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b.
c.
companies like GEC, Metro-Cammell and Dennis. We suggested that the Committee should take every occasion to publicise the opportunity of Hong Kong both in their own constituencies and nationally and that they should distinguish offshore oil and information technology as growing areas where Britain possessed particular competence. We emphasised the efforts which had been made in consumer goods with such missions as John Caines' "Elegance and Excellence" but that more companies should imitate the achievements of Marks & Spencer and Rowntree in selling into Hong Kong.
Hong Kong's fears of creeping protectionism in Britain and the EEC. The session with Bill Dorward naturally concentrated on the issue of textiles and the MFA where the Select Committee took a generally free trade and sympathetic line. Bill Dorward suggested that Britain should press the theme of reciprocity at Brussels but Ian Mikardo argued that the French and Italians would be quite impervious to such an approach.
Unfair competition from Hong Kong. Stan Crowther raised the issue of low wages but Bill Dorward was quick to point out that subsidised rents made the real income of the Hong Kong worker significantly higher. He also pointed to the expense of land in Hong Kong and their distance from their main markets; these were serious dis- advantages which Hong Kong had managed to
overcome.
4. There was also some heated discussion of political issues particularly over dinner. Sir Peter Emery remains convinced that
we should never have raised the lease issue with the Chinese and just allowed "the situation to evolve". The best efforts of Robin McLaren and myself were of no avail in this respect. Another more conventional theme which inevitably surfaced was Ian Mikardo protesting about the lack of representative government in Hong Kong.
I could not resist sitting him opposite Mr Stanley Ho,
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