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There are problems, uncertainties on the horizon. Worries about 1997. About the transition. Worries about the continuing rise in unemployment. About the slow- down in our growth, a slow-down of half a per cent to what I heard someone the other day - he can't have been in Europe or America recently - call only five per cent.

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But we can keep our economy pounding away creating jobs, creating opportunities, creating real wealth for everyone if we hold on to the economic fundamentals that have made Hong Kong one of the wonders of the world. Open markets. Sound public finances. Low taxes. Clean government.

I'm determined that the economy that I hand on to my successor in 1997 will be as strongly placed as possible to take continuing advantage of the economic revolution which is sweeping through Asia.

We need to be self-confident about our more fundamental values as well.

Do people admire us just because of the skyscrapers, the classy shops, the export figures? No - they admire us because of all the signs and attributes of a decent, civilised society.

Impartial justice. Professions. Churches. Voluntary organisations. Free speech. A government that has to account for itself. And, yes, open, public, political debate - conducted, let it be said, in a remarkably moderate way.

We're seeing that, just now, in the election campaign for the new Legislative Council. Those elections will be the most democratic - just as Hong Kong was promised would happen in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law the most democratic in our history.

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And will they be, as some suggest, the last free elections in Hong Kong? Of course, they won't. Just look around you at the people of Hong Kong. And look around other countries too. That idea is absurd.

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When I was talking to one old veteran last week -he'd lost friends here, and in camps elsewhere I asked him what thoughts he would take away from here. He paused for a moment, and then looked out of the plate glass window of the hotel reception room where we were talking, looked out towards Happy Valley and the high rises and the hills beyond.

"Well", he said, "it speaks for itself really. I'm glad it was all worth it."

Awful, dreadful, as it was, fighting and sacrificing for freedom was worth it.

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