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incumbent must be able to move easily in senior political, commercial and industrial circles in the goldfish bowl atmosphere of Hong Kong where there is little opportunity for the pursuit of any private life.
The Role of the Post
The British Trade Commission has considerably wider responsibilities than would appear from the list of staff published in the DS Overseas Reference List. I enclose the latest edition of our unclassified staff list and I am sure you can expand on the extent of the non-commercial staff for whom we have to provide administrative support and cover. It is perhaps worth pointing out that the new batch of language students alone outnumbers the total UK based staff in BTC Hong Kong proper.
The China Trade Unit
The inspectors will need to look carefully at the line management of the staff added to our ideal establishment when the China Trade Unit was created in 1979. The grading of posts in the unit must take some account of their relationship with the post as a whole. As you are no doubt aware at present two members of the China Trade Unit out- rank my Deputy Trade Commissioner and this could create future problems in the absence of the STC and if the China Trade Unit was not headed by such
a senior First Secretary as Peter Thomson. I should also be grateful if you would ensure that the inspectors are aware of the problems which I outlined in my letter of 16 January to Teddy Youde.
Information
The inspectors should be made aware of the constitutional limits placed on our information work. I shall never cease to believe that the projection of Britain as defined in the appropriate self inspection questionnaire goes by default in this colonial territory because our information effort is restricted to export promotion. Attempts to create some kind of UK information tasking within GIS appear to have run into the sand (see the our enelesed correspondence with David Ford ending with
your letter of 2 April 1980).
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Every effort is made to ensure that the information given herein is accurate, but no legal responsibility is accepted for any errors or omissions in that information and no responsibility is accepted in regard to the standing of any firms, companies or individuals mentioned.