TNAG-0802-FCO40-1006-Immigration-from-China-to-Hong-Kong-1978 — Page 134

CONFIDENTIAL

4. More to the point, it is surely a great over-simplification simply to see the problem in terms of balancing emigration and immigration. For a real understanding, one needs to have an analysis of the sort of people who are coming (eg are they already educated and skilled, and economically active, and therefore likely to contribute more to the economy than they take out of it in terms of social benefits and demands on housing, education etc), and one needs also to fit the figures into the overall demographic pattern, including forward projections. Although the numbers arriving in a particular year may pose temporary problems, over a longer time scale it might be perfectly feasible to fit them in.

5. Also, it is surely worth exploring a solution to the problem based not on damping down immigration but on off-setting it by a stepped-up movement the other way. The cynicism in paragraph 9 of Fir Orr's letter is surely misplaced. Without wishing to be too starry-eyed, it does seem reasonable to expect that if things go on the way they seem to be going in China, there may well be more people who decide that China has enough to offer to attract them back from Hong Kong. It would be in everybody's interest to consider whether some form of incentive could be devised to give impetus to such a movement, for example by allowing people to return to China with a reasonable part of the material goods which they may have earned in Hong Kong (I do not know off-hand to what extent this may already be possible). This would surely be a more constructive approach to the problem than the present idea of simply trying to limit numbers: this leads to the infinitely depressing situation described in the "Traveller's Tale" at Annex I, where hapless individuals are made to put up with quite unnecessary hardship and inconvenience simply in order to satisfy a bureacratic desire to make the statistics look better. We seem to be in danger of forgetting that immigrants are human beings.

6. Perhaps this is something that could be discussed with Dr Wilson when he calls next week?

7 September 1978

Mr Quantrill

W.E. Chantell

WE Quantrill

Hong Kong & General Department

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