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香港下亞厘畢道
布政司署
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本署檔號 Our Ref.:
來函檔號 Your Ref.:
R. A. J. Bunten Esq.,
K
HKD,
Mr Marit
9/9
8
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
026/6
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
17 August 1993
R+R
.93
FCO.
LAST PAPER
Да Dow Rod
Group Tours from China
Thank you for your comments, in your letter of 5 August, on the Group Tours Programme and the recent Review Meeting, as reported in my letter of 14 July
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I entirely agree about the desirability of reporting from Southern China. For obvious reasons, there is enormous demand for this within HKG, in addition to the interest for London and Peking. I hope myself to be able before too long to visit some of the places of particular interest, although it is difficult to do this while there are frequent rounds of constitutional talks in Peking.
The decision to hold the recent Review Meeting in Shenzhen did not simply arise from the instinctive puritanism of the Hong Kong Government. The main factor was that it was simply impossible during that period for me to be away from the office for more than a day. We certainly hope to go farther afield for the next Group Tour Review Meeting, and if necessary to take a little longer. But the media, and LegCo, are showing an increasing tendency to accuse Hong Kong public servants of profligacy at official expense, particularly on their travels. So it would be hard to justify protracted excursions on the model of some previous Group Tour meetings unless, in addition to the Review Meeting itself, they also included useful local fact finding.
I am sorry I inadvertently gave the impression that Immigration Department was less than enthusiastic about the Group Tour programme. In fact, as I said in my letter, we all regard this as a success and have been encouraging it. But we do need to keep sight of the way in which it is developing, given the problems which could arise if it were badly managed (e.g. more overstaying, or greater congestion at the border control points, which are already bursting at the seams).
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