DJ Hall, Esq
19 July 1993
base of consultancies does give the U. K. an enviable edge in the big project business here, and an edge which should be transferable in many fields into China. For example, the intimate relationship in water and water treatment requirements between Hong Kong and Guangdong should in theory provide a good launching pad for British expertise and British goods into Southern China. This is of course the rationale for the Pearl River Delta Project promoted by the British Council at the February workshop involving Macau, Guangdong and Hong Kong; project which is now being followed up (and on which we in BTC are finding ourselves in a brokerage role between the Director of Environmental Protection and the British Council).
3. Another area where good British practice, honed in Hong Kong, has every chance of making a commercial impact in Southern China is in railways. I was very struck on my introductory call on the Kowloon and Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC) by General Manager Kevin Hyde's assertion that I and my two predecessors had been the only Trade Commissioners/Consuls General ever to call on him. British firms are very well placed with KCRC, but cannot be complacent (light rail vehicles were commissioned not from the U. K. but from Australia and Japan). All in all, however, the very ambitious plans for railway expansion, and again the intimate working relationship with colleagues across the border, give U. K. companies an
I am excellent potential launching pad into Southern China. enclosing with this letter (indeed it is really the only excuse of the letter) a copy of Tony Yu's recent excellent summary of prospects in railway development over coming years. Much of these costly and ambitious projects will run over 1997 and will therefore require Chinese approval almost certainly in the JLG (similarly, of course, the major sewage projects). Given the Chinese propensity to question major capital expenditure during the transition to 1997, one cannot be absolutely confident that all the projects will be realised, and timing will in any case be much less certain than would otherwise be the case. But we must all keep working away.
4. You may wish to make the enclosure more widely available e. g. to the Railway Industries Association, the HKTAC and others.
Cc:
P A McLean, Peking CJ Ham, AUS, FCO
Ray Mingay, Joint Directorate
P J Ricketts, HKD
Gill Fry, FED
Решив
H Ll Davies
atten