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- <text id=89TT1911>
- <title>
- July 24, 1989: World Notes:Hong Kong
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- July 24, 1989 Fateful Voyage:The Exxon Valdez
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 33
- World Notes
- HONG KONG
- Singapore, Here We Come
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Since the brutal Chinese crackdown in Tiananmen Square,
- many in Hong Kong have concluded that they would rather be
- anywhere else when Beijing assumes control of the Crown Colony
- in 1997. But Britain has slammed the door, saying it has no room
- for the colony's 3.25 million British subjects. And while the
- well educated and well off have found the promise of a warm
- embrace in other Western countries, Hong Kong's working class
- has felt trapped. So last week, when Singapore announced that
- it would admit 25,000 white- and blue-collar workers over the
- next eight years, lines instantly began to form outside the
- city-state's visa offices in downtown Hong Kong.
- </p>
- <p> By opening time Tuesday, an estimated 10,000 people snaked
- twice around the block. Some 10,000 applications were handed
- out in just 90 minutes, and 6,000 more were mailed the next
- day; several recipients then tried to sell the forms on the
- street. Singapore is hardly a stranger to the presence of
- authoritarian government. Even so, Gordon Seow, Singapore's
- commissioner in Hong Kong, said, "Maybe now Beijing will really
- see how much it has scared people here."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-