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10. The re-opening of the Chinese economy to the
outside world - a policy which Chinese leaders are
committed to maintain - has had dramatic consequences for those living on both sides of the border. The position
a decade ago was an unnatural one. (It is worth
remembering that only just over 10 years ago you had to
walk across the bridge at Lo Wu if you were going by
train from Kowloon to Guangzhou: there was no direct
link.) It is now much more natural, with each community
able to make better use of its own advantages and special
characteristics.
11. Few events better symbolise this new relationship than the launch 10 days ago of AsiaSat. Four years of co-operation between business interests in Hong Kong,
China, the United Kingdom and the United States,
culminated, on 7 April, in a resoundingly successful
launch.
12. Meanwhile, other local entrepreneurs have been
quick to seize the opportunity presented by the possibility of investing in Guangdong and elsewhere in China. About 70% of Guangdong's investment is from Hong Kong, and up to 2 million people there more than double our own industrial workforce now work in the industries financed by this investment. This growing economic
relationship with China is of great value to us and, I
believe, to China as well.
13. The opening up of China and the development of manufacturing for export there has put added pressure on our own manufacturers to go further up-market and into
new high-tech industrial processes.
At the same time
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