TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1993
21
We're absolutely clear that in the system that
we're constructing in Hong Kong, even though there is
limited democracy, that limited democracy must be
credible, that the arrangements for the last elections
under British sovereignty in 1995 have got to be clean and
straightforward, and that's what we're discussing with
Chinese officials in Beijing at the moment.
Hong Kong has been a spectacular success, the
tenth largest trading community in the world, the second highest per capita GNP in Asia, a per capita GNP which is
likely to exceed that of about half the members of the
European Community within the next year or so.
We are likely to overtake the Netherlands,
Italy dare I mention the United Kingdom
well before
the transfer of sovereignty in 1997.
We represent in Hong Kong, with 6 million
people, 19 percent of China's GNP. We have the busiest
container port in the world, adding capacity equivalent to
the size of Seattle or Oakland every year.
The fourth largest airport, which will, when we
complete it
(Laughter.)
GOVERNOR PATTEN: be much the largest airport
in the world, the tourist center of Asia.
And so the superlatives roll on, not just the
economic ones, either. We have invested over the years
considerably in social equity programs so that we can now
boast rather better health care statistics on the most
important items than, shall we say, the United States, the
United Kingdom, or Australia, or New Zealand.
/So it's