TNAG-2032-FCO40-2895-Visit-by-Douglas-Hurd--Secretary-of-State-for-Foreign-and-Co-1990 — Page 65

POREIGN SEC:

SPRECH

HONG KONG COMMERCE

PORBIGN SECRETARY (CURTD):

-2-

GENERAL CHAXBER OF

15 JABUARY 1990

since then

-

I have been from time to time though not for 12 years

every time I have been to Hong Kong has been an experience of

pleasure, excitement and interest and this visit is no contrast, no

different.

Then, of course, in the middle '506, Hong Kong was full of

problem: Vâu cxtraordinary onïuoi vi peupie from China; the

problems which that imposed for housing; the problems which it

imposed politically because of extreme Chinese sensitivities about

Taiwan, about the Walled City, about a whole range of mattero which

gave the Governors sleepless nights;

ups and down.

and so it has continued with

In 35 years, much has changed in that time, but the

feel of the place is different and the way in which people talk and

The skyline has changed several times over the

think is different.

last 35 years and Hong Kong has grown obviously physically but also,

ī tùini, us i have said, in the way 10 WD1

1 people think and feel.

In the last ten or twelve weeks tha

I have been Foreign

Secretary, obviously I have bad to spend the British Government

bas bad to spend

―

much time on Hong Kong and so have the other

members of my team and I am thinking in particular of Francis Maude

who was here in November.

That will go on being true and there is

nothing surprising about that.