TNAG-0938-FCO40-1157-Visit-of-John-Nott--Secretary-of-State-for-Trade--to-Hong-Ko-1980 — Page 203

in manufactures

the population.

you have about 15% of it, and you have twice But a much greater share of our total economic effort finds its way into world trade than yours. For instance about a % of our Gross National Product enters into world export whereas I believe in your case the figure is approximately half

this level.

4

It does seem to me that two nations which are faced with

We need to so many common problems should do more together.

recognise our strengths and respective weaknesses to see how we can help each other. It is not sufficient that we should meet together as Summit partners and should talk out the problems of the world, and then go away to pursue our interests independently. Every politician, and every businessman as well, has his own country and his own business to fight for but in the last resort unless we all fight together for freedom and democracy and for the maintenance of exonomic interdependence in the free world we will not survive together but die together, in a struggle against darker forces than our own.

5 So the question which I wish to pose is this. We are both island people hardly able to feed ourselves and dependent on our skill and wits to make a living; relatively deficient in natural resources (I should perhaps add here that North Sea oil represents approximately 2 per cent of our Gross National Product whereas our trade generally in export markets represents about 30 per cent of our GNP). Where then is the line to be drawn between economic self-interest and beggar-my-neighbour policies and the more important self-interest of using our mutual skills to our joint advantage and to the greater benefit of the

Western world?

*

2