HC Deb 15 May 1964 vol 695 cc819-37

1.0 p.m.

Sir William Teeling (Brighton, Pavilion)

The object of this debate is to discuss the question of people coming from the Chinese mainland into Hong Kong, whether any of them can then go on from there elsewhere, and the question of their being returned unwillingly to the mainland without any proper consultation with the United Nations or anyone else.

I should like, first, to thank my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State who is to reply to the debate, because I know that he wanted to go to Northern Ireland and have a pleasant and long weekend, and I have deprived him of half a day.

The two most worrying incidents that I want to discuss are questions of refugees. Over 70,000 of these, in 1962, came away from the mainland and hon. Members will remember that there was considerable uncertainty here because we did not know quite why it was all happening. We now know that it was largely due to famine on the mainland—starvation—and that these people were trying as hard as they could to get away from it.

Unfortunately, of those 72,000 or 74,000, about 60,000 were returned to the mainland protesting. They were not allowed to stay. That was the first time that the outside world, or those of us who really heard much about it, realised that the Hong Kong policy seemed to be changing a little—the policy of accepting refugees and doing everything possible to take in as many of them as they could.

The second incident to which I want to refer is much more recent, and occurred only last November. It was called the junk incident, because of a junk which took 52 refugees away from China, and then they were all returned. I will come back to those two points later, but may I, in passing, make one comment which is connected with both these matters. That is that China, being as vast at it is, one can only expect people to try to escape to Hong Kong from the Cantonese area. They cannot be expected to come from Sinkiang or the North of China—they would never get across China without being stopped and questioned—so it is those mainly from the Cantonese area.

Hong Kong is very largely populated by Cantonese and, therefore, when these people eventually get to the Island of Hong Kong they do not want to be told that they can go on to Formosa, which is quite a long way—from their point of view almost unget-atable—and they know very little about it. These people say, "No, we will not go. We have our own relations and friends in Hong Kong, and if we can get there and occasionally slip back to the mainland to see those relatives that we have left behind we would infinitely prefer it". Therefore, about 90 per cent. of the people who are trying to get away from the mainland do not want to go further than Hong Kong. That, of course, is a great headache for Hong Kong, and it is one of the matters that I suggest to my hon. Friend we should look into again.

What is the background of this? I have been personally interested in China since several years before the war, and I have been out there frequently. I was a member, in 1947, when Lord Attlee was Prime Minister and the Labour Party were in power, of a Parliamentary delegation which went to China to try to see what was going on. China, with Chiang Kai-shek as its leader, had been one of our principal allies. Now it seemed that everyone was getting a little tired on the mainland and that a terrible drift was taking place. The Communists were getting into power, mainly in the North.

It will be remembered that when Japan collapsed she left all of her very up-to-date armaments in Northern China, Manchuria, and that when the Russians took over they passed those armaments to the Communists in Northern China. That greatly strengthened the position of the Communists and it was from then on that they became more and more powerful as Chiang Kai-shek's régime became more and more tired.

We went there in 1947 and for anyone interested in this period I would recommend that he look up the Foreign Office brief to Lord Ammon, the leader of that delegation, as to what the Foreign Office felt about the then Kuomintang Government. That was in 1947. Then, of course, Chiang Kai-shek's régime began to collapse in 1948, and finally collapsed in 1949. I remember so well when Lord Morrison of Lambeth, at a dinner at the Chinese Embassy, asked the head of the Far Eastern Department of our Foreign Office, "What can you do to help us in this dilemma? We do not know what to do". The head of the Department said, "We sent you all the fullest facts and it is not for us to recommend a policy", to which Lord Morrison of Lambeth replied, "Well, our Government know nothing about the Far East, none of us has ever been out there, and we really do not know quite what to do".

Very soon after that, Ernest Bevin went out to the Far East, and India put great pressure on us to recognise the new Communist China. At the same time, there was the China Association, which is still in being, and consisting of rich businessmen connected with all the banks and the Bund in Shanghai, and so on, who felt that if we came to a quick agreement with the Communists they would, in the long run, save something for themselves and things would go on very well later.

Let us look at what has happened since. India can only regret now that she asked us to recognise Red China. The members of the China Association have all been turned out and have got no compensation and if any business people are going out there now they will find quite a different crowd of people from those who have these big claims and who look as though they will never get them settled.

I remember well Mr. Ernest Bevin saying in this House that he was recognising mainland China not de jure, but de facto, and stressing the point very much on more than one occasion that it was a de facto recognition. Whether it has now become de jure I do not know. Since we still have not got an ambassador there they only allow us a chargé d'affaires.

But if we are recognising the Chinese mainland as de facto and de jure what is the position of Formosa? I bring that in because, later, I shall be describing how to get people from the mainland who want to go to Formosa and who certainly do not want to go back to the mainland when at the same time the Hong Kong Government refuse to recognise the existence of Formosa. Not only does the Hong Kong Government refuse to recognise Formosa, but the present British Government taking over from the Labour Government in 1951 recognised—not very happily, but they did recognise—Red China. They also, at the same time, there is no question about it, find the régime of Chiang Kai-shek as very much de facto in Formosa.

That is a de facto régime. There is no question about that. About 12 million people are there. It is an almost bigger population than that of Belgium or even of Holland. It is a quite well-to-do country. Indeed, it is considered to be one of the most important of the lesser régimes in the Far East. After all, 12 million is no small number of people.

We say that we do not recognise them. We have a consul there, and now we have "anted" him up, so to speak, to consul-general. In addition, we have a naval attaché, largely because of the American Seventh Fleet. Of course, he is not called a naval attaché he is called an assistant counsellor, or something like that, but everybody knows he is a naval attaché, and he is a member of the Navy.

Not only that, but there is the Commonwealth point of view, and Australia, New Zealand, Canada all fully recognise Formosa and they do not recognise Red China, though they very often send stuff to Red China; they accept an ambassador or chargé d'affaires in their countries from Formosa, and in return our consul-general is the man who has to act for them in Formosa. So really this is a little bit of a peculiar set-up at the moment, but the whole organisation of it becomes tragic when we have to deal with people's lives, and to that I shall return in a few minutes.

Hong Kong itself started up after the war by having a population of about 800,000. Then, after the beginning of the collapse of the Kuomintang régime, more or less middle class people, university professors, the more educated people, the richer people, started to get as quickly as they could to Hong Kong and about 1 million went in between 1949 and 1951. Then again, after that, over the period between 1951 and 1964 about another 1 million went in.

I cannot believe that all these are Communists. Far from it. The majority of these people in Hong Kong are actually either Nationalists, who would have been for the Kuomintang régime, or, certainly, anti-Communist. I stress that because, of course, before the Kuomintang collapsed some of them did not see eye to eye with the Kuomintang, and many of them went to Singapore and the Philippines or Hong Kong, and did not want to go to Taiwan to get away from the Communists; but Taiwan managed to do quite a lot to help those who wanted to get away, and come to them.

There are, therefore, now about 3 million people in Hong Kong, which is just about as many as Hong Kong can possibly hold. After all, there is practically no water there. There is water now once in four days. Obviously, Hong Kong cannot take any more people, so what I wish to suggest later is that something should be done on an international basis by appeals to the United Nations or other agencies.

In 1962, when the 60,000 to 75,000 people went there, the Formosan Government offered a large amount of grain to be sent them, and while they were held in camps awaiting 11 or 12 ships to collect them from Formosa, but there was nobody official to whom the Formosan Government could put this offer, and that is, of course, one of the difficulties about it all. So the 60,000 were sent back, protesting.

Now we come again to the second incident of last November. Here, I should like to quote what the Chinese Formosan Government stated as their version of what happened. Their version has been summarised thus: 52 Chinese sailed from the coast town of Luk-Fung in Kuantung province on 26th November, 1963. They seized a fishing junk owned by the Commune after disarming those on board. They sailed for Hong Kong the same night. Of the 52 refugees, 27 were male adults, 19 were women, and six were children. Forty-eight hours later, on the night of 28th November, 1963, they had reached Lamma Island off Hong Kong where they were arrested by the Hong Kong water police. On escaping from Luk-Fung the refugees had been under machine-gun fire, and the refugees had returned it with small arms fire. The condition of the refugees was bad. All were in rags and were seeking to escape from the hardships of Commune life. The United Press reported this event on 1st December and quoted the Hong Kong police as saying that a decision was impending as to whether these junk refugees were political refugees or illegal immigrants. Mr. Ku Chang-Kan, head of the Free Chinese Association in Taipein working directly with the United Nations on the matter—cabled the Hong Kong authorities on 1st December, 1963, requesting them to respect the wishes of the refugees as to their ultimate destination. Mr. Ku added that if the Hong Kong Government had no funds to support the refugees the Free Chinese Association would take entire responsibility. In either the same or another cable of the same date, 1st December, 1963, Mr. Ku asked the Hong Kong Government's permission for the refugees to proceed to Taiwan. Two days later, namely 3rd December, 1963, the junk refugees"— as they are now called— were sent to the Red Chinese border in three box-cars usually used for transporting cattle. Their transfer to the Red Chinese authorities involved a scene of much weeping and distress. Hon. Members can imagine the scene well enough, and I have photographs here: On 4th December United Press reported Mr. Duncan Sandys as saying that in the past 12 months refugees to Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland had numbered 29,000. During the past 15 years the Hong Kong Government had built 140,000 dwellings to accommodate some 750,000 Chinese refugees. On 12th December, 1963, Mr. Ku Chang-kan wrote to the Secretary General U Thant of the United Nations protesting against this and many other recent occasions upon which the Hong Kong Government had returned refugees to the Communist mainland. Letters were also written to me and to Lord Killearn and others and this matter has been taken up both in another place and here, and indeed, Lord Dundee and Lord Lansdowne have written several letters on these questions.

I should like to look for a few minutes at the facts which are agreed and at the ones which are disagreed. Everyone agrees that there were 52 Chinese who sailed from Luk-Fung on 26th November. Everybody agrees that they reached Lamma Island on 28th November and that they were arrested by the Hong Kong border police and detained in various gaols. Everybody also agrees that in the afternoon of 3rd December, 1963, they were repatriated across the Chinese Communist border having been held—and this is important—incommunicado from the moment of their arrest until their return to the Chinese Communists.

Now, in dispute are the following facts. In saying these things I must also point out that my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. J. Rodgers), who cannot be here today, has also been in communication with the Secretary of State on this matter and that these are, roughly, his statements to the Colonial Office and, very roughly, the answers.

Our Government's point of view is that the 52 Chinese were illegal immigrants and not political refugees. It has even been suggested that they were possibly security risks, but that has never been definitely stated; it has only been implied. We say they were fugitives from Communism. They must be. They have to be to seize a junk and to fire on people who are trying to stop them from going, and anybody who knows about Communism or about Red China's position will know that people who go like that are unlikely to have a good time of it if and when they go back.

Then our Government say there was no disregarding of the Declaration of Human Rights. But it has been disregarded, for these refugees are leaving, and risking persecution, and according to what I understand the Declaration of Human Rights to say—and which we have all signed—it says that every nation is bound to give sanctuary to such people in such circumstances.

Our Government tell us that Hong Kong is bound to restrict immigration. That I fully grant. All I am asking is that they should just hold them en route till somebody else can accommodate them.

Then they say there was no offer of sanctuary by Formosa. The great difficulty is for the Formosans to make direct contact with Hong Kong, but on 2nd December Mr. Robert Der, who is the person in Hong Kong who looks after Formosan interests, unconditionally on Formosa's behalf made this offer to Mr. Sydney S. Gordon, Hong Kong's political police chief.

We must not forget that the Prime Minister of Formosa, in May, 1962, when the starving 70,000 were going out, made a standing offer which, I am informed today—I have just heard from Taipeh about it—still holds good, to accept all refugees wanting to come to Formosa. Again, the Hong Kong Government say: Formosa's offer is not sincere. When it was made in 1962, only 751 of these Chinese went on to Formosa". That is probably true. They fled to escape famine, but were returned by Hong Kong. In view of what happened to the Korean prisoners after the Korean War, when 80 per cent. of them, on being given their choice, went back to Formosa and not to the mainland, it is unlikely, and, indeed, almost certain, that these people were never told about the Formosan offer.

Many of her refugees are in the same position and they are being turned back fairly regularly, although not in such large numbers. That is why I have en-deavoured to bring this matter up today, because it is possible that we might have something on a much bigger scale in the near future. It looks as though there is no way of helping these people or there being anyone to whom they can turn.

I suggest that some contact should be made between Formosa and Hong Kong. There are, of course, trading ships which go regularly. There are aircraft which go three or four times a week between the two territories. Of the 3 million people, probably well over 2 million are in close sympathy with Formosa. The Hong Kong Government used to be very fair and just on all these matters. They did their best to take as many people as possible. But now it would seem as if they are beginning, bit by bit, to become a little impatient of Formosa and more interested in helping to please the Chinese mainland.

I know that the Foreign Office is absolutely terrified of Peking and that it would not do anything to offend Peking unless it looked as if it might offend the United States a bit more. It is, therefore, in a bit of a jam, because the United States put Formosa very much on the map just after the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek. The British in Hong Kong have really helped the Chinese there. A group of Britons, without really getting very much assistance in the early days after the war from the Colonial Office, did a great deal. It was done through the Hong Kong Bank and other banks. They financed everything and, therefore, they were not in a position to be dictated to by the Colonial Office concerning the expenditure of the money. The net result is that they have made Hong Kong into one of the most exciting places in the Far East, both from the point of view of building and of solving the appalling housing problem. They have not yet solved the water problem—they cannot do that—but they would like to do so very much. They have done all this very much on their own.

In Formosa, however, it is the better type of Chinese who escape from the mainland. They have been left, with the financial backing of the Americans, very much on their own and to do what they want to do. They have done everything they can to make an old China in the Far East, a China of the Confucian period in many ways with regard to religion and culture, and, at the same time, a very modern Formosa in military equipment, and so on.

Is there no way in which we could get these two, even if they cannot officially recognise each other, to do something to save lives for the future? I cannot help but feel that people who escape and get away from the mainland in China, if they are sent back—and one can see from the tears and the scenes that they are heartbroken when they are sent back—they will have the devil of a time. They will be put in concentration camps and will suffer forced labour, or something like that. We should, therefore, try to do something to prevent that situation from arising. It would have to be done on the highest level. This could mean a lot of worry for the Foreign Office, although I cannot see that it will mean very much worry for the Colonial Office.

We must also consider the matter from the lower level. Here, I want to tell my hon. Friend in public what I have told him in private about a Nationalist Chinese who lives here normally and has done so for many years. He looks after everything which can be done for the Nationalists, the anti-Communist Chinese, of whom there is such a large number in this country. His name is Mr. Charles Wang. The other day, he went back to Formosa for a month. To do so he had to pass through Hong Kong. He hoped that he would be able to see some of his friends there. He did everything absolutely correctly. He went to the Home Office and got a Home Office visa to stay for 48 hours—passing through.

Mr. Wang arrived, admittedly, about eight o'clock in the evening, on 23rd March. He went by air. We are told that the senior Customs officials were not on duty, but there was a junior official, a Cantonese, who was extremely offensive and who refused to allow him to stay. He threatened to put him back on the next plane for England. Mr. Wang showed him the Home Office visa. Presumably it was a perfectly legal one. I take it that my hon. Friend agrees that the Colonial Office accepts Home Office visas. The visa was for 48 hours in Hong Kong.

This official said that he could not care less, that he was not interested in that and that Mr. Wang was an illegal immigrant because he did not have an entry visa for Taipeh, in Taiwan. The reason that he did not have one was that it is usually kept at Taipeh airport on landing, and people in Hong King are informed first, or a facsimile of it is sent to one by air mail. Mr. Wang had this document and he showed it to the official, but he refused to accept it.

Mr. Wang was put in a detention centre at the airport to await the next plane for Taiwan. Luckily, he was seen from over the wall by the head of the Press Department, who was expecting him, and others. Finally, after three hours and much trouble, they gave a personal guarantee and they got him out. The Home Office visa meant nothing at all; nobody cared tuppence about it. A personal guarantee had to be given by someone in Hong Kong.

This makes one suspect that, in addition to there being this uncertainty at the top and unwillingness even to recognise the existence of 12 million people in neighbouring territory, there is, at the same time, among the lower ranges of the Cantonese, among whom are quite a lot of Communist sympathisers, people who are most unwilling to do anything to help others going on to Taiwan.

I beg the Colonial Office's officials to do what they can to assert their authority. They know the Far East far better than the Foreign Office officials. When I first became interested in China, before the war, it was just at the end of the time when the old Far Eastern hands in the Foreign Office became ambassadors and stayed on. After that there came the idea that this was just another part of the Foreign Office's world responsibility and one went backwards and forwards from Europe to Far Eastern areas whilst those in the Colonial Office remained specialists in the East. One heard many hard things said by Colonial Office people in Hong Kong about the way in which they were dictated to by the Foreign Office just after the war.

I ask my hon. Friend to see whether the Colonial Office cannot do something to ease the situation and to make it possible for someone in Hong Kong to be recognised as the person to whom messages could he sent by the Formosan Government. For instance, when the Prime Minister of Formosa makes a public statement to say what he will do to help people going there, there should be someone in Hong Kong to receive it and to make certain that it gets to the Governor. There is no certainty that the statements I have mentioned ever did so, and I ask my hon. Friend to do what he can to solve this problem.

1.31 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Royle (Richmond, Surrey)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Sir W. Teeling) on his welcome initiative in obtaining this debate. I should like to say how much I share some of his distress about the illegal immigration into the Colony. However, I do not agree with the unfair censure which he levelled at the Hong Kong Government and their actions in this matter over the past few years.

As my hon. Friend said, the population of the Colony is now more than 3,500,000. This includes a natural increase of 95,000 per annum, but, in spite of it, the Hong Kong Government have continued the tradition of allowing a certain number of immigrants from the Kwantung Province, which has always been very close to the Colony, to enter legally. However, in addition, in 1963 10,000 illegal immigrants entered the Colony, mostly by junk, many from Macao. Of course, the police in the Colony have had a very difficult task. They have coped with this problem as well as they could within the limitations and difficulties confronting them.

I should like my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to say whether any extra pressure, with any success, has been put on the Portuguese Administration in Macao to reduce, if not stop, this immigration at source, because it causes so much human misery to so many Chinese who are crammed into small boats to cross the estuary in order to try to enter Hong Kong. I have seen this for myself in Macao. I have seen the junks and the small tourist agencies which charge the Chinese great sums of money, although many never get to the Colony, some being dumped back on the shores of Red China.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion mentioned the water situation to which I, too, would like to refer. The water situation in the Colony has been desperate since the failure of last year's rains. Domestic taps get water once every four days for periods of four hours while at the standpipes water is available for only an hour or two every other day. I should like to pay tribute to the great restraint of the Chinese in Hong Kong, and indeed the whole population, for the way they have coped with great discomfort and misery caused by shortage of water over the past two years.

However, it should not be forgotten that the Hong Kong Government are pressing ahead rapidly with many development schemes. First, the Plover Cove Scheme is well under way. Secondly, I understand that sea water distillation plants are being set up. Although he may not have the information today, I should like my hon. Friend to tell me at some time when these sea water distillation plants are likely to be in operation. Thirdly, there is the agreement with Red China to obtain water from the East River. I am sure that my hon. Friend welcomes this agreement which will considerably help to ease the water situation.

I should like finally to comment on the most important thing which we can do to ease the population difficulty in Hong Kong. The basic problem is the tremendous increase in population, including illegal immigration. This can be tackled by expanding trade and by providing full employment for the vast numbers living in the Colony. Total trade expanded by nearly 12 per cent. in 1962 compared with 1961, and again by more than 12 per cent. last year compared with 1962. This is a great credit to the businessmen and industrialists of the Colony, but diversification of industry is vital. There is no need for capital, as is the case with other overseas territories, but there is a need for "know-how" and technical assistance and I appeal to British firms to give all the assistance they can. Many have started, but more help is needed.

I should like again to stress that, while sharing my hon. Friend's concern about this illegal immigration, there is no doubt that the Hong Kong Government are doing all that can be done to cope with it there. The flourishing Colony is a great credit to British administration and to Chinese hard work and ingenuity. It is a shop window for the West on the edge of China. We must help to support this fine example of thriving free enterprise in the Far East.

1.36 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and for the Colonies (Mr. Nigel Fisher)

I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Sir W. Teeling) that it was well worth missing half-a-day's holiday to hear his most interesting speech. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle) for his defence of the Hong Kong Government, which I was delighted to hear, as it was well justified. I do not know the answer to his first question, but I will inquire about it at once and let him know. He was perfectly right to say that the water problem is very worrying. There have been several Parliamentary Questions about it, and I am now more optimistic than I have been for some time that something is being done. I do not know when the desalination plant will be ready, but I will let my hon. Friend know as soon as I can find out.

I am very glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion has raised this subject, because it gives me the opportunity to clarify a situation which is well understood in Hong Kong, but perhaps not so well understood in Britain. I want to make it quite clear that we are dealing with a problem not of political refugees, but of illegal immigrants. Most of the Chinese now seeking to enter Hong Kong do so because the Colony's relative economic prosperity is very great, or because they have relations there. The vast majority are not political refugees but are simple, unsophisticated people without any political motives. They are not in danger of losing their lives or liberty and are quite simply illegal immigrants.

At the end of the war, the population of Hong Kong was fewer than 600,000, but by 1950, when immigration controls were first introduced, it had risen to 2,300,000, a very large number of people in a very small place. Since then, more than a million more people have entered Hong Kong from the mainland, either legally or illegally.

There is another side of the coin, and I must remind my hon. Friend that when there is a period of less pressure of immigration from the mainland, the Hong Kong Government at once relaxes these restrictions on entering. This has happened between 1952 and 1955 and again for a period in 1956. As he knows, by arrangement with China, we now have a quota system by which between 20,000 and 30,000 people can come to Hong Kong legally every year. They are not a problem, because these are the people whom the Hong Kong Government believes this very small and overcrowded Colony can absorb. It is the illegal immigrants who are the problem, and in 1962 alone there were more than 100,000 of them.

The Hong Kong Government must exercise some degree of immigration control in the interests of those people who live in the Colony, and I think that my hon. Friend agrees with that. The controls they apply are the usual controls by which any country regulates entry into its boundaries and, as my hon. Friend knows, it is normal international practice to return people who try to evade those controls to the country from which they came.

Only those who are actually caught entering Hong Kong illegally are returned to China; I think that there were only 1,883 of them during 1963. The people who avoid detection and reach Hong Kong are allowed to remain there, and even if they are caught coming in illegally they are not returned immediately. Full investigations are made as to why they came in, and if there are any reasonable grounds for believing that they would be persecuted if sent back, very careful inquiries are made before a decision is taken. Where there are any special circumstances, these are taken fully into account before a decision is made and, it there is any doubt, the benefit of the doubt is given to the man who is claiming political asylum; he is not returned.

Admission is not refused to anyone seeking entry in circumstances covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—I must make that quite clear, because my hon. Friend mentioned it. Article 14(1) of the Declaration says: Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. That Declaration is not actually binding on us, but our own practice does, in fact, conform to it.

The decision whether to admit someone is, and I think must be, one for the local authority, but general policy is laid down by Her Majesty's Government in Britain, and any individual case about which there was any doubt at all would be referred to my right hon. Friend if special considerations arose.

My hon. Friend seemed to imply at one point that we do not exercise sufficient control over Hong Kong from this country, but I must tell him that we are in perfect agreement with the policy of the Hong Kong Government on this matter, and I am not prepared to accept any wedge that he may seek to drive between the Colonial Office here and the local Government.

The suggestion that emigration to Formosa and other countries would ease the immigrant problem in Hong Kong has often been made, particularly by the Chinese Nationalist authorities. The fact is that neither Formosa nor any other country has hitherto been prepared to accept Chinese immigrants in sufficient numbers to make any real contribution to the problem. Whenever countries other than Hong Kong have admitted immigrants it has always been on a very selective basis indeed. They have only taken people—I do not particularly blame them, but it is the fact—of good health and good character, who have professional or technical qualifications. Those sort of conditions are really quite irrelevant to the refugee problem in Hong Kong, because immigrants, whether they have entered legally or illegally, are accepted without any qualifications whatever or any inquiry as to whether they can earn their living in the Colony.

We must also take into account the wishes of the immigrants themselves. It is quite unthinkable that we should move people from one country to another without their consent and against their wish, and it is perfectly clear that the vast majority of them who come to Hong Kong simply want to work there and live there, where many of them have friends, and where conditions are comparatively rather good. Most of them prefer to remain near their previous homes in China, which they often revisit, and have no wish at all to move further afield.

I do not think that it is true to say that Formosa would take these migrants in their tens of thousands, which is the size of the problem, even if the migrants themselves wished to go there. It is true that individuals are sometimes assisted to go, but, as far as we know, those who go to Formosa are normally students, or people like doctors with professional or technical qualifications. Indeed, in the ten years from 1952 to 1962, only about 17,000 Chinese from Hong Kong were resettled in Formosa, yet during the same period no fewer than 800,000 people entered Hong Kong. Those are the facts of past experience.

In May, 1962, after the great influx from China, when about 70,000 people entered Hong Kong, the Formosan authorities publicly declared—I think that my hen. Friend made this point—that they would resettle any refugees who wished to go to Formosa. In the following January, however, the Free China Relief Association admitted that only 721 people—1 per cent.—had been brought to Formosa; 262 of them were students, and 331 were people who could be gainfully employed because of their special skills. It is not true to say that the Hong Kong Government's policy restricts emigration to Formosa. If more people do not go there, it is just that they do not want to go there, or because the Formosan authorities would not take them if they did want to go there.

The United States has also taken between 10,000 and 20,000 immigrants over the years, but the basic United States immigration quota from Hong Kong is only 105 people per year, with their wives and children. The number of Chinese immigrants into other countries is minimal—a few hundred in all. Let me assure my hon. Friend that the Hong Kong Government are not in the least opposed to emigration, and any resident in the Colony is quite free to emigrate to any country willing to accept him.

My hon. Friend has suggested, in effect, that illegal immigrants should be sent to Formosa instead of being returned to China, but there is no indication that the great majority of people entering Hong Kong either wish to go on to Formosa or would be accepted there if they did so wish. They cannot just be kept in Hong Kong; they are not distinguishable from the residents of Hong Kong, and if they were allowed to circulate freely in the Colony it would not be possible to keep track of them or ensure their onward transmission to Formosa—unless they were put in transit camps which would, I think, be quite unacceptable to them and to their friends and relations in Hong Kong. These are human beings, and have to be treated as such, and not, like cattle, to be sent anywhere without regard to their own wishes.

I am sorry to be slightly exceeding my time in this debate, but my hon. Friend took half an hour in opening and there are one or two points of detail with which I want to deal. My hon. Friend referred to the incident in November, 1963, when the Hong Kong police intercepted a junk containing 52 illegal immigrants. Two members of that party said that their vessel had been pursued by an armed junk, and that fish bombs had been thrown at this junk in order to effect escape, but this story was not corroborated by any of the other 50 members of the party. Eventually, as my hon. Friend has said, the members of the party were returned across the land frontier early in December.

There is no reason to believe that this was anything other than a case of attempted illegal entry. Possibly in order to make it appear that these people were refugees hotly pursued out of China, the Free China Relief Association talked at the time of their escape under gunfire—I think that those were the words—and of heartrending scenes at the border as they were returned to "certain death". I am reliably informed that there was no gunfire at all, and that there were no heartrending scenes whatever either at the border or at any other time during their detention in Hong Kong—

Sir W. Teeling

May I show my hon. Friend some pictures at another time?

Mr. Fisher

I should like to see them, but I have been very carefully into this report and would need very convincing pictures to refute the evidence I have.

The Free China Relief Association claims that it offered to take these people to Formosa, but there is no record of any such offer, and the Hong Kong Government received no request from the people themselves to be allowed to go anywhere other than Hong Kong. It is quite untrue to say that the people themselves asked to go to Formosa.

I must refer now to the incident my hon. Friend mentioned of a few days ago in which, as I understand him, the representative of the Chinese Nationalist Government was refused entry to Hong Kong for several hours despite the fact that he had been issued with a 48-hour transit visa from London.

I do not think that this man could have been a representative of Formosa, because there is no diplomatic representative of Formosa in this country. Perhaps he was a member of the Free China News Agency. I do not know. In any case, the Hong Kong Government have no record of the incident, and I know nothing at all about it. If my hon. Friend will give me the name of the passenger and the date, together with the flight number, I will have this matter carefully investigated, and I will write to him as soon as I have some information about it.

Lastly, there is the question of diplomatic relations or liaison with Formosa. As my hon. Friend has stated, Her Majesty's Government do not recognise the Nationalist authorities of Formosa. The existence of a British consulate in Formosa does not mean that we have diplomatic relations. As my hon. Friend knows, consuls are not diplomatic representatives; their duty is simply to look after British interests. The consulate in Formosa has relations with the local provincial authorities in the island, but not with the Nationalist authorities. If my hon. Friend is arguing that Her Majesty's Government should change this policy of non-recognition of the Nationalist regime in Formosa, I must decline to enter the controversy, because this is not a matter for the Colonial Office, and my hon. Friend should put his arguments to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. I am not prepared to answer, because I should get into terrible trouble with the Foreign Office if I sought to assume responsibility for these matters.

I hope that I have covered the main points and arguments which my hon. Friend has put to the House. If, for lack of time, I have not covered every point that my hon. Friend raised, I hope that he will understand that this is out of consideration for the other debates on the Whitsun Adjournment and in deference, Mr. Speaker, to your informal time table, to which I have tried to adhere, however unsuccessfully. If there are points that I have not covered I will write to my hon. Friend as soon as possible after the debate in order to refer to them, and reply to the other points that he mentioned.