0003230 G.F. 323
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1-m
generate considerable public interest. If we had not kept the
present consultations from the press, you would have been met at
the airport by correspondents of all the leading English and Chinese
You would most certainly at sometime during
language newspapers.
your stay been invited to appear on radio and television.
At this point I would like to slip in a word about
industrial advisers. On the whole, as you know, we do not welcome
the presence of industrial advisers in substantive negotiations
because they inhibit what we can say. Our own people fully under-
stand and accept this. Nevertheless, we fully appreciate the
reasons why you would like your advisers to attend. I hope that the
compromise, based on the practice in London, I proposed to the
Consul-General will be acceptable to you. We have made provision
for industrial advisers, both yours and ours, to be present at the
two sessions of the Statistical Group or Sub-Committee for which the
programme provides. If you would like your advisers to be on hand
during the Working Sessions, I can easily put a room in this building
at their disposal. Our idea is that, as in London, we should use the
meetings of the Statistical Group to go fully into the facts of the
case for restraint on particular items.
Where the facts will lead us, I find difficult to assess.
•
This is
We summarised our present views in our Note of 30th July, in reply
to yours of July the 22nd. Since then we have more up-to-date export
figures. In general they show a marked decline for all the items on
which you are seeking restraint, including the cotton ones.
most unusual, and from my point of view I might say, a depressing
development. Usually, in spite of our best endeavours, some rumour
of the possibility of controls escapes and, though we have said
nothing about your present visit, it did become known in Hong Kong
some months ago that we had had some talks with you about possible
export restraints. In this sort of situation, we usually find an
The fact
increase in exports anticipating closing of the doors.
that this has not happened, and that the trend has actually been in
/the opposite
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