American textile producers have their own special complaints against the Hong Kong industry. They point out that because of the existing price differential, Hong Kong can buy U.S. cotton at 8½ cents less per pound than American mills can, and that the colony has been stocking up heavily on it. In 1960, Hong Kong imported 55 percent of its raw cotton from the United States. The U.S. textile men say that while Japan’s textile exports have been held down by a five-year quota limitation, Hong Kong has rushed in to sell America the items that Japan agreed not to sell. The demand for restrictions on colony textile exports to the United States began in 1958. United States officials visited the colony in 1959 with a proposal for a voluntary cut in the exports. The Hong Kong garment manufacturers proposed a three-year quota arrangement, starting in July, 1960, to hold exports to the 1959 level, plus 15 percent on cotton blouses and blouse sets, shorts and trousers, sport shirts, brassieres and pajamas. American textile producers immediately rejected the proposal as far too generous to Hong Kong competitors. During the negotiations, American importers placed huge orders with Hong Kong to get in ahead of the threatened limitations. When the agreement blew up, they found an interesting variety of reasons why they couldn’t accept most of what they had ordered, such as late deliveries, and unsatisfactory quality. Exports to the U.S. dropped and the decline persisted into 1961. In May, 1961, President Kennedy proposed an international textile conference to work out some agreeable way to control textile exports. The United States then suggested that Hong Kong cut its textile exports at least 30 percent below the levels of 1960. But the word “quota” had assumed a fearsome aspect in Hong Kong because of a textile agreement involving the colony, England, India and Pakistan. Hong Kong had agreed to limit its exports to the British Isles, provided that Pakistan and India would do the same. In 1961, the Hong Kong industry began to suspect that India and Pakistan might jump the traces, leaving the colony interests holding the bag. A large section of the Hong Kong press is rabidly pro-textile industry, and every American move toward textile controls is headlined as a thrust at the heart of the colony’s principal industry. Communist papers shoved their way into the act by crying that American restrictions would starve the refugee workers who left the People’s Republic of China to escape that very fate. After the July 1961 International Textile Conference at Geneva, the Hong Kong government, following long bilateral discussions with the U.S., agreed to limit its exports according to the Geneva Textile Agreement, with July 1960-June 1961 as the base year, and dividing the affected export items into 64 different categories. Starting date of the agreement was October 1, 1961.