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are not enough to afford businessmen, whether British, American or of any other nationality, the confidence they need to plan and develop important new projects. It is just about all right now, with eighteen years of the New Territor- ies Lease left but in two or three years' time confidence will rapidly evaporate if there is no security of tenure. On the whole businesses expect to make enough profit to recover everything in about twelve years but we are fast getting closer to the point where the twelve year span cannot be seen clearly.
Peking says that these are all legal problems which require no attention. Why bother? Can you not see how friendly we are being? Fine as far as it goes but businesses must have some title which they can amortise over a reasonable period if they are to function effectively.
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China needs Hong Kong (she would collapse without the New Territories) very much for her own industrial development. She sends engineers, tourist executives, and so forth to Hong Kong to learn and study new technologies. It is the shopping centre of the outside world for China. China also gets over forty per cent of her foreign earnings of seven thousand million U.Sd dollars
Fight a year by exporting foodstuffs and like machinery to Hong Kong as well as collecting dividends, rentals, etc. for her property in Hong Kong to the tune of five hundred million pounds a year. You could say that as some eighty per cent or more of the wealth