XN000022-1978-04-26 — Page 50

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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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