CONFIDENTIAL
28. There is one other area in which we are already working to ensure that Hong Kong in 1997 hall is a territory well able to defend its own interests. That is constitutional development. Here have to tread warily. At least some Chinese, I am sure, suspect that our aim is to leave behind a quasi-independent political entity, fashioned to our own design. In handling this question. I believe that a firm but cooperative attitude will produce the best results.
29.
The Hong Kong we took over in 1842 was a barren and unhealthy island. Some people took a pessimistic view about its future. In "Three Years Wanderings in China", published in 1847, Robert Fortune, the botanist, wrote:
"In 1843, when I first visited the island, it was in a lamentable condition. A place called the 'West Point'... proved fatal to the greater part of a detachment of our troops quartered there. The mortality was such that Lord Saltoun, then commander-in-chief, was obliged to remove the wretched remnant ... Viewed as a place of trade, I fear Hong Kong will be a failure.”
Today, Hong Kong (with a land area more than ten times greater than it had in 1842) has a population of 5.3 million, a GDP of more than $20 billion and exports worth about the same amount only a little short of the value of China's exports. It is a busy, prosperous and invigorating place. My own belief is that it can look forward to a future which, if by no means risk-free, is brighter than it has often seemed to have in the past (during the Second World War, for example, and during the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution) and a good deal brighter than it could have hoped to have under any earlier Chinese Government, Imperial, Nationalist, or Communist.
30. I am sending copies of this despatch to the Governor of Hong Kong, to Her Majesty's Ambassador at Washington and Tokyo and to the United Kingdom Permanent Representative on the North Atlantic Council.
CONFIDENTIAL
I am, Sir,
Yours faithfully,
RICHARD EVANS
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