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were fascinating. I was not there but have had substantially the same account from both John Yeung of Immigration Department and your friend in the Consulate-General, Jean-Paul Dumont. At his own request, Peyrefitte was simply introduced as a French writer and he was given complete freedom to choose whom to approach. The first two people did not wish to speak to him and he accepted this gracefully. The third was a young man who had succeeded in evading arrest on his second attempt, about a year ago. He said that when he had been arrested earlier and returned from Hong Kong he received no punishment in China.. Despite some fairly leading questions, he insisted that his reason for leaving was not that China lacked freedom but that it lacked materials. He had had enough of walking barefoot in wet fields.
5.
The second person interviewed was a young girl who had evaded arrest on her first attempt only two months before the change of policy. She also insisted that she had been attracted by the prospect of a good job and said that she was already earning 50 times more than she had done in China. The reason why she was back at Immigration Department was to apply for a Hong Kong re-entry permit (the document which we provide to non-passport holders for travel to China and Macau). She wanted to go back to visit her relatives and take them presents. Sadly, under our rules, it is only when she has been here a bit longer that she will be able to take the risk of a return, legal, visit.
6.
responses.
Apparently, Peyrefitte was shocked by these When the revised edition of his book appears it will be interesting to see how this chapter comes out. I should be grateful if you could leave a standing order for a copy before you come here.
7.
At the meeting we passed Peyrefitte a copy of the information paper put out last October. We also offered to provide fairly detailed statistics on both illegal and legal immigration over the past decade as well as a more detailed breakdown for recent years by age, sex, occupation, education and place of origin. We talked briefly about the relationship between Hong Kong and China and we shall also provide a short background paper on this. I hope to send these to you in about two weeks for onward transmission.
8.
We also talked briefly about Macau. I have since discovered that I inadvertently misled Peyrefitte in the rough estimate I gave him of tourism to Macau. I should be grateful if you could pass on to him the 1980 statistics: Over 4 million visitors with arrivals from Hong Kong rising by 3.5 per cent over 1979 to 3.4 million and from China by 39 per cent to 0.7 million. The number of 'foreign visitors' (inevitably spending longer in Hong Kong on the way) remains static at 0.6 million.
You might also like to pass on an interesting statistic that I have just discovered. The area of the Macau peninsula has doubled since 1940 from 2.78 sq kilometres to 5.87 sq kilometres
a recult of reclamation. (The corresponding figures for Hong Kong are 390 sq miles 1010 sq kilometres in 1979 and
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