MAJOR HONG KONG SHIPOWNERS
At present Hong Kong is a port of registry under the British Flag on exactly the same footing as London or Liverpool. For some years there have been pressures from shipowners to establish a separate Hong Kong register. The underlying motivation is to make it possible to employ either non-British national but British certificated officers or non-British certificated officers on Hong Kong registered ships in order to facilitate the repatria- tion of some of the Hong Kong beneficially owned tonnage to the Hong Kong register. The colony's administration have indicated informally that they do not have the resources to cope with any major expansion of the register.
The attached list gives an approximate breakdown of the number, weight and flag of registry of Hong Kong owned vessels. [Bermuda should be included in the UK figures, because like Hong Kong it is a port on the UK register. Approximately 1 million dwt are registered in the port of Hong Kong]. It shows that not all flagged out tonnage is on open registries although it accounts for by far the largest percentage (c89%).
The following three Hong Kong shipowners account for approximately of the Hong Kong owned or controlled fleet;
(i) Sir Yue Kong Pao CBE
Chairman and owner of World Wide Shipping, the largest private shipp- ing company in the world with extensive bulk interests, particularly in the tanker sector. Pao is also chairman of the influential
independent tanker owners association Intertanko. Day to day manage....... ment of World Wide is now left to a nephew William Lee (Pao has no sons) while Pao plays elder statesman establishing and maintaining links with western world leaders. He also enjoys good relations. with China, where a cousin is Minister for Tourism, and formed a U.S. $50m joint venture covering all aspects of shipping and ship- building with the Chinese last year. The current order is thought
to be on behalf of Chinese interests.
Extract from the
background notes
on
Hong Kong Shipowners