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other idea which is absolutely in line with our commercial jectives here. You will be aware that the Council are making good progress with their proposed Management Training Centre. This will be run as a joint-venture between the founding donors, the academic institutions and the British Council. would offer residential and day/weekend courses to Chinese participants from Hong Kong, South China, and at some stage in the future, Taiwan, giving management and manufacturing technology training to graduates. The Chiang Industrial Charity Foundation Ltd has offered to raise up to HK$50 million to build the centre. But we see strong advantage in maintaining a direct British Government involvement and believe that to achieve this we shall have to make a significant contribution from HMG, to establish Britain's bona fides as well as to make up the overall financing. Our thinking is that in the first year (probably 95/96) HMG should put up a sum in the order of £250,000 as a contribution to the fitout cost of the centre and in the following year (96/97) the same sum should be used to start a recurrent programme providing scholarships to allow graduates to pursue yet further studies in the UK.
S.
This proposal looks to me to be a very sound ‘one. It would take graduates, give them a "British" training in Hong Kong and give some of them follow up scholarships in the UK. It seems to me to be very much the sort of activity we should be pursuing.
6.
If we were to commit £250,000 in this way, this would leave £250,000 for the FCOSAS for Hong Kong under the figures approved by Mr Goodlad. We agree entirely that we should seek some matching funds from the private sector. We and the Council are reasonably confident that we could stimulate matching funds for a sum greater than £250,000, and your letter encourages us to suggest that some of the "savings" should be ploughed back in this way.
7. It seems to us therefore that we could limit the very steep decline:proposed, to quite good effect if we were to think in : terms of of some £250,000 for the proposed. Management Centre, a
sum in excess of £250,000 for FCOSAS (to be matched by the private sector here) and the modest: increase. suggested above to the Category One visit programme: We should need to give further consideration to the sum for FCOSAS for which we could find the right candidates. It will probably be in the order of £350,000.
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8. We have discussed the gist of the above with Hugh Davies who is content. Both he and I are agreed that we should do more with the Category One visit programme and at the same time make the fullest possible use of scholarships. I appreciate that I have given you a rather wider answer than you sought. But you should be aware how our thinking is developing on the scholarships front.
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Your week
Tumes full atten
Francis Cornish
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