CONFIDENTIAL
Trade Policy Department
345
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London S.W.1
Mu
hauth
Dear Peter,
339.
9 December, 1970.
339
Generalised Preferences and Hong Kong
The
Thank you for your letter 6/67 of 27 November. point in your second paragraph is well made and well taken. In fact the Prime Minister is being briefed for his visit to the United States to press the Americans not to be influenced. by Japan's eventual decision as this may largely reflect their fear of Hong Kong as a competition in the U.S. market rather than in their own.
2.
We found the article from the Oriental Economist provided an interesting look at the GPS through Japanese eyes. It seems to suggest (second paragraph of second
50
column on page
that not only has Japan decided on her list of benefi ies but that this list has been made public. We sl
be interested to know if this were either by leaks official or semi-official statements but we
assume from your opening sentence that no list has been made public. We would rather expect the Japenese to keep the details of their list under wraps until nearer their deadline (on which see the 8th paragraph of Lam's minute of 3423 December on the recent OECD Trade Committee meeting)
And the activities of Endo here (following his talks with Kemmis, the record of which you have seen, he has repeated to us his request for a mass of detailed information on our dependent territories; we are compiling this urgently) and remarks by Miyazaki in Paris certainly suggest that the Japanese list is not yet in "final" form.
Yamever
Rae
P. G. A. Wakefield, Esq., British Embassy
TOKYO.
cc:
(R. G. Britten)
HKK6/2
J.A.L. Morgan, Esq., FED, FOO. A.C. Buxton, Esq., UKMis Geneva. A.F. Maddocks, Esq., Hong Kong.
T. Muir, Esq. . OECD, Paris.
D.ll. Hannay, Esq., UKDel EEC, Brussels. B.W. Meynell, Esq., Washington.
CONFIDENTIAL
J.G. Morris, Esq.,
CRE, DTI.
E.O. Laird, Esq.,
Hong Kong Dept., FCO.
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