XN000022-1980-10-17 — Page 10

4

there have also been successes in the fields of which we do not

so often talk. Our successes over these years against the traditional

evils of corruption, drugs and crime have been extremely significant,

and even spectacular. To my mind the most exciting aspect of

progress in these difficult fields has been not only due to the

efficiency of the law enforcement agencies concerned, but the

cooperation of the population and the way it has organised itself

to help. In the last year, and you may find this hard to believe,

12 per cent of total arrests were made by private citizens.

We have also had our problems. Most of our major

markets are bedevilled by inflation and unemployment that have

not yet shaken free from the dramatic change in oil pricco, with

inevitable pressure for control of imports. No doubt there is a

time and place for protection in an adjusting economy, but all I

would say on this subject which means so much to us in Hong Kong

tonight, is that I have much sympathy with developed countries who

find their industries undercut by imports from those developing

countries which by one device or another protect their own markets

from the products of the countries they sell to. There is rough

justice about retaliation.

But by the same token I resent intensely

when this understandably political reflex for protection is

visited on Hong Kong, where all are free to sell, and is the only

market in the Far East which is entirely free without discrimination

or control.

/For the

Page 10Page 11