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Mr President, for too long now this Council has been a chamber of doom and gloom. Let me dare to put it to Honourable Members that political leadership does not consist only in exposing the dark side of our community and telling our citizens how badly off they are. Not too long ago, there was an American President who indulged in telling himself and his people, again and again, about the malaise that their country was in. He managed to make American voters feel so depressed that he became a one- term President because, at the next election, most of them voted for his opponent, who ran an upbeat election campaign which made them feel good again about their country.
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Mr President, Honourable Members ought to know that there is such a thing as talking the economy down. If people do not feel good about their prospects, their desire to consume is inevitably reduced and that will have unfavourable knock-on effects on the economy as a whole. So, Mr President, at the risk of delaying Honourable Members' supper by a few more minutes, please allow me to take Honourable Members on a tour of the sunlit uplands of our still prosperous economy and to end my speech on an optimistic note by quoting a few facts about Hong Kong, of which the people of Hong Kong can justly be proud.
Hong Kong is today the 8th largest trading entity in the world. If the member states of the European Union are counted as one, which they should be, then Hong Kong is the world's 5th largest trading entity. America with a population 40 times that of Hong Kong, has a total trade value which is only 4 times that of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong's per capita GDP is the highest in Asia after Japan. In the past two years, we have overtaken developed countries such as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, which all now have lower per capita GDP than ours.
According to the World Bank, Hong Kong's per capita income, expressed in terms of actual purchasing power, is the 6th highest in the world, after Luxembourg, the United States, Switzerland and two oil- rich Arab states and ahead of Japan and Germany.
Our port is the largest in the world in terms of container throughput.
Our airport is the world's 2nd busiest in terms of international passengers and 4th busiest in terms of international cargo.
Hong Kong is one of the world's leading financial centres - 5th largest in terms of the volume of external banking transactions; 6th largest in terms of foreign exchange transactions; 8th largest in terms of stock market capitalisation.
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