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foreign exchange earnings acquired in or
through Hong
Kong, the easy availability of technical expertise and
venture capital in and
convenience of Hong Kong as a point of entry and exit
and as an entrepot. But believe that the importance
of these three classic reasons will tend to diminish
over time if the expected results from China's
modernisation programmes under the open door policy
really begin to come on stream.
through Hong Kong, and the
27.
for I do not believe
Yet I do not believe that the value of Hong
Kong as a capitalist enclave inside the Socialist
Motherland will then wither away, for I do not
that Hong Kong will cease to be a viable and productive
asset. Whilst the manufacturing sector has remained the
base of the economy
the economy and the source of livelihood for
over one-third of the labour force, Hong Kong has
rapidly emerged, since the middle of the 1970s, as an
international commercial, mercantile and financial
centre in its own right. It is already the largest such
centre in the Far East and is said to rank third in the
world league after London and New York. Be that as it
may, the City of Hong Kong provides and markets,
off-shore as well as on-shore, a wide range of services
independent of visible trade transactions and see no
obvious competitor to Hong Kong for the role of the
regional capital city in and for the Far East. Yet the
economies of this developing region need
region need a focus and a
centre where there is a concentration of the
the complex
services required for operating in the world economy.