Report No... HK.113....
Continuation No...........2..........
devaluation could have given them a most popular grievance. In this 50 lampoon, Britain, the Imperialist assassin, is shown slinking off with the loot, and the caption tells the Chinese that the thieving character of the British will never change. By devaluation they've stolen two hundred and ten million dollars, from the people of Hong Kong, it says. Fortunately, after initial devaluation, the Colony was able to revalue its dollar to within 5% of its old worth and a drastic rise in prices has been prevented. But it's towards sensitive areas like this, to the sweat shops of this city, where neither wages nor working con- ditions are what they should be, that the communists may turn their attention. Remember that it was in an artificial flower factory like this one that the trouble started last May. It began when Union leaders launched a calculated campaign of violence in reprisal for a management lock-out and the same sort of thing could easily happen again.
The Government says that it's aware that in the over- crowded, ill-ventilated workshops, labour management relations are in a bad way. But it's under attack for doing little or nothing to improve the situation.
As
the communists may have discovered, Hong Kong is a place more concerned with economic realities, with money, than with social and political theory. I discussed its problems with the Editor of the "Far Eastern Economic Review", Mr.
Derek Davies.
Mr. Davies, there seems to be a certain amount of self- congratulation in official circles that the Colony's weathered the storm in the past year. this euphoria's justified?
Do you feel that
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