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The following is the speech given by the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce luncheon today (July 7):
Mr Sears, Mr Armitage, Minister Julien, Consul-General Gillies, friends, ladies and gentlemen,
Robin, thank you very much for those very generous words. No bullet-holes or scars yet. Plenty of grey hair and eye-bags getting bigger and bigger, but otherwise I want to assure everybody, I am fine.
I had a wonderful visit in April to your country. Before I left, I had promised Colin Russel that after my return I would meet with you to share with you my experience of the visit. Unfortunately, Hong Kong as it is, being very, very busy, it has taken me until now to come and talk to you. I am sorry about that, but I hope I have caught you before you all go on summer vacation anyway.
What can I say? I was really deeply touched by the warmth of the hospitality and the friendship that were extended to me and to my colleagues by your government, by the Prime Minister personally, by your business community, and also by the Canadians who were before from Hong Kong, the community of Chinese who live there. I was impressed with what I saw, what you have done as a country. And I was pleased by the fact that both Canada and Hong Kong attach so much importance to this very special relationship we have with each other.
I think Canadians should really be very pleased and very proud. The economy has been growing at 5 per cent plus rate, unemployment is down to a 10-year low. You are even worrying about how to spend the fiscal surplus, which is a wonderful thing.
I notice that the United Nations, in their Human Development Report, has for seven years in a row ranked Canada as the most desirable country to live in. And this is no small feat, it is a wonderful achievement. Beautiful and really breathtaking scenery, a very clean environment, vast living space, cultural diversity, a highly educated population, quality of life which you will not understand until you are there. And these impressions you will have as soon as you hit Canada. So I think you should really all be very proud of this.
But Canada is really more than that. Your education system is amongst the best in the world. You are world leaders in innovation and technology. Many Canadian companies are in the forefront of information technology and in areas of environmental technology. You are in the forefront of those areas.
Now, these are also the areas where we in Hong Kong are very much focused on. We want to move ahead in education; we need to embrace information technology totally; and we have to move very rapidly on environmental protection. So I would hope that in the months and years ahead, Canada and Hong Kong, in these areas, can cooperate a lot more closely together. I should really use the words, that Canada actually can help Hong Kong a great deal in all these areas.
I look forward to our business communities driving very hard in these areas and truly making a contribution to Hong Kong as we build a world city in the twenty-first century.
Let me talk a little bit now about Hong Kong. We have had five successive quarters of negative growth - the longest in our memory. But I am pleased to note that the economy is now rebounding - the last quarter's economy was growing at 14.3 per cent; the second quarter looks very good; the third quarter is looking, equally, very promising. The economy's recovery is led by tourism, by export-import, by investment, as well as by consumer spending. In every quarter we have been chalking up solid growth. So we are really very confident that the recovery is now strong, the foundation is there, and we will see this sustained recovery not just this year, I am quite sure throughout into next year.
Two thousand IT companies, new companies, have started in the last year or two. Cyberport, the Science Park, are filling up already. So the talk of being the centre of innovation and technology is no longer just a dream, it is now becoming a reality.
Before 1997, 2,500 companies from overseas made their headquarters in Hong Kong for activities in Asia and on the Mainland. And you would have thought that because of the financial turmoil and retrenchment of many, many multinational companies, this number would have been cut back. But the fact is that the same number, 2,500 or thereabout, are here. There may be some different names but the number is more or less the same.
Last year, over 5 million square feet of office space was absorbed, one of the largest absorption rates on record. The container terminal handling, in the first quarter and the first half of this month has gone up 15 per cent. And the list goes on and on. I can recite all these figures, to tell you that the economy recovery is a reasonably solid one, and that it gives us ground for hope not only that the economy will continue to be strong, but also unemployment will continue to come down, and give us the breathing space to really tackle the issue of poverty which is a worry for us.
So the news is good news. But then you might ask: Mr Tung, what are you doing with all these reforms? Why are you doing all these things? There have been a lot of reports in the newspapers that are these reforms necessary, are they being done right? Let me tell you what our thoughts are. We have said to ourselves that Hong Kong will become the world city of Asia and we have every confidence of achieving this objective. But we also, in that process, evaluate how do we get there, what are the issues? And one of the issues is, of course, the globalisation of the economy and Hong Kong being a small, open, external economy, we have to be competitive.
And secondly, is the impact of information technology, in the way we live, in the way we conduct business, and we need to be a lot more efficient and competitive. And IT can help us with that.
And the third is, of course, the bursting of the bubble economy we had before 1997, where much of our wealth was driven by high property prices and the unrealistic stock market prices.
And fourthly is that we are looking at China which is changing very rapidly; it is opening up to the whole world. And we see many major cities in China whose quality of delivering service, whose infrastructure is improving every day very, very rapidly and looking at Hong Kong as a major target to catch up with.
So the question is, could we stand still, could we just ignore all these and do what we have been doing before? And to that the answer must be no. We really need to move forward. And furthermore, in some of the areas where reform is now planned, before 1997 or since the commencement of the discussion between China and Britain on the Handover in the 80's or mid-80's, many, many rather controversial issues were left untackled because they may have been too controversial at that time. And issues that were beyond 1997, certainly were left untouched. So, we have lost a number of years where things should have been done but were not done.
So it is for these reasons we felt there is a need for reform. For instance a reform in education. The need to provide better delivery of municipal services. The need to improve our environmental protection, whether it is in air quality, whether it is in solid-waste disposal or sewage water-treatment. And the need to reform the activities of the civil servants to be more in line with the expectations of our community. And so on and so forth. And if we do not do any of these things and if we stand back, then I am afraid the rest of the world will go by us and we will be left behind.
Reform is always difficult because it touches on the interests of many stakeholders. Have we done a great job in prioritising, in the delivery of reform? Have we done a job not just thinking about the efficiency but also thinking about being more sensitive to those stakeholders? I think we have tried our best but I think we could do better, and I just want to tell you, we will do better. But we cannot stop at this and say, well, it is too difficult, let's not do it.
It is unfortunate all these things are happening just at the time when we are also, at the same time, facing a major economic restructuring, where the future of our community is going to be more reliant on the quality of the people we have, on how well each one of us is equipped to compete with each other and with the world outside. It is a major economic restructuring. In the 80's, there was a restructuring of our economy when we moved our facilities across the border, the manufacturing facilities across the border. But this one we are facing is really upgrading the quality of our people so that we can face the knowledge economy which is now with us. And the question also is, how do we take care of the people who are now not able to join this new brigade of knowledge economy workers? So it is under this sort of environment we are undertaking some of the reforms we are undertaking.
I just want to tell you that we are determined to carry these things through. We will carry them through with sensitivity. If we have not done well enough, we will try to do it better as time goes on.
You know, ladies and gentlemen, we are trying to make Hong Kong a world city of Asia, but I just want to mention one other thing which underpins our confidence in Hong Kong's future. And that is China's accession into WTO. China's accession into WTO will give us enormous opportunities, especially the professionals here in Hong Kong. It will also give multinationals headquartered in Hong Kong the great opportunity to further move into the market in China.
China is now undertaking this tremendous task of entry into WTO. And I have to emphasise, from what I read it is not just the economic issue with China, it also demonstrates China's determination to move ahead with their reforms so that they can join the ranks as one of the most important nations in the world.
For Hong Kong, we are moving ahead to make Hong Kong the world city of Asia. But in the process of doing that we will faithfully implement the 'one country, two systems' concept. We will respect and protect the rule of law, the rights and the freedoms enshrined in the Basic Law, and we will continue to liberalise our markets to create new opportunities for business, and we will maintain a level playing field and simplify our rules and procedures to provide a business friendly environment for both local and overseas companies to compete in.
We will resolutely move ahead with the reforms, which I have just mentioned, especially in areas of education and environmental protection. We look at Canada as our model and as a community that really has provided the best living environment and quality of life for its people. And I hope, as I said earlier on, it is in these areas where we can get greater support from Canada.
Canada and Hong Kong have always had a special relationship. And this is not about business, this is not about economics, it is more about people. It is really more about people. Although divided by the Pacific Ocean, the feeling is strong, the feeling of attachment is strong, and I am quite sure in the years ahead this relationship will continue to grow stronger and stronger.
I am looking forward very much to the visit of your Prime Minister later on in November, in Hong Kong. I understand he is also bringing with him a huge delegation of business executives and I look forward to welcoming him to Hong Kong and to returning his very warm hospitality. And I am sure Hong Kong people will look forward to his visit as an opportunity to renew and strengthen the already very strong bond of relationship we have. Thank you very much.
Photo: The Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, attended a luncheon hosted by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce at which he spoke on recent developments in Hong Kong, and the future of the Hong Kong-Canada connection. Picture shows Mr Tung addressing at the luncheon.
End/Friday, July 7, 2000
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