SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
CITY OFFICE
112 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET LONDON EC4P 4BS TELEPHONE: 01-236 892 6901
7
March 31, 1982
The Prime Minister,
The Rt. Hon. Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, M.P.,
10 Downing Street,
LONDON SW1
Dear Prime Minister,
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I have just returned from Hong Kong where your picture, alongside Y.K. Pao, was very prominently displayed I enclose a copy from one of the Chinese papers and I cannot tell you how many times it was used over the period of a week. I am taking the liberty of writing to you because among the various businessmen I met in Hong Kong was C.Y. Tung who, as you know, is the second biggest ship-owner in the world after Y.K. Pao. C.Y. is the man who bought the old Queen Elizabeth and is still heartbroken at her loss - tears were actually running down his face as he told me about her.
He is very pro-British, now owns Furness Withy and is keen to place orders in the U.K.
However, in the very delicate but deadly game of "face" that the big Chinese businessmen play, C.Y. is feeling left out. He showed me a letter he'd had from you in 1976 concerning the christening ceremony of a container ship in Sasebo and he seemed genuinely delighted that you had written to him at all even though you were not in a position to accept his invitation. But it does occur to me that if your visit to Peking in September takes in Hong Kong, even a few minutes with C.Y., giving him the "face" he wants, could well be amply rewarded in terms of future ship-building orders.
Mr. Tung is desperately anxious for you to watch his thirty-five minute film of the Queen Elizabeth. It is not dramatically interesting, and rather sad at the end, but he is unbelievably pleased with it. This, I suspect, might be the equivalent in his terms of launching a ship for Y.K.
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