XN000022-1984-01-12 — Page 16

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very grateful for the opportunity to address this gathering today. From my own eight years in the United States, four of them in New York and four in Washington, I am conscious of the importance and influence of the Council on Foreign Relations.

side many of you will know Hong Kong, some well and most of you will at least have visited it. There could be no better basis for an

oooasion of this kind.

On your

Over the past eighteen months you have probably read and heard more about Hong Kong than at any previous time in its history. Almost overight the future of the territory has become an intemational topic. It is not surprising that the Hong Kong press should be fixed on this issue but the interest has spread far more widely to the informed international press; and even in provincial European and Australian newspapers speculating, often fancifully, about our future has become a new pastime. Fame has indeed been thrust upon us.

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Some of that comment gives the impression that Hong Kong is a star about to fall. One U.S. report which I recently read started with the words "The fall of Hong Kong seems to have begun." There is

no lack of Jeremiahs predicting our demise. I hope to convince you today that while we have our difficulties and there is understandable

anxiety in Hong Kong about the future, Hong Kong is very much a going concern and there is no reason why it should not remain so.

But first to our problems. After a decade of expansion punctuated by a period of recession in 1975/76, 1982 was a difficult

year. The reasons were many. There is no place in the world more exposed to world trade trends - for trade is equivalent to 147% of our

gross domestic product and it was in 1982 that the effects of the

world recession began to show. The growth in our exports declined from 13 per cent per annum to minus 2 per cent.

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At the same time the effects of the substantial fall in

property prices became apparent. There are those who will tell you

that the ocllapse of those prices began in the autumn of 1982 with the

commencement of the talks in Peking. It did not.

/The fall