort. There are no Chinese businessmen comparable to the heads of the Midland Bank or ICI. All such people belong to state organisations. Tre relatively small number of entrepreneurs run small scaie business such as restaurants, taxi companies; all these would be likely to make private applications and would therefore be charged. If we begin to charge for the state-employed businessman, we suspect that we would quickly find there were protests from British businessmen. Inevitably the time taken to process these applications would increase (fee collection, scrutinising passports to make sure which category they belong in etc), and if our major competitors such as the FRG and France do not charge, there would be objections from British businessmen that we were making it more difficult for them to do business here. As we now have the "official visa" side working well, with no recent complaints about delays, this would seem a retrograde step. (And would surely look bad in presentational terms, when as you know we are faced with difficulties on the private visa side, and, more importantly, when HMG is pursuing a policy of improving relations with China).
5. That said, the Chinese might accept the charge fairly gracefully if it applied only to visas for the UK. The numbers are relatively small: 8,000 in 1988, 5650 in 1989 - we do not know what the figure will be for 1990, but the indications are that there will be a further reduction. The Chinese might well become unco-operative over helping us with visa queries from UK visitors or with other visa/consular problems. This would be a nuisance but we could live with it. If, however, it was proposed to extend the scheme for charging to include Hong Kong visa applications, which from 85% of all "official" applications, then we could expect the Chinese to react in a far more hostile way. On this, you will need to consider the views of Hong Kong Immigration Department, who have never indicated to us that they see any problem in the present arrangements for issuing gratis visas on their behalf.
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