5. As for the export of arms, he produced a
lengthy confidential despatch from the United
States Consul-eneral at Hong Kong, dated Datobor
9th. According to this despatch, in the four
preceding months about 465,000 rifle and revolver
cartridges and 644 revolvers had been sent from
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the United States to three firms in Hong Kong, namely
the Outdoor Sports Equipment Company, the Ying Tak
Kee and the Hong Kong 3porting Arme Store. The
United Statos exporters had declared all these munitions
to be destined for the llon Kong retail trade: but
statistics supplied confidentially by the Hong Kong
police had revealed that practically all the revolvers
and a great deal more than half of the cartridges had
gone straight on to Canton or Macau.
The Hong Kong market was, the dospatch asserted,
a very limited one. The needs of the Government were
fully met from the United Kingdom. There remained, for
all practical purposes, only the aporting trade; and
it was absurd to suppose that the sportanon of liong Kong
could use even a fraction of the material recently sent
hore from the United States alone. If they did, r.
Green remarked laughing, there would be a deafening
fusillade day and night.
7.
The Hong Kong authorities might, Er. Green
1
proceeded, be technically correct in their assertion
that no war material was "exported" to China from
Hong Kong without the permission of the Kanking Government; Hong Kong without the permission of
but,