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HONG KONG: A HARD-EARNED SUCCESS
I personal view by Sir Hamish Macleod, KBE, JP.
began his career with the Hong Kong Government in 1966, ording Financial Secretary in 1991. He retires in 1995.
SUCCESS is not guaranteed but earned. And in Hong Kong more than in most places, given our dependence on trade in goods and services with the outside world, we must ensure that we continue to be able to adjust rapidly to a rapidly changing world. This is not a theoretical point. It is worth recalling the impact of the world oil crisis of the early 1970s. In 1975, unemployment in Hong Kong rose to some nine per cent. In the words of a newspaper article of the time: "No one really knew the figure because unemployment had been such an unheard of thing in the Colony that the Government had not troubled with statistics." Thankfully, the figures rapidly subsided to the levels we are more familiar with.
Given the migrant background of much of our population and the peculiar status of Hong Kong, we are particularly keenly aware of the potentially fleeting nature of success. It is this awareness that has contributed to our dynamism; our relentless thrust ever-upwards. For the same reasons, we should not too readily decry the high value placed on personal financial success, and more broadly, on economic success for the community as a whole. This priority is entirely rational: financial and economic success do help cushion us against unexpected downturns, whether personal or communal. And we do face more risks than most.
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I remember a small example which brought home to me this difference in attitude, this drive to succeed. During a trade negotiation visit to Norway, I had dinner with the Norwegian agent of a Hong Kong garment exporter. He told me with pride that the business was so profitable that he had been able to reduce his working week to only three days; probing revealed he had no interest in expanding into importing garments from places other than Hong Kong. I hid my amazement, but I could not imagine any Hong Kong businessmen taking such a view here surely was a chance to expand into other products, other suppliers, not to take it easy!
Symbolically, perhaps, the cover of this Hong Kong Annual Report is a dramatic construction picture of the Tsing Ma Bridge, a vital transport link to Lantau Island and the new airport at Chek Lap Kok. The cover for the yearbook for 1967, my first full year in the Hong Kong Government, was of 16-storey flats in Aberdeen which formed part of Hong Kong's massive housing resettlement programme.
Both are symbols of Hong Kong's extraordinary ability to cope with change and to set new standards of achievement. They also, in a sense, mark the beginning and final stage of my career with the Hong Kong Government: I started as a novice administrative officer in the Resettlement Department (later to become the Housing Department), and I have been
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