than British subjects, have been born there.
But do you confine
your electorate to British people or not? Is it right to allow
aliens to have a vote in legislature?
There is no problem in local authorities.
You allow
aliens to vote for local authorities.
This is one of the
1
problems we have, quite apart from dangers of nationalist
communists voting and all the rest of it.
A possibility I thought about, I have never announced
it, or said anything about it in Hong Kong, except to very few
people, is if we could get decent elected local authorities,
then one might be able to use local members from elected
bodies as appointed members of the Legislative Council.
Chinese do not want it. Let me assure you of that. This is a
pure Western idea.
Western?
The
QUESTION: Groups like the Reform Group are more
'SIR DAVID TRENCH: They are; very high proportion
of Westerners in it, and of course highly westernised Chinese.
QUESTION: I remember a few months or years ago
there was some discussion here about the alleged malpractices.
in the police force. Has there been any further discussion
of this? Has that been proved or disproved?
SIR DAVID TRENCH: Entirely disproved. No evidence
at all. No police force in the world could entirely prove
In a big force there are a certain number of
;
completely pure.
bad eggs in it. Ours is like any others. The level of
corruption in our police force compares very favourably indeed
with any police force anywhere, including here.
1.
QUESTION: What in financial and economic terms is
the benefit to China of a stable and prosperous Hong Kong?
£200 million sterling in foreign
SIR DAVID TRENCH:
exchange is about the figure.
-20-