RESTRICTED
Financial Policy and Aid Department
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London S.W.1
28 September 1970.
Enter
2.
CDC and Hong Kong
Thank you for your letter AID 273/77/01 of 21 September.
You would have grounds for arguing for a reduction in the size of the proposed investment but on balance we would much prefer you not to try to dissuade CDC from going ahe ad altogether.
3. I fully appreciate that Hong Kong is comparatively affluent and that there are other more "needy" countries where our limited aid funds could be spent. Nevertheless Hong Kong is UK's direct responsibility. Because of its comparative affluence it gets negligible assistance from our normal aid programme. (And yet if Hong Kong were situated geographically within the British Isles it is more than likely that the UK exchequer would be pouring fund s into her as a "development area".) This, as you know, is a sore point with Hong Kong and they tend to think that we too often act with cavalier disregard of their interests. I fear that an attempt by us to dissuade CDC from going ahead would certainly become known in Hong Kong and they would find our attitude, at best, incomprehensible. At the present time we would prefer to avoid such a situation developing.
4.
Given that CDC
(a) was originally established to assist the economic
development of the dependent territories,
(b)
(c)
(a)
is required to operate on commercial lines and to pay its way,
is under no legal obligation to confine its activities to the poorest countries and territories, and
already has investments in Hong Kong.
I do not think that there are any "policy" grounds on which we can convincingly argue against the current application.
(A.T. Baillie)
ÄSIVE IN [R=GTRY No.:
R.E. Radford, Esq.,
Ministry of Overseas Development,
Eland House,
Stag Place,
S.W.1.
ལ།
HKK21/4