TNAG-1354-FCO40-1795-Constitutional-development-in-Hong-Kong-1985 — Page 97

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foreign exchange earnings acquired in or

through Hong

Kong, the easy availability of technical expertise and

venture capital in and

convenience of Hong Kong as a point of entry and exit

and as an entrepot. But believe that the importance

of these three classic reasons will tend to diminish

over time if the expected results from China's

modernisation programmes under the open door policy

really begin to come on stream.

through Hong Kong, and the

27.

for I do not believe

Yet I do not believe that the value of Hong

Kong as a capitalist enclave inside the Socialist

Motherland will then wither away, for I do not

that Hong Kong will cease to be a viable and productive

asset. Whilst the manufacturing sector has remained the

base of the economy

the economy and the source of livelihood for

over one-third of the labour force, Hong Kong has

rapidly emerged, since the middle of the 1970s, as an

international commercial, mercantile and financial

centre in its own right. It is already the largest such

centre in the Far East and is said to rank third in the

world league after London and New York. Be that as it

may, the City of Hong Kong provides and markets,

off-shore as well as on-shore, a wide range of services

independent of visible trade transactions and see no

obvious competitor to Hong Kong for the role of the

regional capital city in and for the Far East. Yet the

economies of this developing region need

region need a focus and a

centre where there is a concentration of the

the complex

services required for operating in the world economy.