TNAG-0037-FCO40-73-Effort-to-improve-relations-with-Hong-Kong-1968 — Page 79

Mr. W.S. Carter

Reference... EAP E/2.

c.c. Mr. W.J. Smith

Mr. Maby

Mr. Hurrell

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In your minute of 21st February about the need to improve relations with Hong Kong you suggested (at paragraph 3(a) of that minute) that a Colombo Plan project might be established there; and you will have had a copy of my

interim minute of 28 February to Mr. Beaty.

2. The possibilities of Colombo Plan participation are I am afraid a little limited. We cannot contribute to the capital cost or the normal recurrent costs of a project, even of a project with a regional use. But the passage you quote from the Governor's letter does not perhaps suggest this, but rather the provision of what is technically called "third country training" the physical facilities and staff to be provided by Hong Kong, the fees and maintenance charges for students not themselves resident in Hong Kong being met by Britain.

3. This is a pattern that was adopted very usefully in Singapore prior to independence. The question has been raised on earlier occasions whether it could not be repeated in Hong Kong, but our understanding has been that there is too much pressure on training places for local people. We have accepted this perhaps too easily in the past.

4. I should perhaps add that we are conducting a review on training policy at the present moment, one aspect of which is the emphasis that should be given to third country training, and the extent to which it should be practised. Hitherto it has been the exception rather than the rule with us, whereas the Americans practice it freely.

5.

At this point it becomes important to decide what are the fields in which Hong Kong could most effectively set up a training centre which could aspire to regional significance. Our thoughts in the accompanying minutes, you will see, have turned to a school of town planning, about which there has been some discussion already. Here I think we must await the report of Professor and Mrs. Glass, who visited Hong Kong early in March and should be back in this country very shortly. Since such a school of planning, if it came to be set up, would appear probably to be a part of the University, it is not entirely out of the question that some of the unexpended C.D. & W. funds that have been allocated to the University can be used to set it up.

6. I think we must now await the consideration of Professor and Mrs. Glass's report, which will no doubt come to you as well as to the Hong Kong Government. We shall be happy to look at it thereafter from the standpoint of the provision of Third country training. It seems to us important that a school of planning should be justified in a context limited to Hong Kong, before one considers it in a wider context. The same I think would be true of any alternative proposal for a regional centre in some other field of study.

XeMantecalli

(D.C. Mandeville)

20 April, 1967.

Code 18-75

P.S. In this repicat Town Planning Edercation in Stong Kong (Aug/Sept $966),

wrote ($37):

1+

Mr. G. G. Pullen

But it will need

"There is no doubt that a regional need for planning education exids

and that Hong Kong could usefully fill this word.

to have shown itsey to be a centre of quality before offering it's courses

to the outside world.

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Centres with a regimal intent have been

an over. Cautions statement.

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but the path is often a Story

from scratch in the past

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