布政司
CONFIDENTAL
香港下亞畢道
* OUR Ref.:
CR 2/2071/78
*** Your Ref.:
Hien 02blin!
17
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
Mr Man's of pe 아
23 June 1982
• Any Morar, tiklar ji.
R. N. Peirce, Esq.,
HM Embassy,
Peking.
Der Bas
Visit by YU Guangyuan, Vice President of the Academy of Social Sciences
- NR
Following Michael Atkinson's letter of 28 May to Robin McLaren, the Chief Secretary agreed to see YU Guangyuan on 16 June. The following account of the conversation may help to show how worthwhile are such calls.
2.
W
YU began by saying that he had last seen Hong Kong in 1936 when he passed through briefly after graduation. Clearly many changes had been made since then. YU's present visit was at the invitation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he gave a lecture on 14 June entitled "Problems on Strategies for China's Social Economic Development" (the full Chinese text of which was carried by Wen Wei Po on 15 June and a synopsis in English by Ta Kung Pao on 17 June - copies enclosed). In answer to questions put by the CS, YU said that China's economic development would continue to be focused in the S.E. part of the country since the enormous cost of providing an adequate infrastructure in difficult terrain. prevented early development of the North and the West.
3.
YU remarked that Hong Kong was a prosperous, free port and therefore played a very useful role in China's modernisation programme. He said that Hong Kong's role as a financial centre should be strengthened.
4.
The CS affirmed Hong Kong's interest in providing assistance for China's modernisation, and said that a sustained growth rate for Hong Kong's economy would secure continued Chinese foreign exchange earnings through the territory. In recent years, a healthy growth rate of some 10% per annum in real terms had been achieved through diversification in the manufacturing sector and a development of the development of the financial and allied services sector. The latter now contributed some 21-22% of GDP. The increased role for the financial services sector however, was not without a cost. It made somewhat volatile (through foreign currency flows) an economy which was already vulnerable to the international markets ,on which Hong Kong's economy depends. Nevertheless, such developments
had sustained Hong Kong's growth rate in the 1970s at about 10%
CONFIDENTIAL
/per annum