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9.
We run our own economy, and do it very well. When we first started collecting statistics our GDP roughly what we are worth as a community - was HK$7 billion. Today, it's HK$1,111 billion. And the figures per head make even more startling reading. From US$410 to US$23,210. That puts us right up with the best-off countries in the world.
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Today, we are growing at about 5 per cent a year. We've got huge financial reserves they belong to us and no one else. Inflation has fallen back to half what it was five years ago. Our taxes are among the lowest in the world. Crime is low by international standards. And we've been developing our housing, welfare, health and education to match our economic performance. We've raised spending on education - which is where about a fifth of public spending goes - by 25 per cent over and above inflation since 1992. And we've increased spending on the elderly by 55 per cent in real terms. What better beneficiaries of extra spending that we can afford than the retired who helped create today's prosperity and the young who will create tomorrow's?
Hong Kong will go on winning the prizes, provided that we go on following the same winning formula. And why should anyone want to change the policies that have brought success. Above all, a fair, friendly and clean environment for business.
The second thing I want to say about the days when the counting will have stopped is that Hong Kong is supposed to be just as free then as it is today. That's what the treaty says. That's what the Basic Law says.
Just as free, not almost as free.
So, if you want to write to the newspapers in the same way that you would today, well that should be no problem. If you want to speak out, go to a meeting, take part in an orderly demonstration - not that many do- that's fine, too. Now as I've just said not many people actually want to do these things, but most people want to live in a society where those who choose to do these things can. We've all got a pretty clear idea of what life is like in places where people aren't allowed to do things like that. When they are warned off if they try, or put in prison, or worse.
And what holds everything together is the rule of law. Not just rules. Not just laws. But the rule of law to which I'm subject, the government is subject, just as you are. Think of some of the issues on which people have taken us to court in the last year or so. Freedom of speech. Electoral arrangements. Vietnamese migrants. There aren't some areas so sensitive that the government rules unchallenged. The best defence against arbitrary government, unfair government, is the rule of law.
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