TNAG-2032-FCO40-2895-Visit-by-Douglas-Hurd--Secretary-of-State-for-Foreign-and-Co-1990 — Page 66

FOREIGN SUC:

8PERCH

HONG KONG GUNERAL CHAMBER OF COMMARCE 15 JANUARY 1990

3-

POREIGN SECRETARY (COMTD);

Hong Kong matters to Britain, it matters to me personally.

We have no intention of being negative or defensive about Hong Hong,

either when we are here or when we are speaking in Parliament in

Vestminster or when we are in discussion with the Chinese

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That is

Authorities. You are entitled to an active and intelligent British

policy working on behalf of liong Kong and that is what you will get

for many reasons, but primarily because what you have created here

out of barren rock and 150 years of bistory is unique and worth

1 had read preserving.

but it is not the same thing and was

amazed to see yesterday flying over or driving through the New

Territory the scope, the imaginativeness of the development there.

I was equally impressed by all those thousands of people joining

yesterday morning in the Charity Walk for Community Chest.

an event which would surprise those people and they are not faw,

an afraid in the outside world whose only knowledge of Hong Kong

is a crude and iguorant caricature and I was deeply impressed this

Dorning when I had a presentation of the plans for the future of the

new airport, of the new container port, of all the communications

which are planned to go with those two developments, produced before

me in a very matter of fact tone as if this was some little bypass

round a town or something which was perfectly normal and feasible

The scale of that, and to be expected in a place like Hong Kong.

the imaginativeness, the ambition of that was something which must

have struck, I think, anybody who listened to it and was not

familiar with it.

I