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Undeterred. Jardines continued to do as much business as possible with the Communists from its Hong Kong headquarters, swapping Western chemicals and machinery for Chinese commodities. But the company also embarked on a major program of expansion into other areas. It bought up an importing and engineering company with outlets in Singapore, Malaya, Borneo and Sarawak. It stepped up tea marketing in the U.S. through Jardine. Balfour Inc.. branched into manufacturing with a $1,000,000 textile plant in Hong Kong.
New Markets. Much of the profit from these operations funnels back to the descendants of Founder William Jardine, who now live in Britain. The working head of the Jardine empire is Managing Director Hugh D. M. Barton, 50. Tall (6 ft. 3 in.), suave and social, Cambridge-educated Hugh Barton joined Jardines in 1933 as a tea taster, scrupulously lives up to the company's cherished traditions, including the raising of ponies that race under the Jardines' silks.
Barton freely concedes that Jardines' trade with Red China, which has sagged steadily from the last published figure of $35 million in 1959, is likely to sag even more. Says he: "The immediate outlook for trade with China is discouraging because of natural calamities. This has resulted in China having to spend a great deal on the import of foodstuffs." But he is confident that great new markets still await Jardines in the emergent nations of Southeast Asia. And most old Asia hands, convinced that a prime motive for last week's stock sale was to raise expansion capital, back Barton's judgment of Jardines' future. Says one: "Jardines always was, and still is, a Scottish house that kept the Sabbath and everything else it could lay hands on."