HONGKONG
593
}
1
But if you ask whether people in Hongkong feel secure about their long-term future, and that of their children and grand-children, that is a different matter. Ask any bank manager, ask even the government in Hongkong how many top-class young administra- tors, executives or technicians they have been able to recruit-and retain-from the Chinese community in Hongkong. Everybody in Hongkong has a friend or a relative who is actively seeking to emigrate to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.S., Britain, Singapore-in order to make sure that his family have as good a chance as he had.
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}
}
IV
If these are the long-term objectives, what is likely to happen as the deadline of the lease expiry draws nearer? It is not very helpful to speculate about China's attitude as it may evolve in the next 20 years, because that will depend on the nature of internal developments within China. For my purposes in this article I will assume that China will retain its long-term objective of reintegrat- ing Hongkong, but I would like to take the further premise that the Chinese authorities might continue throughout the forthcom- ing 20 years, and even possibly beyond them, to want to maintain the present status quo in Hongkong. This is because the financial advantage is so great: China already receives from Hongkong more than US$22 billion a year, or about two-fifths of its hard currency income from the outside world, and I do not see any pos- possibility on the horizon of that proportion significantly reducing in the years to come. The Chinese are now double-tracking the railway from Canton to the Hongkong border in order to accom- modate a greater traffic' in foodstuffs, live animals and the like. Even the export of oil to Japan and other markets, which some thought might solve all of China's problems, now looks like settling down into a rather modest operation which is helpful, but not transforming China's foreign trade and balance of payments.
As for the British, I would like to take it for granted in this article that they stand ready to surrender Hongkong at any time that China asks for it, provided only that London would seek to 'get the best possible deal in the transition period and afterwards for the present population of Hongkong including its commercial interests. But there is no possibility of British military force being used in Hongkong against China, and this is known by all parties concerned. That is the significance of the observation that is com-
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