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The following is the speech delivered by the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, at the Hong Kong Business Community Luncheon at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre today (October 16):
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,
I am indeed delighted to be with you today, and value this opportunity to talk to you, distinguished and leading members of the business community. As you all know, I delivered this year's Policy Address to the new Legislative Council last Wednesday, and I am sure many of you have heard about it through the media, and some may even have read it, or parts of it. The response from the public has been on the whole quite positive. And I am particularly encouraged that the Policy Address has struck a chord with different sectors of the community. Individual business people I have met in the last few days have readily given support. I have come today to give you all my heartfelt thanks. I certainly recognise that we can always do better, and we will continue to strive for that.
Let me tell you that the Address delivered last week deals with issues really, really close to my heart. It is an Address that heeds the people's voices and aspirations, on the issues that concern themselves, their sons and daughters and their parents. It answers queries and criticisms, and, in a year still not that distant from the Asian financial turmoil, responds to the entreatments for help from the less fortunate among us. It reaffirms beliefs, incorporates useful new thinking, points to opportunities and maps out strategic moves. It is a document of hope.
The three main issues I dwelled on in this Policy Address are: education, poverty and governance. I would like to go over them quickly for the benefit of those who have been totally scrupulous in performing their duties to the business of Hong Kong - I mean their own business, so that they haven't had a chance to ponder upon and sort out the significant contents of this particular Address. Of course, I am going to add my own emphases along the way, too.
I have accepted the final recommendations of the Education Commission in full. I have always thought that our education system, however well it has served us in the past, has become inadequate when measured against the demands of a knowledge economy and the forces of global competition. The proposed reforms in the Education Commission Report, when fully implemented, will go a long way towards meeting those demands. It will help our young people succeed in life and find greater fulfilment, more so than our own generation has ever managed to. The Government will commit ample resources to carry out the reforms and initiatives, which will allow, among other things, essentially all junior secondary graduates to continue to study, and 60 per cent of senior secondary graduates to go on to tertiary education, with appropriate subsidies in both cases. This means that the number of young people who can go on to college after secondary school will double within ten years. This will put us on a par with most other advanced countries in terms of providing educational continuity for the young.
Quantity improvements aside, there will also be fundamental changes in curricula and teaching methods. Examination based rote-learning will be replaced by creative interaction between teachers and students; critical thinking will take precedence over memorisation. Instead of learning within four walls, students will be able to go outside the classroom and exploit all the learning resources that are available in the community and beyond, aided by advanced IT and ample access to the Internet. Team work and communications skills will receive heavy emphasis. Language learning, especially English learning, will be one of the top priorities. Education reform will take time, but I am hopeful that in a few years' time, the new system will be up and running and producing fine young graduates fully capable of meeting the demands of the knowledge-based economy. I guarantee that at that point parents will be satisfied, the students will be proud of themselves, and the business community happy to find an abundance of high quality young people to recruit to help boost their competitiveness.
We know the new mode of teaching and learning will impose heavy demands on our already very hard-working teachers, so we are prepared to help them by giving our schools the needed resources. We will reduce their non-teaching workload, improve the teacher-student ratios, encourage and enable them to acquire new knowledge and appropriate teaching skills, and reward those who can successfully meet our heightened expectations.
At the tertiary level, the quality of teaching and research have already improved markedly during the last ten years, and our universities have consistently ranked very high within Asia. But I will assure you that, with several resource rationalisation schemes in place, including the Areas of Excellence Scheme, which encourages specialisation and reduces effort duplication, our universities will soon be producing research output and young graduates that can aspire to be comparable to the best in the world.
Education reform is a mammoth and arduous long term task. Much is to be done, but in the next two years, our focus will first be on upgrading the standards of our teachers, reforming curricula and teaching methods, improving system of assessment and examination, as well as increasing learning opportunities at and above the senior secondary level. The task is costly. The entire Education Commission reform package, when fully implemented, will require an additional Government recurrent expenditure of $2 billion a year, and may require further investment and support on the part of the community. However, of the considerable amount of money to be invested in human capital, I am sure that every dollar will bear return to our citizens many times over.
As you know, I have also committed the Government to a serious effort to deal with poverty, a long-standing issue much exacerbated by the Asian financial turmoil and the ongoing process of economic restructuring. While I prescribe no magical cure, and cannot promise to bring immediate relief to all, I do make sure that the SAR Government will provide necessary help for the very poor and the needy. The Government will help them to help themselves, create more job opportunities and design programmes to address special and acute needs. Training and retraining programmes will be vastly expanded and improved. By speeding up many needed social investments such as delivering better hospital, elderly and environmental services, including the greening and cleaning of Hong Kong, 15,000 new jobs will be created, some of them time-limited and others long-term. In the next two years, spending on these initiatives will exceed $2.7 billion. Again, the sum is quite substantial, but every dollar spent will bring much help for pains, joy to many families and smiles on many faces. For many, it will also mean a head-start to a productive working life.
Yet do let me assure you that we are NOT going down the slippery slope towards a welfare state. We do sometimes give unconditional benefits, but primarily to the needy, the elderly and the infirm. For the able-bodied welfare recipients, our philosophy is to do things to enable them to find jobs in the job market, and their own footing in life, so that they become self-reliant, useful, productive members of the community. This emphasis on the initiative on the part of the individual as the prime motivating force for a person to improve his own fortunes is no different from that underlying our economic philosophy, which all of you already know so well.
In fact, if anything at all, we are trying to move even closer to the ideal of a small government. The common view of a small government is one with a small budget relative to GDP and which does not unduly interfere in the market and citizens' private lives. But that should not be all. A small government leaves a lot of room for the private sector and individual initiatives to come into full play in fostering developments not only in the market, but also in the social, cultural and environmental spheres. The latter civic space, existing between the government and the market, is what social scientists often call the Third Sector. Many problems, which the government can't solve and the market won't solve, are best handled by the Third Sector. Poverty is one example. Welfare reforms in some countries have demonstrated amply that when private sector and government resources, NGO expertise and volunteer dynamism all come together to bear on poverty and welfare delivery, improvement is most obvious. It is only when the Third Sector is strong, aside from the market being free, that the government really can be small. We now have this insight in mind when thinking about small government.
In the Policy Address, I also discussed in depth a number of governance issues that have been subjected to spirited public debates. Contrary to some, I think our governance structure, product of benign evolution and ordained by the Basic Law, is working well. "One Country, Two Systems" have become a reality. Though the Asian financial turmoil brought Hong Kong to its deepest economic recession in recent decades, the economy has now returned to a steady growth path. Throughout the last three years, the institutions of Hong Kong have held firm.
Indeed, our experience in the three years since reunification fully demonstrates that the executive authorities, legislature and judiciary of the SAR are able to function effectively under the Basic Law. During the First Legislative Council, we put forth 159 Bills - all of which were enacted, and in many instances with modifications following discussions between the Government and Members of the Legislative Council.
In a political system with a division of powers and constitutional checks and balances, it is natural that some tension exists between the executive and the legislature. But I can assure you that we value the views of the Legislative Council. We have had useful exchanges of ideas with Members when I was preparing the Policy Address, and we will examine ways of strengthening communication with the Legislative Council.
Responding to calls in our community for the Government to be subjected to a higher degree of accountability, I have undertaken to examine how we can enhance the accountability of principal officials at the Secretaries and Director of Bureau rank who assume an important role in policy formation and implementation. Under the new system, I will continue to rely principally on the senior civil service for appointments to the top echelon of the Government.
Furthermore, we recognise that it is essential to preserve the principles of permanence and neutrality of the civil service, so that it can continue to serve our community with its finest traditions.
I also want to dwell a bit on the issue of wider community participation in the tasks of governance. Currently, there are about 370 boards and committees advising the Government on policy and administrative matters, consisting of some 5,300 members of the public serving mostly as volunteers. They have provided high-quality, invaluable services to the community. One main focus will be to bring in an even broader scope of talent to make sure that these bodies truly reflect all the significant views of the public, so that policies formed with their input will have even higher quality and hence greater public acceptance. To that end, I am sure the business and professional sectors are a good source of such talents.
My friends, in spite of all the ups and downs, this year has been a good year. Our economic recovery is robust. Unemployment has been going down. While the new economy has sent us warning signals, we the people of Hong Kong are rising to the occasion. Now all of us know the importance of innovation and technology, and the role of knowledge in the creation of wealth. Also, all of us are now aware of the importance of sustainable development as the key to our long-term welfare. We are working hard to improve our environment, and will do a lot to improve our education system. We have put into place a number of other crucial reforms, most of which are beginning to bear fruit, although I know my friend Henry thinks we are still too slow at it. We are on a good start for the new Millennium. Moreover, we are blessed with opportunities. Mainland China will soon join the WTO. Our China advantage will bring us enormous opportunities.
This is also a good year in the sense that we in the Government have, through various events, discovered and understood better some problems that are non-trivial and worth the best of our efforts to tackle. This Policy Address brings solutions to these problems.
This year, we have also worked diligently together and covered much ground. Looking forward, there is a bright future and there is hope. What is needed to turn the challenges and opportunities into success? The answer is simple: your support. I started by saying that I come here today to thank you for your support, but you know I am asking for more. And I am not ashamed of it. Hong Kong's business people have boundless energies and their generosity and gung-ho spirit are truly legendary. We are facing rising expectations matched by enormous potentials. We simply need to close ranks and measure up. Thank you very much.
End/Monday, October 16, 2000
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