Coleraine Town Hall in Coleraine. Fifty Chinese families from Vietnam had been resettled in Craigavon and Coleraine already, George Fergusson, a Northern Ireland civil servant.
Source:
https://scmp.com/news/world/article/1831888/uk-officials-discussed-resettling-entire-hong-kong-population-northern Hong Kong
UK plan to resettle entire Hong Kong population in Northern Ireland before Beijing handover 'a joke'
British officials poked fun at the idea of setting up a Celtic colony for Hongkongers in Northern Ireland before the handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, newly released documents reveal.
More than 30 years on, the bizarre plan has surfaced in official government documents - although one of the civil servants who considered the proposal told the BBC it was just a joke.
In 1989 a separate think tank also suggested Scotland could be another home for Hongkongers.
Academic Christie Davies, a sociologist and expert in humour, was the driving force behind the original proposal. He is currently in California for the International Society of Humour Studies.
He wrote a humorous piece in a Northern Ireland newspaper in 1983 which was apparently picked up by government officials at the time.
Britain's National Archives on Friday released a 1983 government file called "Replantation of Northern Ireland from Hong Kong", which showed officials discussed a far-fetched proposal to settle 5.5 million Hongkongers in a newly built "city state" between Coleraine and Londonderry prior to the handover.
A former top senior British official said the suggestion was merely civil servants "seeking some light relief at a difficult time in Northern Ireland".
David Snoxell, an official named in the documents, told the BBC the exchange "was a spoof between colleagues who had a sense of humour".
The newly released documents show that George Fergusson, an official at the Northern Ireland office, was inspired by Davies' proposal to "transplant" Hong Kong to Northern Ireland - a move that would supposedly have revitalised the local economy as well as saved Hong Kong, which the lecturer believed had "no future on its present site".
"At this stage we see real advantages in taking the proposal seriously," Fergusson wrote in a memo to a colleague in the Foreign Office.
"My initial reaction ... is that the proposal could be useful to the extent that the arrival of 5.5 million Chinese in Northern Ireland may induce the indigenous peoples to forsake their homeland for a future elsewhere," quipped Snoxell.
An official scribbled in the margins: "My mind will be boggling for the rest of the day."