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travel agency, with many customers in the sort of predicament Ni described, should have one. I can certainly see no harm in it, if it is available to more than just consular representatives.
3.
The second question concerned a TDC office in Taiwan. Ni said that trade between Hong Kong and Taiwan was booming, though with a heavy surplus in Taiwan's favour. He argued that a TDC office could contribute both to boosting Hong Kong's exports to Taiwan and encouraging more direct investment into Hong Kong from Taiwan. I said I appreciated his points, but had to say that in the present political climate it would be most unlikely that we could agree to the TDC opening such an office. Although separate from Government, it was nevertheless partially Government funded and the establishment of an office would be seen as a significant step. I saw no reason why it should not happen in due course, were our political relations with the Chinese to become less fraught. At the moment the Chinese were simply using anything against us. Ni said he appreciated this point but hoped that things might be easier in
the future.
4.
The third question was Hong Kong's attitude to the idea
of meetings between the Association for Relations Across the
Straits and Straits Exchange Foundation. He said it seemed odd
that they should be meeting in Singapore when Hong Kong was such
an obvious site. If both the Chinese and Taiwanese sides
wished it, what would HKG's attitude be? I said I could not, of course, give any authoritative view on this. However, I personally reckoned that if both sides wished it, Hong Kong would certainly not wish to be obstructive. Given the fact
that we had no official contacts with the Taiwanese, I imagine that any such request would come to us via Peking's
representatives in Hong Kong. If that were the case I would
expect HKG to be positive. Ni went over this idea in some detail including the question of visas for Taiwanese representatives, which made me think that they have it in mind to propose to the Chinese that they hold meetings here in
future I believe they have already held one informal
FADEŤ
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