་་
1
+
HONGKONG
599
this to be left until the last moment would be too much of a cliff- hanger from the point of view of the brain drain and investment confidence, and it would be better for Britain to begin tackling the question of its own legal system's view of the status of Hong- kong after 1997 well before 1997.
Personally, I hope that the government in Hongkong will address itself to the possibilities here outlined rather soon. I am distressed by the number of my own friends and professional acquaintances and colleagues in Hongkong who have either left it or whose children have left it, during the twenty years I have known them. Hongkong has its built-in disadvantages and inhibitions, about which little can be done, but if it is to represent in East Asia in the best possible way an alternative social system for the Chinese people to consider (and be in the long-term a constructive in- fluence on the Chinese in China), then it ought at least to be retaining the confidence of its own university-leavers.
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