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21. Four trade-related missions led by Cabinet Ministers visited China. Lord Young came here in February and December; Mr Ridley in September; and Mr Jopling in November. The format of associating a group of senior
businessmen with a Minister during quite a long visit worked well; and I am strongly in favour of its continued
use.
22.
Doing business in China remains difficult. So does
investment in China. There are still only about a dozen Sino-British joint ventures and most of these have generated problems. I would certainly not advise British companies to
rush to invest in China. Many, especially among the newcomers would be wise to concentrate for the time being on simpler forms of activity, including technology transfer and technical training. On joint ventures, I suspect that the looser form (the contractual joint venture) is less likely to give trouble than the stricter form (the equity joint venture).
23. Cultural, educational and technological exchanges (many under our Technical Cooperation programme) developed well. There are now about 2000 Chinese students, engineers and technicians, in the United Kingdom. There are about 150 British teachers of English in China and about 110 students. Towards the end of the year, Sir Y K Pao proposed that the British Government, the Chinese Government and he himself
should contribute a total of $50 million to a fund for the
education of Chinese students in the United Kingdom over a period of ten years. Both the British and the Chinese Governments have welcomed his scheme in principle. When launched, the numbers of Chinese students in the United Kingdom will probably exceed the numbers in France and Germany, for the first time in recent years.
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