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You may well ask "but will it continue?" "Is it a sufficiently
long-term market to be worth cultivating?"
My unequivocal answer is "yes". I have been involved in Sino-
British relations for thirty years and they have never been better. Practical
co-operation over Hong Kong is excellent, and Chinese trade with and in Hong
Kong is important. The community of Hong Kong is an enviably stable one
politically, it is happily free from labour difficulties, and the adaptability,
vigour and inventiveness of its work-force and management alike are proverbial.
Increasingly capital intensive developments of industry and communications and
increasing sophistication in banking, commerce and tourism, require large
numbers of technicians, technologists and professionals of virtually all
disciplines, but Hong Kong's educational system can supply them.
Hong Kong is only vulnerable in that it is so unusually dependent
for its prosperity on demand and economic activity in areas beyond its control
for instance in North America and Europe. So long as a modest growth in
the economies of these areas can be maintained Hong Kong should prosper.
A U.K. minister once said to me that the Hong Kong economy was so flexible
and quick that a puff of demand anywhere would fill Hong Kong's sails. There
is of course the threat of protectionisn. About this we have no illusions.
If carried to excess it could kill Hong Kong and the developing economies
as equally it could kill the slow recovery of the developed countries from
recession. But I am confident that this will not happen, that wiser counsels
will prevail, that recession in the world will gradually lift, and with it
the political pressures for protection that high levels of unemployment have
generated,
/ Hong Kong is
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