9
FX
FX
Communist-capitalist type companies.
Their major broking role in Hong Kong's vital daily food imports from China appears to give them leverage with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. But their immediate links in China are with the Kwantung authorities, in Canton, and not with Peking. Kwantung is remote from the capital and national concerns, and the Cantonese are noted for their autonomous leanings and their orientation to the profitable Hong Kong market.
The total Chinese wildlife exports to the Colony are officially worth only 51⁄2 million Hong Kong dollars or in sterling just over £400,000 a year, which in China's overall trade is insignificant. This figure embraces frogs, grasshoppers and so forth: and the animals that we are concerned with the Director guesses to number some 15,000 head a year which is worth 730,000 Hong Kong dollars or under £60,000. Now, even adding birds of prey, this is a lot less than China's earnings from the sale of pigs to the Colony in a single day!
The mark-ups seem to go to the dealers in Hong Kong - where a pangolin steak in the market can fetch +2.50 p. sterling for one pound in weight
Now, even if records of animal sales do go to Peking, they probably stop short on some minor bureaucrat's desk. There are hints of growing conservation consciousness coming from the capital for example posters extolling the value of owls in the wild - while in the south Kwantung peasants are harvesting these very birds from all over China. The question raised in our minds is whether, considering this small financial return, Peking has noticed what Kwantung is doing; and the wastage involved, and whether anything would be lost by taking the matter higher, after all. As things are now, Hong Kong is contorting itself to accommodate a wasteful and cruel trade.
Shing Lee Hong shop interior.
Lance
This is a racoon dog which has a badly injured nose as you can see, and the front paw has had a large wound in it from
We's kicking the cage now to arouse it.
a gin trap
You see the front left paw with a large gash in it?
Penn
What's that?
Lance
From a gin trap.
(fade)
Cross fade to clean sound of shop, with hammering and banging, and hold under following narration.