5.
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I hope that we'll be able to develop even more successful, even more comprehensively constructive programmes for dealing with this problem. And maybe as a result of that we'll have things to teach other people. But I would hate to start bragging about our successes in Hong Kong and then find in a couple of years' time that we were getting as bad a problem, as difficult a problem, as it has enblighted so many other places.
What I think is clear is there isn't a simple answer and it interests us that some of the characteristics of communities which have suffered severely from drug abuse among young people, some of the problems that they face, socially and economically, don't actually face us in Hong Kong. For example, I was saying earlier we don't have high levels of unemployment in Hong Kong, we certainly don't have high levels of youth unemployment and yet we have been seeing against the background of unparalleled prosperity, we've been seeing some of the same sort of consequences of social alienation, which have increased drug abusers elsewhere. So we've got to learn, even as we try to put better programmes in place. And one reason why I am here today is to try to learn, and to learn how these Gospel-based organisations are working and to see what we can discover from their activities. Thank you very much indeed.
End/Tuesday, April 25, 1995
CS in "one country two systems" concept
The Chief Secretary, Mrs Anson Chan, today (Tuesday) called on China, Britain and Hong Kong to work together to realise Deng Xiaoping's visionary concept of "one country two systems":
Speaking at the Royal Institute for International Affairs luncheon in Brussels, Mrs Chan said she believed Hong Kong's future was bright, but she was under no illusion that the remaining 800 days of transition to Chinese sovereignty would be plain sailing.
"We will have to continue to do our best to put in place the legal and administrative framework that will ensure the future SAR Government can start off life with the high degree of autonomy that is promised in the Joint Declaration," she said.
Mrs Chan said 1997 was a challenge, but it was also an opportunity to a much larger relationship that embraced a rapidly modernising China.
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