CONFIDENTIAL
Treasury Chambers
Great George Street, London, S.W.I Telephone: 01-930 1234, ext. 126
JR D Gildea Esq CRE3(3)
Board of Trade
1 Victoria Street
London SW1
Dear Gildea
HONG KONG
1.
49
RECEIVED IN
REGISTRY No.51
› AUG 1970
нккири
29
July 1970
John Slater has asked me to let you know that our only comments on the draft paper on Hong Kong which you circulated on 22 July, concern paragraph 41.
2. We would in fact prefer the deletion of this paragraph but if it must be kept in the paper we would suggest that the
In line 3 delete the following amendments should be made. words "a sterling balance" and insert in their place the
The reason for this words "the colony's large reserves". amendment is that what is meant by "sterling balances" is in fact Hong Kong's reserves - over the use of which the UK has no control (except in general influence over the economic policy of a colony). In line 4 after "United Kingdom" we would suggest an additional sentence:-
"The use of development aid to help a dependency as
wealthy as Hong Kong would clearly create a difficult precedent and one which ought to be avoided if at all possible. However, so far Hong Kong has not found difficulty etc".
The last sentence of the paragraph might be altered to read "It seems most unlikely that aid could be justified on normal economic criteria and in any case it is improbable that it would lead to a solution of any of Hong Kong's likely difficulties in the next decade".
3. I have copied this letter to Robinson and Laird in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Peat in the Ministry of Overseas Development and Gregory in the Ministry of Technology.
Yours sincerely
DP MERCY
CONFIDENTIAL