Mr Burns
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FROM: A D Harris
DATE : 16 December 1991
CC : Miss Spencer
Mr Davies FED
HKD
Mr Ricketts
Mr Colvin SEAD
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ch 13/1
HONG KONG : FUTURE BRITISH CONSULTATE-GENERAL : INFORMATION SERVICES
1. I am sorry that I have not replied earlier to your minute of 15 November which was held up in my Department. I agree that the
information establishment in the draft schedule of requirements does
look a bit thin. I should have thought that we would want to exploit the opportunity to establish a shop window for China or at least the southern part of the country and that this would call for a reasonably strong information presence, with at least one fulltime
UK-based Information Officer.
2. I am less sure of the case for giving the Consulate-General a wider regional information role. I assume that you have in mind a regional information distribution centre rather on the lines of a
scaled down BIS New York. I wonder however whether this would be
appropriate given the degree of diversity among countries in the Far East and the need for speedy communications. Information Department
are not keen to introduce an intermediary tier between themselves
and Posts.
3.
There might be a case for producing economic and commercial publications (with a regional bias) in Hong Kong, but Singapore
already produce a very successful self-financing trade magazine
(Triple I) which is distributed throughout South-East Asia and Hong
Kong. Alternatively Hong Kong might well be able to produce commercial publicity material which would be useful to Peking and
Shanghai.