43
- 8
It has proven a potent formula. Of our 160 banks,
136 are incorporated overseas overseas, and 22 of these
come from the United States. This year we have issued
eleven new bank licences; seven of them since June 4. Ten
of the banks use Hong Kong as their regional headquarters.
We also have 10 overseas security companies and commodities
traders.
So what of our future? What is it that worries
people? It is of course the question in people's minds
over whether all the arrangements for the future laid down
in the 1984 Sino British Joint Declaration will work out in
practice.
Under the Joint Declaration, sovereignty over Hong
Kong reverts over to China at midnight on 30 June 1997. The
agreement, carefully and painstakingly negotiated between
Britain and China sets out how this transcion is to take
place. In brief, Hong Kong is to become a Special
Administrative Region, with its distinctive capitalist
system preserved separate from the rest of China. All its
key institutions are to continue in their present form.
We are to have the same legal system with the
final court of appeal in HK.