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Possible Implications of a Special Hong Kong Register
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The principle benefitters will be Japanese manufacturers, ship-builders and the Classification Society. Due to the special Japanese package deal in respect of ships built there, they will have a ready marketable product. This package deal ship will be readily saleable to any shipowner who wishes to register it under the Hong Kong special register.
Initially Hong Kong shipowners will benefit as acceptance by U.K. of flexible standards under a Hong Kong register for ships flying the Red Ensign will increase the resale value of their ships to a greater extent than if they were registered with Liberia, etc.
Other countries have standards over and above the I.M.0.0. and I.L.0. medium and shipowners in these countries will also benefit as oventually if not
Therefore other ship- initially entering to the register will be obtained. building countries industry will suffer as will their ships auxiliary machinery equipment manufacturers.
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British law preventing full benefit to shipowners registering vessels in countries outside the United Kingdom could not reasonably be sustained under the conditions outlined in para. 3 above, and British shipowners would eventually obtain entry either directly or indirectly to the register.
Equipment manufacturing in Hong Kong is at a primitive and minimal level. hos Facilities exist for production of navigation lines and the expertise is available
for manufacture of ships' lifeboats. In practice the manufacturers find it more profitable to sell their products to tourists and yacht owners in the United States respectively than to manufacture the equipment for ships.
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Approval by the D.T.I. of Japanese type testing would make it easier for Japanese equipment to be sold to ships not being built in Japan.
The Japanese Classification Society (N.K.) Survey has a poor name, although M.K. is already the fastest growing society. A special register would mean that other classification societies included with Lloyd's would lose initial and subsequent classification business with consequential loss of earnings to the United Kingdom and other countries because the Japanese are now insisting that ships built in Japan must be to N.K. classification.
Lloyd's Register and other classification societies survey ships registered in flag of convenience countries on their behalf for safety equipment and other surveys. This business would then be lost to N.K. and there is evidence that the N.K. Survey is not up to the standard of other classification societies.
Standards of maintenance of ships is dependent upon the rigour of the inspection and the N.K. survey system is based on flexibility in acceptance of assurances of shipowners, shipyards and equipment manufacturers 'compared with other classi- fication societies.
It is not This system is attractive to some shipowners. generally believed that any Japanese Classification Society Surveyor would be permitted to insist on compliance in the case of a good ship-owning customer. There are only thirty-one ships under the existing Hong Kong register and the
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