CONFIDENTIAL
HICK 040/1
1220A
DESSERT MO
Mr Clift
Mr Daviess
1.
I have taken
/ you have our
Fas/t
photo capoy. I will let photocopy thought's 25th
Sir John Keswick called on me yesterday for a general chat in order to give his impressions of his recent visit to China. Nothing very remarkable emerged but he was impressed by how short the Chinese are of money, ie capital for all the invest- ment projects. He had been giving advice recently to the Mayor of Shanghai that China should develop power, communications and municipal requirements in that order (the Mayor of Shanghai had been complaining that the Yangtze was heavily polluted but they simply did not have enough cash to deal with it).
2. There is a connection between the points Sir John made and the attached personal paper of his entitled ''Hong Kong and China''. He gave it to me on a personal basis and asked if he could have it back. You will see that it is an elaborate scheme of sharing out control of Hong Kong with the World Bank (or ADB) under UN guarantee for one hundred years!
3.
There are a number of perfectly obvious flaws to the scheme not least the likely unwillingness of the Chinese ever to contemplate something which would be many times worse than the international concessions in Shanghai of the old days.
4.
Perhaps you would care to keep a photocopy and return to me with a few comments which I could embody in a note of thanks when I return the paper to Sir John Keswick.
27 October 1981
Arstmald
A E Donald
At curious
idea. It does not
seem
to have been
very
the orangely thought through
CONFIDENTIAL
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