6
HONG KONG IN TOUCH WITH THE WORLD
Naturally, in a city where some 98 per cent of people are ethnically Chinese, more than half of them born in Hong Kong, Cantonese predominates. It is the language of southern China, an intricate tonal language baffling to the foreign ear, and often spoken so loudly and rapidly that a friendly discussion may sound, to the alien, like a heated argument.
There are, too, other Chinese dialects: the softer-sounding Putonghua, China's common language; Shanghainese, Chiu Chow, Hakka .. and of course English in as many variations as there are people to speak it: perfectly enunciated Oxford English, twanging American, drawling Australian, the distinctive Spanish-American accent of Filipino English. German, too, and Japanese, Hindi, Thai, French, Malay. And in Statue Square on Sunday, when Hong Kong's thousands of Filipino domestic helpers have the day off, the machinegun rattle of Tagalog.
This multiplicity of languages in a small territory is one of the hidden factors behind Hong Kong's international success. In particular, the role of English, the international language of business, is recognised. The Hong Kong businessman able to communicate with a client in the United States, England, Canada or Australia, in the client's own language, has a decided advantage over many of his Southeast Asian competitors. The telephone, telex, and facsimile machine are tools of business, and language is another.
Hong Kong's links to the world are both public and private. For example, the Hong- kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation uses circuits leased from Cable and Wireless for its own telecommunications network, on which some three million banking messages are sent to more than 100 offices throughout the Asian region each year. The bank's data exchange service, based in Hong Kong, also uses leased circuits carrying messages to branches and clients around the world.
Such advanced technology is vital to the operations of Hong Kong's money brokers, who depend on it for the split-second deals which generate their profits. Traffic growth has been phenomenal: in 1985, Cable and Wireless handled more than 44 million minutes of outgoing telex calls, more than 142 million minutes of outward telephone calls and 1.3 million outward public telegrams.
Rapid growth has also been seen in the facsimile service known as Bureaufax operated by Cable and Wireless and the similar service known as Intelpost provided by the Post Office, which can handle any type of written or printed material, from legal documents to the design of a garment or a computer printout. This service is particularly valuable to Hong Kong businessmen because of its ability to transmit and receive material written in Chinese characters, which do not lend themselves easily to other forms of data transmission.
Not all messages to and from Hong Kong are business-related, however, and the sophisticated systems which allow communication with ships and aircraft are equally important to the territory's trade. Marine links are provided through the Cable and Wire- less Coast Station, which gives nearly instantaneous communication - radio, telephone, telegram, telex - to ships anywhere in the world through INMARSAT, the international maritime satellite system. Aviation links are provided by the Hong Kong Dragon, a long-range radiotelephone system which allows contact with the crew of an aircraft up to 8 000 kilometres from Hong Kong.
Banking and Finance
Statue Square, in the heart of Hong Kong's Central District, has but one statue. Frock-coated, the tall figure gazes across the square to the old Supreme Court building,