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Mr Patten said he wished to stress that the Government would be as unequivocal in a positive direction in the help that was given to the Chief Executive (Designate).
"It is sometimes suggested that we would give more help to a successful candidate whom we had favoured over other rivals for this onerous post.
"That is nonsense. We have no candidate. The selection is not for us. We have not, will not, and would not seek to interfere in the selection process. Whoever is the winner, our open-handed support will be the same," said the Governor.
End
Governor's vision for the future
The Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, said today (Wednesday) that he suspected that his successor, the Chief Executive (Designate), would be increasingly preoccupied over the coming years with what he called the second of Hong Kong's transitions.
"We have been going through two transitions in recent years," Mr Patten said in describing "a vision for the future" in his 1996 Policy Address to the Legislative Council.
"The first is the transition from British to Chinese sovereignty. The second is the transition from a struggling developing economy to a great international business and financial centre - and then to what?
"What is next? Some argue, not without good cause, that Hong Kong can become the principal financial centre and commercial dynamo on this continent, the New York of Asia. It is not a fanciful notion, but we still have some way to go."
In some ways Hong Kong was playing a similar role already to that which New York played at the turn of the century when it helped to open up the rest of the North American continent and to funnel know-how and investment to it.
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