Paragraph 1, line 6: economic benefit to us!
surely the use of English is not per se an
Paragraph 2, lines 5 and 6: given the pressures for restrictions on Hong Kong exports of textiles to the UK and EEC it seems a little odd to argue wholeheartedly their benefit to us,
Paragraph 3
It should surely be pointed out that UK visible exports to the Hong Kong market are relatively unimportant (in 1974 less than 1% of our visible exports). If other countries are ahead of us in visible exports to the colony it might be worth saying so. Most of the rest of the factual information in this paragraph seems superfluous,
Paragraph 4
The penultimate sentence of your draft refers to capital gains on the stock-market. This reference might be better omitted given the Spydar/Haw Par affair and the generally speculative nature of trading on the Hong Kong stock-market.
In the third sentence of the paragraph reference is made to the UK's £150m of direct investment in the colony. It might be as well to put this in the context of our total overseas investment - at a rough guess the income from our direct Hong Kong investments may be no more than 1% of the UK's receipts of "interest profits and dividends"
Paragraph 5
UK trade with China is potentially of considerable importance but it may be worth giving a quantitative estimate of its present level (the figures suggest that in the first half of 1974, for example, UK exports to China were only £25m).