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6 Britain’s plan for emergency evacuation of Hong Kong Despite a public undertaking by London and the colonial administration to maintain law and order in Hong Kong during the 1967 riots, the British government started to deliberate the scenario of withdrawal from Hong Kong as the confrontation escalated. The British government had prepared an evacuation plan for Hong Kong in the early 1950s (DIGIT), which provided for evacuation of 16,500 non-Chinese women, children and elderly men only.1 However, in 1967, the plan, which was known only to the governor, the commander of British forces and a small group of Hong Kong government officials, was considered out of date and incapable of effective implementation. Senior British officials first indicated their deliberation of such a possibility on May 17, five days before the Garden Road incident. In a telegraph to Sir David Trench on May 17, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs Herbert Bowden said: “It would be very helpful to me to have your assessment of the ability of Hong Kong to cope with an all-out confrontation by the C.P.G. [Chinese People’s Government] short of armed intervention, i.e. widespread disorders, in the Colony coupled with the cutting off of Hong Kong’s water and food supplies from the mainland, and your assessment of the effect on the morale of Hong Kong Chinese if this situation lasted for some time.” “Once it became clear that the C.P.G. intended to go for all-out confrontation of this kind this might well be the point at which we should have to consider withdrawal from Hong Kong,” Bowden wrote.2 In a memorandum submitted to Britain’s Defence and Overseas Policy Committee for its meeting on May 25, Bowden expressed anxiety that political fervour during the Cultural Revolution might overshadow economic benefits brought by Hong Kong in Beijing’s deliberation on the status of the colony. “While Hong Kong was of great economic value to China than to the United Kingdom, there appeared to be a difference of view within the Chinese government about whether the present status of Hong Kong should be maintained. An element in Peking appeared willing to sacrifice the economic benefits China derived from Hong Kong to the purity of doctrines of the ‘cultural revolution’,” he wrote. Cheung_06_ch06.indd 95 19/04/2011 4:00 PM 96 Hong Kong’s Watershed “We could not rely on remaining in Hong Kong on present terms until our lease of the New Territories lapsed. We should therefore consider what adaptations of the status of Hong Kong might be possible and desirable after the conclusion of the present conflict in Vietnam. We should also consider what steps would be necessary if we were forced to evacuate the colony.”3 In a report to Saville Garner, permanent undersecretary at the Commonwealth Office, submitted on May 31, 1967, Arthur Galsworthy, deputy undersecretary of state in the Commonwealth Office, noted that an orderly withdrawal from Hong Kong would only be possible with co-operation of China. However, both Governor David Trench and Commander of British Forces in Hong Kong, Lieutenant-General John Worsley, believed that such co-operation would not be forthcoming and discount entirely the possibility of an orderly withdrawal on the part of the British. “Sir David Trench and General Worsley (commander of the British Forces) believe that there is nothing we can do at present to organise a general withdrawal from Hong Kong, or to plan for that contingency. They stated more than once that they believe we are trapped in Hong Kong. They feel that we have no option but to sweat it out on this basis until the post-Mao period, in the hope that we might then get back to a less dangerous relationship with mainland China,” Galsworthy wrote.4 “Our discussion [with the governor and General Worsley] led us to conclude that if Beijing decided to make an all-out effort to bring us to our knees in Hong Kong, the chances of our being able to negotiate our withdrawal from the colony with any semblance of orderliness or dignity would be virtually nil: we should rather have to face a humiliating capitulation,” said Galsworthy, who visited Hong Kong at the end of May 1967. But Galsworthy insisted that there was a need to deliberate the contingency planning for a possible British withdrawal from Hong Kong in London. “While fully accepting the view of Sir David and General Worsley that...

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