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which were indeed to the best interests of the nation then and afterwards. Let us take the two examples in ancient China. The construction of the Great Wall and the plantation of Chinese nationals to the borderland.
wer
At that
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time, of course, nobody would be willing to be asked
which was
their
construct the Great Wall so far away from the home
A
人 reuttled in the frontiers at that time.
or. to be planted
to
towns
How many
people were willing to support or accept such policies? But history has proven to us that such policies which were unpopular at that time had precisely protected our country
survive and from foreign invasion and enabled our nation to
!
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So grow. One ancient scholar has said: 's the people can share your joy over the country's accomplishment but not your considerations when the work has to be started'.
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1. Members, I cited these examples not to
prove that
we should not respect public opinion or that we should negate all public opinion but I think when we consider public opinion we should not follow them blindly or unscrupulously mislead or abuse public opinion. In a time of great changes, it is important for us to enforce training in civic education. We should enhance the quality and standard of public opinion and guide public opinion onto a right track. This will be 23 much, much better than just to go on with empty talks on
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democracy and freedom, and this will be more to the benefit of Society. We all know that careless thoughts will always lead to regret, so when we guide public opinion and analyse public opinion we must be cautious and farsighted and we must 28 really put our collective interests before all else,
especially when there is serious divergence of views. think that a cautious and a gradual political development will
be more to the interest of Hong Kong.
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I
Sir, all along we have stressed the importance of free debate. We would like to collect views from everybody
and we have tried to concentrate on issues and not on
personal grudges, but unfortunately we have not always succeeded. In the past two years we have had endless heated debates on the