FO371-46255 — Page 46

Page 46

Page 46

مه ها الله

-Bulino 12

Вит

T60A Haverstock Hill,

N.W.3.

• Not yet adhurovisius

3 copies

marty

und, 10

(

Dear Mr. Sterndale Bennett,

42

F 6725

9th September, 1945.

IL SEP 1945

You held a conference some while ago about the Chinese Double Seventh, if you remember, which I was kindly asked to attend. My brother Charles Empson was planning a meal for a further meeting when he was called back suddenly to Cairo. I should be very pleased if you could dine one evening with myself and my wife, but I expect you are extremely busy now. There is a point I am anxious to put to you, and I had better just send it in a letter.

XIt

#

It seems to me important that the London BBC broadcasts in Kuoy (Mandarin) and Cantonese should get relayed from the recovered radio stations of Singapore and Hongkong. It appears that so far there is no Mandarin broadcasting from either station; this may seem natural because neither is in a Mandarin-speaking area, but the Chinese overseas have been making a point of at least teaching their children the National Language" of Kuoy, and it would be unwise for Britain to seem to discourage this as a nationalist movement. Our business, it seems to me, is to show firmly that we accept the natural ties of Malayan or Hongkong Chinese with what is now one of the "Big Five", and thus to imply that we are not afraid it will weaken their British loyalties. In fact a friendly Chinese Government should become a help in the minority problems of Malaya, because it is an inducement to the Overseas Chinese to accept solutions agreed on at the level of the Security Council. But to achieve this condition of feeling we ought not to appear grudging. If we relay to overseas Chinese the same news service from London as is being put out in Chinese for China we appear willing without making any dangerous commitments. This will be particularly to the point in the next few months, while London is the centre of international discussions in which Chinese figures hold prominent positions. It is a fine opportunity to give a direct service from London in their own language of news which they will be wishing to hear. In any case not to broadcast from Hongkong even in Cantonese, at a time when the southern Chinese radio stations are out of action, shows I think an unwise refusal to make Hongkong seem a useful British institution, ready to collaborate with China.

Of course I realise that the long-term question is a more complex one, which is still being considered; the questions, I mean, of whether broadcasting in Chinese is wanted from London, who is to control it, and, much more generally, what policy is to lie behind any British propaganda to the East. But I do not see

Page 46

Page 46