TNAG-2344-FCO40-3410-Future-of-Hong-Kong-British-Consulate-General-1992 — Page 138

FROM

: A D Harris

HKC 406/1

EGISTRY

02 MAR 16992

173

n

Mr Burns

urns

:

Ma Hague,

absence (if fors). his for action i.d.c

ohr dai.

an

DATE

16 December 1991

18/12

CC : Miss Spencer

Mr Davies FED

Mr Ricketts HKD

по реками тленый, Mr Colvin

18/11

--with

ta?

горком FEDKIMfDepl

HONG KONG FUTURE BRITISH CONSULTATE-GENERAL

Attached

SEAD

INFORMATION SERVICES

to Hiss Spencer?

1. I am sorry that I have not replied earlier to your minute of 15 November which was held up in my Department. I agree that the

information establishment in the draft schedule of requirements does

look a bit thin. I should have thought that we would want to

exploit the opportunity to establish a shop window for China or at

least the southern part of the country and that this would call for

a reasonably strong information presence, with at least one fulltime

UK-based Information Officer.

2.

I am less sure of the case for giving the Consulate-General a

wider regional information role. I assume that you have in mind a

regional information distribution centre rather on the lines of a

scaled down BIS New York. I wonder however whether this would be

appropriate given the degree of diversity among countries in the Far

East and the need for speedy communications. Information Department

are not keen to introduce an intermediary tier between themselves

and Posts.

3.

There might be a case for producing economic and commercial

publications (with a regional bias) in Hong Kong, but Singapore

already produce a very successful self-financing trade magazine

(Triple I) which is distributed throughout South-East Asia and Hong

Kong. Alternatively Hong Kong might well be able to produce

commercial publicity material which would be useful to Peking and

Shanghai.