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boat people without slowing things down very considerably. The junks would have to be herded together in special anchorages to await their. turn for immigration inspection each time they planned to make one of their 140,000 annual journeys. Even if the masters consented to submit, it is doubtful if they could afford to: they have to catch the winds and the tides which are proverbially not subject to immigration control. of course some of them would not submit: some of them would transfer their operations to the free port of Macao.

12.

But

Already the patience of the master is being tried high. For customs and registration reasons a junk setting sail from Hong Kong is currently required to provide itself with no less than twelve documents before it can get clearance. Our experts think that twelve is as many as the master, or his trade, can stand. If to the list were added the necessity for personal identification papers for himself and all his crew, and their subsequent inspec- tion whenever the junk moved anywhere, the master would be inclined to regard the result as altogether too much of a good thing. If that happened and the master began to transfer to Macau, the movement of goods through our entrepot would inevitably slow down and some part of it (depending upon the numbers of junks which moved away) would cease.

13.

The fishing fleet which still less than the trading fleet can afford delay either going out or coming home must also gravitate to Macau under immigration restrictions. If it did, it would be serious. We would lose the one thing we produce in quantity from our own resources and we would have to buy our fish back from Macau; and incidentally lose a valuable export. (Last year we caught $20,000,000 worth of fish, of which we exported a quarter).

14.

It is difficult to see why immigration control would not have a profoundly discouraging effect on the inflow of Chinese remittances from abroad upon the continuation of which much in our economic life depends. For more than two generations now, Overscas Chinese have made a practice of sending money back through Hong Kong to their families and connections in China. These remittances are not used for the maintenance of their families but to finance trade in which the family is interested. Because Hong Kong is the principal trading centre of the region, the remittancos are banked here. But if the Colony lost its importance as a trading centre or if those concerned could not pass in or out at will, with no questions asked, the remittances would be banked elsewhere and Macau provides an all too convenient alternative. As things are, Hong Kong benefits from this enormous influx of money, practically the whole of which is used to finance trade.

15.

The amounts involved are very large. To take one category alone: remittances from hard currency countries (predominantly America) last year financed the $100,000,000 debit balance of Hong Kong's import and export trade with the dollar area. If remittances cease to come, from this one source alone we reduce our trade directly by $100,000,000. But it does not stop there: the probable indirect loss is much more serious. The total of the remittances from which the $100,000,000 mentioned above came has another trading function of much value. It acts as the nest egg to finance seasonal imports from hard currency areas. This stimulates exports to the same areas which in turn finance fresh imports as it is true to say that trade with hard currency areas will always follow these remittances. The expert calculation of this amount of trade with hard currency areas which would eventually be lost if remittances ceased to come to Hong Kong is $600,000,000 annually. Adding the $100,000,000 direct loss mentioned earlier, the total probable loss comes out at $700,000,000 a year from hard currency areas alone. That is a loss of a fraction under 20% of our total trade