Hong Kong emigrant potential under-used

Press, 5 July 1983, Page 15

Hong Kong emigrant potential under-used

NZPA staff correspondent Hong Kong New Zealand could use Chinese with expertise in a number of occupations other than the cooks who usually secured entry to the country, says New Zealand’s commissioner to Hong Kong, Mr Frank Muller. Mr Muller, who has ended his 3%-year tour of duty and will return to become executive assistant to the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Lange, said many Chinese circumvented normal migration procedures. “The Chinese are very persistent,” he said. “They have family in New Zealand running restaurants and takeaways, and these people create jobs for them.” But often, said Mr Muller, Hong Kong Chinese went into New Zealand on a visitor’s permit then merged after working in a restaurant for six months, their employer insisting they were essential to the running of their business. “Yet these people would not normally meet the basic requirements for entry from Hong Kong,” he said.

“A lot of the ones who do succeed in getting in would never have suceeded in getting past the screen. They are not even proper cooks, a lot of them.”

It was a pity, said Mr

Muller, because New Zealand could use some of the entrepreneurial skills and expertise of the Hong Kong Chinese in other occupations.

“It is my feeling that you could take 100 enterprising Chinese into New Zealand and they would create 500 jobs."

In terms of Hong Kong Chinese investment in New Zealand, Mr Muller said that starting from a very modest beginning the country was now beginning to see some “valuable nibbles.”

Uncertainty over Hong Kong’s future relationship with China undoubtedly motivated many Hong Kong Chinese to look about for an alternative base, he said.

“But even without the colony’s future being on the line a lot of Chinese businessmen who are well established here have realised they have to spread abroad to expand.”

The New Zealand Commission’s trade commissioner, Mr John Driscoll, said the six or so Chinese investment projects nearing final approval by New Zealand included clothing manufacture, deer farming, dried fish processing, quilting, and an aluminium manufacturing concern. Although countries such as the United States, Can-

ada, and Australia were often the first choice of Hong Kong Chinese looking to invest in a place which could provide dual citizenship, New Zealand was now receiving a “fairly steady flow” of inquiries, he said. “It is definitely up on what it has been in the past. “It is fair to say that in most cases the motive for coming to New Zealand may well be the desire to locate themselves somewhere offshore because of doubts about Hong Kong’s future.” New Zealand’s “entrepreneur policy” which had been set up to attract investment, particularly into tourism and export industries, was also playing its part, said Mr Driscoll.