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HK Prospects Institute: The Standard reported on Saturday that HK Prospects Institute, a 'think-tank' addressing the 1997 issue, was calling on the British and Chinese governments to jointly conduct a comprehensive opinion poll on the future of HK. The Institute suggested the two governments should then work out a solution for HK's future based on the results of the opinion poll. It would write to the Governor in a few days asking him to make the suggestion to the British and Chinese governments. The letter would say the HK Government should take steps to influence the Sino-British negotiations in such a way that a preliminary agreement was reached as soon as possible, to the effect that a joint effort be made to conduct a formal, comprehensive survey of public opinion in HK. It would also state that those who lived in HK should be entitled to decide, in principle, on their own eventual status and future. The Institute's secretary, Mr. William Hsu, said what was important for the time being was to get both the British and Chinese governments to agree to conduct such a poll, but he emphasised that the Institute was not calling for a referendum.
Trafalgar Housing: A report in the Asian Wall Street Journal of 28 April said. most ailing real estate developers longed for Britain and China to settle their differences over HK so that buyers would return to the depressed property market, but Trafalgar Housing didn't mind if the two governments kept on arguing. HK-based Trafalgar and its privately held parent, Central Enterprises Ltd., could not pay their debts totalling $1.35 billion. A document circulating among their lenders said the companies' chances of survival rested with a housing complex that depended on political problems here to boost sales. To attract HK buyers to the Taipa complex, being built in Macau, Trafalgar was promising to help them become Portuguese residents; and the more worried HK's citizens became about who would rule the colony, the better the sales prospects. "Indeed, it can be argued that any downturn in the HK property market would assist in the recovery of the group, since the Taipa project is believed to appeal mainly to those who wish to secure alternative residence in the event of a change of government," the companies' financial advisers, Samuel Montagu, said in the document. The bulk of the document consisted of information on the Taipa project, and Montagu's stressed that the future prosperity of Trafalgar depended almost entirely on the success of its Taipa sales programme.
Ta Kung Pao Weekly Supplement: The Supplement for 28 April
4 May had an
article by Lee Tsung-ying about Henry Litton's recent speech which said the big IF raised by Mr. Litton was actually the question of confidence. Would the Chinese leadership abide by their promises? Certainly, many of them would not be around by 1997. Then, would their successors abide by such promises? These were legitimate concerns which could not be removed overnight. People often asked how, in view of the drastic changes that had actually taken place in China in the past 30 years, one could be sure that the present policies would not be pushed aside by some entirely different policies? This was a nagging question, but Mr. Lee believed that, if one took a hard look at the so-called changes that had taken place, one would find that, ever since the 50s, the swings had been one-directional, with every mass campaign initiated from the top pushing the nation further to the Left. The only interval was the three years of recovery which gave the nation a breathing-space, but even then the prevailing Leftism hardly came under any criticism. He said after all these years
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