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sake of serving the public and attending to the needs of the public. If we expedite the infrastructural projects and provision of facilities because we have to cater to the needs of the community and because we have to serve the community, which require funding. I will give my support. In this connection, if we are short of funds and have to seek additional provision from the Central Government, I will give further support. However, I will have reservation if it is for the sake of creating more job opportunities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MISS ANNIE WU Suk-ching (in Cantonese): -I wish to respond to the question of tourism raised by a few Members just now. This is by no means an innovative idea brought up by the Government. The fact is that since 1996, tourism has been declining because in particular, hotel charges are so exorbitant that tourist spending is affected and being influenced by the drastic economic recession in their country, Japanese tourists prefer Hawaii and other places to Hong Kong. This is something we can't help. The only thing we can do to attract foreign visitors to Hong Kong is to develop international conference tourism. Apart from attracting tourists to Hong Kong, we could make arrangements for them to visit cities on the Mainland. Promotion of tourism in other areas is the only way to bring about any gains. In this respect the Council cannot act alone.
The first problem mentioned by Members just now is that we should provide more job opportunities as soon as possible and recruit workers. Hong Kong is a city built on its economic drive. It is not essentially a provider of social welfare. We should encourage more people to make their own living and give them more chances to do so. We should create more opportunities to enable them to work in Hong Kong or encourage them to seek development in cities on the Mainland. I know that a lot of the young people of Hong Kong have gone to Xian, where they open their own shops and employ local residents. I did not believe this at first but some people are in fact doing this. I consider that there is at present a setting in which we should help local people get a job and at the same time, create for them more opportunities to set up their own business. We should not focus our attention on the creation of more posts in the Council, which is shortsighted and ineffective.
Furthermore, the present problem is that the overall economy of Hong Kong is undergoing a vicious cycle as a result of the bubble economy in addition to the impact brought about by Asian countries. This overall environment is something that Hong Kong is unable to influence. We would notice that the firm stand of the Central Government, that is, Beijing, against depreciating the Renminbi is very invaluable in backing up the Hong Kong Dollar, which has given us some assistance. Of course, what Hong Kong should consider doing is to get its import business back on the track and promote the establishment of offices in Hong Kong by more international enterprises. When I talked to some foreign friends lately, they said they no
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