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Records still to set
Hong Kong people will scale new heights, break new records and set even higher standards in the coming century, according to the recently retired Senior Member of the Executive Council, the Baroness Dunn.
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She makes these remarks in the latest edition of the Hong Kong Annual Report Hong Kong 1996-- Which will be published next week.
A government spokesman said today (Tuesday) that one of the world's most remarkable developments had taken place in Hong Kong since the end of World War II, when the first in the current series of yearbooks was written, and had involved some quite remarkable people.
"Prominent among them is the Baroness Dunn, who between 1976 and 1995, was in succession Senior Member of the Legislative and Executive Councils," he said. "She was also Chairman of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council for nine years and achieved noted success in the private sector."
Before her departure from Hong Kong, Baroness Dunn was invited to write the yearbook's Review Chapter, in which she picks out the key ingredients of Hong Kong's success.
She reflects on the qualities that have made Hong Kong the way it is and on the territory's prospects for "the first page of its next chapter".
As a community leader involved in major decisions from the 1970s to the '90s, Baroness Dunn says strenuous efforts are made to achieve consensus on an issue. But, she says, Hong Kong has operated so that when general agreement is not possible, all
people should feel that they have had a fair chance to put their point of view forward and that it has been considered.
Further, the existence of a structure for hearing appeals is a brake on ill- considered action by any authority, she says. Commercial life also operates within a system of rules? the rule of law? which Baroness Dunn says is a very important factor in facilitating the conduct of business and in attracting business to Hong Kong.
She added: "Our success has demonstrated that there is plenty of confidence in our society but that confidence is little use if we cannot have confidence in the rules of the game and that they will not be changed overnight."