古港總督府
нак
10.
for draft reply pse
GOVERNMENT HOL'SE
HONG KONG
3
515
22 April 1983
Paid trim times.
I understand that sometime during March Der Spiegle devoted two large articles to Hong Kong. From the summary I have seen this was misleading, out of date, ill informed and generally a poor piece of journalism. The picture does not fit the world's third financial centre, fourth biggest container port, largest exporter of high quality garments and watches in the world, with an unemployment rate of less than 5%, where public housing has been provided for over two million at low rents, and which is in no way on its "financial uppers" as the article suggests.
We shall be pursuing separately through our Brussels Office what response we should make to this article: our image in Germany is important to us since the Federal Republic is one of our better markets and there is a strong German business community here. The purpose of this letter is to ask that if your Information Section get any wind of similar articles being produced by leading German newspapers or news magazines in the future it would be very helpful if they could alert our Brussels Office so that they can consider what briefing they could offer. Just to convince you that we have a story to tell I enclose for the Embassy reference library a copy of "Hong Kong 1983". You will not have time to read it but even the pictures may convince you that rumours of our demise are entirely premature.
Sir J. Taylor KCMG
Ambassador
British Embassy
Bonn