02/12 '92 17:27
071 957 5710
ROYAL INS INT AF
Rt Hon Christopher Patten
香港總督府
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG
9 November 1992
Z Jail.
Thank you for your letter of 22 October.
I am greatly looking forward to participating in the Tokyo meeting next March. The title you suggest for the Hong Kong topic will do very well. Hong Kong is usually considered either against the background of China or in relation to its western markets, i.e. America and Europe. I think it would be helpful to give more emphasis to our role as a regional entity (in some respects quite a pivotal one). The development of Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), for instance, points to some interesting developments. Among other things it provides an umbrella for useful economic/trade related contacts with Taiwan, another major regional entity with a unique political status. The strong growth in intra-regional trade in recent years (in stark contrast to the weakness of world trade as a whole) also gives cause for thought. No country is more interested in all this than Japan, of course. And perhaps UK Plc ought to be more interested in it than it sometimes
seems.
We had heard about the idea of a conference planned for next year in Hong Kong, but this had come to us in the form of a bilateral UK/Japan gathering. I am frankly much happier if it is now being thought of as three-cornered, given Hong Kong's effectively independent economic and commercial existence. Depending on the dates (and my diary) I would like to lend some appropriate support to the gathering, if it does go ahead.
Am
Governor
The Rt. Hon. David Howell MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A OAA
4
004
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