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All in all, the net British rake-off is in the order of about £1 billion p.a. and is more or less at the same level as the net return on British investant in South Africa a sum so large that successive British Govts, have maintained
any sort of sanctions against S. Africa would be harmful to the national interest. Estimate for S.A. from Anti-Anarteid ).
HK's trade with UK yields a useful profit, but UK is nowhere near the important market it once was USA, EFC and Japan having passed the UK long ago.
However, ( and here we come to the mub of the problem) this rake-off is very unevenly spread over the UK economy. In effect while the City rubs its hands with glee, the CBI is weeping into its beer. Put another way, finance capital is happy and manufacturing capital is not. Whole industries like garments,
electronics, toys, footwear, cutlery etc. are laid low by low-cost imports of which the HK contribution is the single largest. In these industries, there is often a united front of joint employer/union defence committees that speak equally eloquently to a Labour or a Tory administration against the HK-connection.
We must now look at another matter that will further complicate the picture, Here I will trespass a bit on my collegue Dr. Chan's paper, but it is inevitable. The question is this: to what extent does British retention on HK affect Political and economic relations between Britain and China?
It has been said, indeed it has been said over and over again, that a further unquantifiable advantage that Britain possesses from its presence in HK is that Britain has a 'special relationship' with China arising from the century-plus experience of dealing with China over and from HK. This advantage, so the story goes, still obtains today. (Some) HK officials speak Chinese and occasionally travel in the PRC for various reasons. Some sort of expertise in dealing with Bank of China officials, or those from Xinhua or Luxingshe has been acquired and, somehow, this enables Britain to possess a mysterious 'headstart' on the competition. The competion, as we all know, is for the last great untapped market an hallucination that has powerfully affected the minds of western manufacturers for over a century. It still does, and although the market for Mini Metros or electric toothbrushes will not materialise for a lifetime or two (if ever) there are substantial contracts to be picked up during the operation of the Four Modernisations policy. The available evidence is that Britain is doing rather poorly in this scramble: witness the trade figures below.
For 1979 in USøn.
Imports from China
Exports to China
Japan Hongkong
2793
3674
3021
382
USA
594
1724
West Germany
464
1493
Britain 303
469
Rumania
477
543
Canada
143
507
Australia 166
776
Italy
406
278
USSR
241
268
Singapore 395
164
France
284
339
Source: China Trade and Economic Newsletter.
The comparison with W. Germany is striking: without any particular expertise of special relationship, they out-perform Britain in exports threefold. Even Rumania does better. It doesn't seem that British retention of HK yields any particular advantage to its share of the China trade, and it may be that it inhibits it.
3.