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SECRET.
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+ 4 bennes.
25
Hong Kong.
dby
pampered for Binar
P
Factual Background.
1. Hong Kong at the time of its cession to Great Britain
by the Treaty of Nanking a hundred years ago, was a desolate
island with no inhabitants except a few groups of fishermen.
It has grown under the direction of the British Government
to be one of the great sea ports of the world based upon
British law and order and on the enterprise of all peoples
and nations alike.
2.
The British policy has been and will continue to be that
Hong Kong should be a free port for the services of all
trade and commerce in the Far East. Hong Kong is the depôt
for an incessant flow of people and goods in and out of
China. Of the population of nearly a million residents which
it had attained, all had freely come in of their own choice
or were the children of immigrants who had done so.
If any
prefer to live under Chinese rule there is no let or hindrance
to their moving over the border for the purpose.
3. It was a centre of settled and orderly conditions for
the benefit of all countries having relations with China
throughout the prolonged era of revolutionary disturbance in
South China.
4. When the Japanese overran Shanghai and South China the
Colony was for 3 years up to December 1941 able to serve as
a channel of supplies to China and a refuge for hundreds of
thousands of displaced and largely destitute Chinese people,
and for numbers of foreign nationals in China.
+
5. /
The following is an extract from the Colonial Office list: "Hong Kong is a free port except for an import tariff on all intoxicating liquors, on spirituous liquors containing more than 2% of pure alcohol by weight, on tobacco, and on hydro-carbon oils (including motor spirit), and on motor vehicles not of British Empire origin. There is no export tariff."
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