CONFIDENTIAL
Mr Larmour
се
PS to PUS Mr Male
Mr Scrivener
Mr Galsworthy
Mr Faber
Mr O'Keeffe
the 24/12
the hookow of
20
Mr. Fau/21/1. Галей Mr. O'Keeffe or
Dim
22/12
BRITAIN AND HONG KONG
1. I had three interesting if depressing days in Hong Kong earlier this week.
2. The interesting things were:-
(a)
(b)
The calm on the border resulting largely from the oral arrange- ments on illegal immigrants.
The fact that in Peking Hong Kong was never mentioned and in our relations with China for the moment at least it seems that if we keep our heads down Hong Kong could for some time at least be a non-problem.
(c) The anti-corruption drive and the rehousing projects.
흐흐
(a) The prosperity of the colony.
3.
The depressing aspects are, however, more worrying:-
(a)
(b)
The British case, by which I mean the nature of the social changes taking place in Britain and the rationale for them plus our approach to our own economic problems is going largely by default.
Hong Kong is failing to get over its case in Britain ie its value in eg invisible terms and the reasons why it is pursuing its fiscal and other policies.
(c) The extent of anti-British (or perhaps I should say particularly
but not exclusively anti-labour party feeling in Hong Kong not only among expatriate anti-British businessmen and Chinese businessmen but even unfortunately in the Hong Kong Government.
(a)
4.
The way in which the Hong Kong officials and unofficials have an uncanny knack of overstating their case and making enemies rather than friends (I saw this particularly in the USA).
I was exposed to this pretty hard. For us as diplomats accustomed to defending government policies in friendly and unfriendly countries against uniformed and prejudiced not to say hostile opinion this is
CONFIDENTIAL
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