YOU read it here first: Hong Kong is to computer disks what the Golden Triangle is to heroin.
According to the European Commission (EC), Hong Kong is being used as a front to flood the world with cheap Chinese computer disks so they can evade anti-dumping duties.
The EC this week said it was going to look into allegations that manufacturers from China, Taiwan and Japan are diverting their products so it appeared they originated in other countries, after heavy dumping duties were imposed on them in 1993.
According to the Committee of European Diskette Manufacturers (Diksma), Hong Kong, Macau, Canada, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand have been cynically used as transshipment points, performing a minor role in the disk manufacturing process to justify a change of export origin.
Diksma would not say something like that just to protect its own market share from competition in what is becoming a tough high-volume, razor-thin margin business.
If there's one thing that can be said of the European Union and units thereof, it has always been one to promote a free market, the total abolition of tariffs, agricultural subsidies, and an end to the building of ludicrously highly-priced military hardware designed to prop up an ailing military industrial complex.
Anyway, Diksma says that while imports from China and Taiwan fell to four per cent of market share in 1994 from 20 per cent in 1992, the combined market share of the alleged front countries rose to 36 per cent in 1994, from 21 per cent in 1992.