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I put the brief facts in a note which I gave to John Gummer before he left (copy enclosed). As I told him, my concern is not just that the view he passed on to me is factually inaccurate. Equally important is the fact that the sort of poison being fed to him can do greater damage than the feeders probably realise. Hong Kong is a village on matters like this. Spreading false stories that British firms are being elbowed out to the advantage of the Americans, creates the impression that British firms are being negative about their own prospects or, even worse, are trying to set the scene for exerting undue political influence in their own cause. This is exactly the wrong approach. Good British firms are perfectly capable of competing, and doing well, by their own efforts and without artificial aids.
One other minor point came up in my conversation with the Minister. He said that our licensing of wine and spirit merchants discriminated against importers of eg Scotch whisky, and asked if this could be looked into both for its own sake and because China kept a watch on such matters and might use Hong Kong as a precedent. I checked and found that a previous system, which did have some discriminatory elements, was abolished two years ago. On this I also gave the Minister a note before he left (copy attached). His MAFF briefing on this point seems to have been pretty out of date.
I dictated the above over the weekend.
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Coincidentally, the United States Consul-General came to see me today to make representations about a particular consortium, which was using an American bridge construction consultant, being excluded from the Lantau Bridge short list. I told him the list had been carefully considered by the Central Tender Board. had.) The consortium, which included a prominent Hong Kong firm run by Gordon Wu, did not meet the requirements since one of the Japanese partners had dropped out earlier in the year. It would not be right to accede to his request that the matter be reconsidered: it was essential in a project of this size that we should run and be seen to run a fair system which did not bend to pressure.
At the very least this little episode shows how wrong was the story about the system being distorted to give advantage to the Americans.