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domestic shipping enterprises in the territory. Government is actively working on a new Hong Kong Register of Shipping to be in place by 1991, and which is expected to attract additional tonnage to the 50 million tons deadweight of ships already owned or managed from Hong Kong.
A consortium including Cable and Wireless, CITIC, and Hutchison Whampoa has announced plans to launch and operate the first domestic Hong Kong telecommunications satellite by April 1990. Hong Kong already has access to major submarine cable links, to Intelsat Lelecommunications satellites, and will join in the proposed "global digital highway" which will ring the globe with optical fibre cables by the end of the 1990's. Hong Kong will likely have a fully digital telephone network well before the USA and other developed countries. In terms of range and relative cost of lelecom services we are already ahead of most other places.
An outward reflection of the increasing internationalisation of business activity in the territory is the rapid growth of new Chambers of Commerce set up in recent years to promote the links between Hong Kong and various of its major trading partners. I need not mention AmCham but, for example, the Australian Chamber now has over 400 members, the Canadian 600, the Swedish more than 100, the British 210. There are also more than 450 members in the Hong Kong-Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Evidence of Hong Kong's importance to the rest of the world can also be found in the extremely high quality of the diplomatic personnel stationed here, who individually and collectively have done and are doing a lot to assist Hong Kong and its concerns around the world.
Hong Kong's contact points with the People's Republic of China are numerous and constantly expanding at all levels. The relationship overall is friendly and positive. The successful conclusion of the Sino-British negotiations on the future of Hong Kong, and China's continuing efforts at modernisation and liberalisation have provided both impetus and opportunity. There is no need to quote you trade or Investment statistics to demonstrate the importance of China to Hong Kong in economic terms: suffice it to say that Hong Kong's ongoing ability to assist China's development will remain its best guarantee for the future, politically, economically, and socially. How to preserve and improve on that ability will be the major test for Hong Kong during the remaining years of the transition period and for the years after 1997. The continued internationalisation of our community will in turn greatly help in, if not ultimately determine, the success of this effort. Hong Kong is in fact already assisting China's own emergence as a major player on the world scene through the facilities it is able to offer the country in
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