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and to varying degrees their fortunes in Hong Kong, but the early years were extremely hard. Hong Kong had been devastated by the War. Early efforts to re- establish Hong Kong as an entrepot trading centre were completely scappered by the Korean war and the trade embargo on China.
So Hong Kong had to shift from being a trading centre to a cheap manufacturing centre, and then steadily over the years it moved up the ladder. It moved up the ladder from manufacturing trunkets, from manufacturing plastic flowers in the case of Mr Li Ka Shing, to manufacturing computers as investment and hard work added value.
The opening up of China meant that it became cheaper to manufacture there in Southern China or elsewhere in Asia, so without government interference or government management, Hong Kong then shifted again from being a manufacturing- based economy to being a service-based economy, employing about four million men and women in its own factories in Southern China.
The economic odds must have seemed to be regularly stacked against Hong Kong but camped on the foothills of volcanic events to the North, Hong Kong showed all the resilience and adaptability of a refugee community. Governed by the values of a free society, its mainly Cantonese and Shanghainese people thrived, prospered, lived better, lived longer, travelled further, were educated to increasingly high standards from Wanchai to Winnipeg, to Winchester to Buckingham.
On my first outing with my family to a local restaurant, we arrived on the quayside in Sai Kung, which some of you will know. We went to choose our own fish to take back and have them cooked in the restaurant, and were surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd of well-wishers. The first little girl was pushed through the crowd to be touched by the Governor. I asked her proud father behind her, 'where does your daughter go to school?' - 'Wycombe Abbey', he replied!
What are the values which have governed Hong Kong? Why has Hong Kong done so well? Hong Kong is a free society, open to argument and ideas as well as trade. It is a plural society with a growing civic consciousness and all the institutions of civil society: newspapers, professions, churches, non-governmental organisations, political parties. It operates under the Rule of Law which applies to all alike, governors and governed. It has impartial courts and a disciplined, clean police force. It has a Civil Service, mostly Chinese not least in its senior positions. There is only one other senior official in the Government apart from me, the Attorney General, who is British. I run a Chinese Government which operates on the same principles of meritocratic advancement as our own Civil Service.
The Government of Hong Kong for almost half of century has run one of the most open economies in the world, probably the most open. Adam Smith has been in
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