CONFIDENTIAL
5.
Foreign investment has played a fairly small part in
Hong Kong's rapid development. Only the electronics
industry has been mainly financed by foreign capital.
The USA is the largest investor, with Japan second.
UK investment interest in manufacturing industries is
relatively small, but it is considerable in the service
industries. It has been estimated that our direct
investment is some £40 million with as much again in
the form of portfolio investment, and our earnings of
profits and dividends from Hong Kong could be of the
order of £10 million per annum.
6.
It is difficult to assess the importance of invisibles,
since Hong Kong does not appear to publish balance of
payments figures. Tourism has increased rapidly in
recent years and Hong Kong's earnings from tourism of
£124 million in 1969 by itself more than offset her
trade deficit, though this is not large in relation to
her total imports of over £1000 million. There are 29,000
Hong Kong seamen (2 per cent of the working population),
and there must be considerable earnings from banking,
insurance and other similar commercial services.
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7.
It has been estimated that Hong Kong's Gross National
Product has grown from £650 million to £1000 million
between 1966 and 1969 and her figure of/£275 per capita
G.N.P. is towards the upper end of the developing
countries and is around three times as much as that of
Taiwan and South Korea. Wages have been rising at about
8 per cent per annum since the early 1960s and this rate
has increased recently.
Hong Kong wages are second only
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