CO537-4999 — Page 247

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express would then take eight hours instead of four. travelling trader would find it cheaper and quicker to operate into Macau by junk, more particularly when the Chinese felt themselves compelled as they would, on grounds of prestige and in reprisal, to enforce reciprocal control on passengers from Hong Kong into China. The travelling trader would not only sit in the train four hours at the frontier before he could enter Hong Kong but he would have to sit another four (and probably many more) at the frontier before the Chinese allowed him to leave it again. In the end, the answer would be that he would shift his operation to Macau.

8.

On the land frontier the effect of control would be somewhat different. The people who cross and re-cross our land borders freely bring in rice, meat, vegetables and firewood. All these we need and want; and the nearer an emergency approached, the greater would be our want and our need. This traffic or some of it such as rice is illegal from the Chinese end. We condone it because we need the produce these law breakers bring. We could not do this if immigration control brought the traffic right under our noses, There is a world of difference between allowing something which you never officially see and something which is carried through an official immigration control post. Rice, meat, vegetables and firewood are essential imports of which the bearers must be welcomed and encouraged. Immigration control does the reverse.

9.

Moreover, all these gentlemen who slip back and forth over our land frontier have a marked reluctance to carrying identifying tickets. The essence of their business is to be unidentifiable. They smuggle a good deal: they bring in produce and they take back piece goods. Both activities suit us very well: many a consignment of foreign imports would moulder in our godowns but for this trade across the border. We do not know its dimensions and we have taken very good care not to find out. It appears in no trade returns and to the Chinese and to the world we have minimised its extent for obvious reasons of policy: but those best qualified to judge guess that it is considerable. Immigration control would not completely kill this trade, for Macau is not an immediately possible alternative market for much of the produce which is brought in: but control on the border would discourage it. Some of it would certainly cease altogether and the remainder would be slowed up. Moreover, we would have, as always, to reckon with the reciprocal control likely to be enforced by the Chinese in reprisal. This would make serious inroads into the remaining volume of our unackowledged export trade to China via the land frontier.

10.

So much for trade on the railway and by foot across the border. Now for the little ships, so necessary a part of trade by the splintor method. There are 1,000 licensed junks, 2,000 fishing junks, and 12,000 small boats and fishing vessels. The licensed junks alone carry 500,000 tons of cargo annually, which is 15% of all cargo handled by the port. As has been noted in para. 4, these little ships are constantly on the move from their base in Hong Kong to the West River Delta and to points on the coast between Swatow and Kwongchowwan: they make in all 140,000 movements each your collecting or distributing the splinters of the big-ship consignments of their home ports.

11.

One great asset of those small craft is their mobility: at short notice they load and distribute whatever is offering. This is essential to speed of movement which induces cargo to come through Hong Kong. Now the average junk carries up to 30 persons The necessity to identify and check each of these persons even to pretend to do so every time the junk moved would materially hamper its mobility. It is idle touppose that 6,000,

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