HONG KONG GEARS UP FOR A WORLD WITHOUT WALLS
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Special Administrative Region Government (SARG) and-more importantly—our professionals, businessmen and women and entrepreneurs have recognised the golden opportunities presented by the Internet and the new horizons that it opens up.
They are seizing these opportunities with a relish and a determination to make the Information Age work for them. Their goal is clear: they see Hong Kong as Asia's City for the Cyber Century. Hong Kong is gearing up to take its place in a world without walls.
The speed and scale of the e-revolution have been astonishing in Hong Kong. By the end of 1999, there were more than 1.5 million Internet users compared with 500 000 in 1997. The value of products and services transacted over the Internet is expected to top US$2.4 billion by 2003, compared with US$60 million in 1998—a whopping increase in just five years. The figures are even more telling for China, where e-commerce transactions are estimated to reach US$3.8 billion by 2003 compared with US$8.1 million in 1998.
The opening of a Cyberport on the western shore of Hong Kong Island early in the new millennium will help nurture the development of IT applications, software development and multi-media content. With this hi-tech centre and the Science Park now taking shape in the north-east New Territories, Hong Kong is laying the groundwork to take advantage of the e-revolution, stimulating innovation, and promoting the growth of technology-based industries, not only at home and in the adjoining Mainland market but also in the borderless market place beyond.
There is some typical Hong Kong irony to all this. At the time of the Handover, two and a half years ago, there were those ready to write off the fledgling SAR. It was not difficult to detect eerie echoes of those grim predictions made about colonial Hong Kong a century and a half before.
The new Jeremiahs have been just as wide of the mark as their Victorian forebears. The forecasts of loss of freedoms, civil liberties, the suppression of democracy and free speech, the curtailment of press freedom and the throttling of the legal system have fallen to the ground with the familiar thud of all false prophecies. Hong Kong remains as free today as it has ever been.
What has changed is the shape of our economy. In October 1997, the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, in his inaugural policy address, outlined a bold strategic blueprint for the SAR's future. It included measures to stabilise grossly inflated property prices and major initiatives to promote innovation and technology. However, no sooner had the policy been announced than Hong Kong was hit by the fallout which cascaded in unprecedented force from the Asian financial crisis.
In the painful period that followed, Hong Kong suffered the first recession in its recorded history. This brought a plunge in property prices, a rise in unemployment and a deep shock to a community which had grown accustomed-perhaps to the point of complacency-to decade after decade of exponential economic growth.
For instance, in the period between 1979 and 1999, Hong Kong's GDP grew at an average annual rate of about 5 per cent. The SAR is the world's ninth largest trading economy, the fifth if you count the EU as a whole. Per capita GDP stands at US$23,200, more than advanced economies such as Canada and Australia. Life expectancy for men (77.2 years) and women (82.6 years) is amongst the highest in the world, and ahead of countries such as Norway, Germany, the US and New Zealand.