Within this same context there are good opportunities developing for our service industries which need further encouragement and for those who are sufficiently far-sighted, excellent opportunities for local investment. ICI is our finest example of this in Taiwan.
Taiwan's own dealings with mainland China have considerably improved recently and we must take every opportunity to develop our own contacts with officials and business in Taiwan, as do our continental neighbours, without being too afraid of what Beijing may think. Our current exports to Taiwan are running at the same level as those to mainland China and all for good hard cash.
David Pointon is doing an outstanding job, helped by the UK expatriate community. I am extremely grateful to him, his wife and his very small staff, for looking after us extremely well and I am delighted with the progress that the ATTC office has been able to make.
Korea
This was my second visit to Korea having been there some 2 years ago, and I was amazed by the construction which had gone on in that period and the amount of money being spent on development in Seoul. There are economic problems at the present time with inflation at about 10% and problems of unrealistic wage demands and student riots. There is currently a drive in Korea to increase their exports which have fallen back as a result of these problems and a campaign which discourages expenditure on what they consider to be luxury imports but which we would call quality imports.
As a country dealing with international trade they are still back where Japan was 4 or 5 years ago and we need to keep pressure on them for more liberalising actions, especially in intellectual property, in invisibles and in high profile whisky. They simply do not seem to recognise that some of their illiberal actions and failure to deliver on what appears to be promised, creates a feeling in British and no doubt other countries business that this is a place which is too difficult to be worth bothering about.
This would be a serious and devastating mistake for British industry. There are 40 million people there now which could increase by a further 20 million if there is a rapprochement between north and south and that same rapprochement would give South Korea access to many raw materials. It would, of course, also give rise to the same sort of problems that there are between West and East Germany. Nevertheless, it is a country of very hard work, enormous potential and great drive. As a brief visitor, I would say that the people are delightful to meet, very happy to get on with in discussion and in casual meetings, but as hard as nails.
The gist of
The detail of my discussions was well covered in the Ambassador's report to COMED, which is available. my argument with Ministers etc was that hopes of
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