Zhou Enlai to the Bandung conference, the aircraft subsequently blew up while in flight but Zhou was not on board). There is no suggestion in this admittedly rather flimsy record of three hours or so of conversation that the constitutional future of Hong Kong was discussed at all. As I said in my minute of 5 April, Zhou did pass a message along rather similar lines to those claimed for the Grantham incident to Colonel Cantlie in 1958, and this message was subsequently replayed by other Chinese official interlocutors, showing that it had become firmly fixed in the Chinese official memory. It is less clear how much the message actually affected British policy. The papers show that not much attention was paid to what Col Cantlie had to say, and those relating to Sir A Grantham are no help. The understanding, and I doubt if it ever amounted to that in British eyes, does appear to have been a thin
one.
3. I apologise for troubling you with this ancient history. My earlier inability to track down the record of Sir A Grantham's meeting in Peking had been preying on mind. The surviving offical records do not show any sign that the constitutional future of Hong Kong was discussed. It therefore remains a puzzle as to how this idea originated. You will be relieved to hear that I do not propose to follow it up any further.
Age
RF Wye
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