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Question (in Chinese): Now, what you are doing is very popular among Hong Kong people. You have won over our hearts. But then, you need to do something about people's livelihoods. I think people's livelihoods are more important than democracy.
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Governor: I think they are both important. And I think that they are actually related. I think, on balance, open societies societies where people are free in every sense - are more likely to be successful economically. There are exceptions to that but I think by and large if you look around the world that tends to be the situation. I don't think I really fought for more democracy for Hong Kong, if I may just correct that. What I fought for was what Hong Kong had been promised by both China and Britain in the Joint Declaration, the Basic Law and elsewhere, and I wasn't prepared to see anybody try to walk away from those promises that had been made to people in Hong Kong. I very much hope that over the next 21 months until I have to leave Hong Kong, we can go on bedding-down our institutions of Government the Legislative Council, our administration itself so that they are as successful as possible in delivering here policies in Hong Kong which go on ensuring that Hong Kong is a terrific success, which go on ensuring that we show the rest of the world how to run a responsible, caring, market economy.
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Question: I'm just curious at what seems to be the Government's response to an ever increasing rise - just looking at the papers recently with corruption within the police and civil service, and what the Government plans to do over that in the next couple of years?
Governor: There has been an increase in corruption right across the board, in the private sector as well as in the public sector. It was particularly marked in 1993/4 but I think it is fair to say that the figures have plateaued over the last month. There have been some recent cases of corruption in the police. It's nothing like the problems, thank God, that we experienced in the sixties and seventies, but as the Commissioner would say, any corruption is thoroughly bad and has to be dealt with very firmly. I don't think we should be alarmed about the scale of it but we should certainly be vigilant and the Commissioner of Police is working very hard with the Commissioner Against Corruption to deal with corruption wherever it rears its head. It really does pose - everybody knows it - it really does pose a threat to Hong Kong's livelihood, a threat to Hong Kong's well-being, and a threat to Hong Kong's decency, so we must crack down on it hard.
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