BUSINESSMAN LIKES CHINA

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30846, 3 September 1965, Page 14

BUSINESSMAN LIKES CHINA

/ (A’ew Zealand Press Association/ AUCKLAND, September 2. Within a few years a popular optional route to Europe for New Zealanders would be through China, an Auckland merchant, Mr C. Lawford, predicts on returning from his second business visit to China in two years.

Mr Lawford bases his prediction of New Zealand tourist traffic through China on China's need for overseas funds, on the excellence and cheapness of facilities so far provided for tourists, and on the fact that “anybody who, like me. likes Chinese anyway, will like them just as much in their homeland as in, say, Tahiti.’ With his wife, he went primarily to the Chinese export commodities fair in I Canton. Since their first visit to China two years ago they! noticed vast progress in Canton, notably in fast, frequent and clean public transport and in creation of a modern efficient waterfront along the Pearl river. Products at the fair were high in quality and competitive in price. On his first visit he was questioned on his political attitudes. He made very clear then that he admired the Chinese people but did not like communism. This time the question was not raised.

Mr Lawson says that to a New'Zealand businessman it was distressing to note the intense activity in Peking of British, German, French and Danish businessmen and Government trade officials—and the total absence of New Zealanders.

He thought the Chinese Government’s milk-minded-ness created an immediate opportunity for New Zealand dried milk.

His thought as a New Zealander all the five days he was in Canton and seven days in Peking was that he was in a nation of between 650 and 675 million people, whose living standards he had seen rise dramatically in two years.

These were people to whom the Australians had sold millions of pounds worth of wheat.

“In Western countries one found educated people who were barely aware of New

Zealand, but in China I do not recall talking with one English - speaking Chinese who did not seem to know where New Zealand was and that it was a sea-encircled land of green pastures with snow-capped mountains and good fishing.”