.
5
16
prosperity
be services
increasingly
sector
future
will Hong Kong's
the high-tech industry and dependent on banking, insurance, shipping, communications. Its strategic location at the hub of the region and the efficiency and standards of its financial, commercial and
advantages.
If,
sector services
currently
it give
strong
however,
the brightest continue to leave and the education system remains as it is, then Hong Kong will not be in a good position post- 1997 to take up the opportunities that lie at hand. If that happens,
will not be as valuable to China as Peking
expects;
there will be less constraints on Peking to preserve a 'high degree of autonomy and capitalist lifestyle' for the HKSAR.
it and
Cultural identity and autonomy
no.
Hong Kong will be able
17 As to whether
to retain come form of cultural identity and autonomy' given the lack 'a locally-educated intelligentsia', the answer is probably In the early 1970s, when he saw what Lee Kuan Yew's: authoritarianism and distancing from China was doing to the youth of Singapore,
in a Goh Keng Swee
memorable speech maintained that Singapore was in danger of becoming rootless,
without any cultural ballast. After that, Lee tried to turn Singapore back
roots to its
and by introducing Mandarin
the study of Chinese history culture and literature in schools. The upshot of all that is
still another story
being written. But what of Singapore in the 1970s is to some extent
the 1970s is to some extent true of Hong Kong today. It is a superficial, materialist, transient society with little cultural identity of its own.
18
is
a
society parvenu
a
-
was
truo
ATC
that ausi er e
But it should be
be noted in this context that Hong Kong
with predominantly Cantonese city
sophisticated and talented
The leavening of Shanghainese.
Cantonese hardly the Parisiens of the East. They are a noisy, cheerful, uncultured group of merchants with a talent for hard and making money. They are disdained in Peking northern capital; and, of course, in Shanghai. If Hong has a cultural identity, it lies in business not ballet (still less in the Hong Kong Philharmonic...). For Hong Kong's post- 1997 fortunes depend not SO much on a strong cultural identity, as on
its ability to maintain its position as an international centre for trade, shipping, finance and communi- cations. This has long been Hong Kong's strength. When Purves and Allen Lee link
link Hong Kong's post-1997 fortunes and its education system, it is on account of the adverse implications of the current shortcomings for the technical and business sectors rather than because Hong Kong lacks a strong cultural identity.
contradiction in
19 After their second liberation, the bulk of the Hong Kong population are not likely to miss the gradual disappearance of the British culture (if that is not terms) that has temporarily superimposed itself on southern Chinese traditions. Given the numbers of haggis that
get
/piped