COLONY IN CHINA BRITISH TROOPS “PLAY IT COOL” IN HONG KONG

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32126, 23 October 1969, Page 14

COLONY IN CHINA BRITISH TROOPS “PLAY IT COOL” IN HONG KONG

(By

NICHOLAS BETHELL

(LORD BETHELL), who was in Asia recently as a member of a

parliamentary delegation, writing in the “Guardian". Mancheater)

(Reprinted from the “Guardian" by arrangement) The Affair of Anthony Grey, whom the Chinese Government detained as a reprisal for the imprisonment of Chinese journalists in Hong Kong, highlights the situation of the last substantial’ British-run colony, ironically situated in the land of the world’s most militant antiimperialists.

The wheel has turned full circle. Passive resistance, once used so effectively against colonialism in India, is now the weapon of the British in Hong Kong. Even after only a few days in the colony I began to feel uncomfortably enclosed inside this tiny spot of red (“red” for Empire). It made me uneasy being towered over by the new “Reds,” 700,900,000 of them, maybe more. The temperature was up into the nineties, and even apart from politics it was bard to keep cool. And in Hong Kong “cool” Is of the essence. Once it is lost, China will certainly reclaim Hong Kong by force. True, the colony is useful to China, providing her with 50 per cent of her foreign exchange, but these days countries tend to put national pride before financial gain.

Strange War A British brigade guards the 17-mile land frontier with the Chinese mainland, and since the serious rioting of 1967 they have fought a strange sort of war against the militants of the cultural revolution. Every day a crocodile of Maoist farmers crosses the border at Lo Wu to till the 500 acres their collective owns in the colony. They sing improving songs as they march, and at the slightest sign of a provocation they are ready to hurl abuse or stones or to brandish their agricultural weapons. Wherever possible the Hong Kong border guards turn the other cheek, resorting only “in extremis" to the non-lethal weapons of riot control. A British officer must be a psychologist as well as a soldier. Never must he allow the Chinese to lose face because they would then be in honour bound to retaliate massively.

I visited the village of Sha Tau Kok, which is divided Berlin-style, with the frontier running along the middle of a street. A stone’s throw from the border (and with good reason) the army mans the British frontier post. Once a week a patrol walks along the British pavement of the street “just to show it’s still ours,” in the words of the lieutenant who commands it When the police approach the border they carry dustbin lid-like shields to ward off the stones, but the army cannot. “What do you do if a stone hits you?” I asked a lieutenant. “Pretend it didn’t.” “Suppose someone gets knocked out?” “We carry him away—very slowly. That makes an impression, even on them.”

Gurkhas’ Function The 48th Gurkha Infantry Brigade has a strange, almost unmilitary, function. The soldiers are under orders to confront Maoism, even violent Maoism, with sweet reason. A British officer described to me how during 1967 his border post was fired on for four hours by Mao’s People’s Liberation Army. He ordered his men to take cover and do nothing, not even to fire back. After a few minutes it became clear that the Chinese soldiers had orders to fire wide of the post, over it and all round it. Remaining in such a position without retaliating demanded a great effort of self-control, but on this occasion they managed it

and there were no casualties. During the past year the border situation has not been so tense, and there is evidence that in some cases Chinese soldiers have been restraining the ardour of the trouble-makers. The day I visited Sha Tau Kok there was a minor incident at Lo Wu, where six of my parliamentary colleagues were kept in a police post for half an hour by farmers waving hoes and demanding apologies for the "provocation" of photographing China. Two years ago, the Chinese border guards might well have intervened in their comrades* support, but on this occasion they did not. They remained at their posts and ignored what was happening. Aims Not Identical

In fact there is evidence that the Hong Kong and mainland Communists do not see their aims as identical. The detention of Anthony Grey may strike us British as a barbarous act, but the Hong Kong Communists would certainly have preferred a stronger retaliation

from Peking. In spite of reports to the contrary, Peking has not tried to barter ths freedom of other British subjects detained in China for that of the Communists still held in Hong Kong. This month a rumour was floated in the colony that this might happen, but it was probably inspired by emissaries from Peking in an effort to give comfort to their Hong Kong supporters. The Peking position is still that certain British subjects have committed crimes under Chinese law and have been sentenced for them. They are not hostages, and it is unlikely that they will be used as such to support Maoism in Hong Kong. China now seems to want a distinction between her relations with Britain and those with Hong Kong. It is a tendency our Foreign Secretary would do well to follow. In Hong Kong we negotiate from a position of weakness, everyone knows this and it does not make for a stable relationship. The United Kingdom need not and should not let this weakness upset its own slowly improving reiationship with China.