XN000022-1997-04-10 — Page 3

- 1

Transcript of the Governor

Following is the transcript of the question and answer session by the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, at the lunch hosted by the British Chamber of Commerce in Central this (Thursday) afternoon:

Question: Governor, when you think of Hong Kong today and when you think of the job that you have done over the past five years, and when you think of Hong Kong in the future, what keeps you awake at night?

+

Governor: Brandy, usually. I'm quite a good sleeper but it's and I'm not a great worrier, but it's an extremely important question. Of all the issues which we debate back and forth, and nobody's absolutely right and nobody's absolutely wrong, the one I suppose that most concerns me is autonomy. I know that Britain has been the sovereign power in Hong Kong. But you know very well that by and large for 99 things out of a 100, Hong Kong has been run in Hong Kong, and for the last few years, I've run with the exception of the Attorney-General, I've run an entirely Chinese government. The success for our policies in area after area belong to local Hong Kong Chinese professional public servants. I hope that Hong Kong continues to run its own affairs in the same way after 1997 because I think one of the reasons for Hong Kong's success is that there's a Hong Kong chop on what we've been doing. While the rest of the world entertained a rather fanciful and not very successful notions on economic policy, while Britain flirted with those sort of policies, Hong Kong went its own way. Governments were elected in Britain committed to all sorts of economic insanity. But Hong Kong went on running its economy in a way which has produced today's success. So I suppose that if I were to wake up at night, the thing that would most worry me was I would want to be assured that that degree of autonomy would continue into the future. One post-script: Every year I go to a dinner-dance given by the Administrative Services Association, given by the corp of our civil service and before the dinner I meet a cross-section of the new graduate entrants into our civil service. One of the important things about public service in Hong Kong is that it's properly esteemed in the community, it's properly rewarded and as a result we get outstanding recruits year after year. There's no reason to suppose that the people making policy, the Hong Kongers running Hong Kong in the future will be every bit as talented, won't be more talented than they've been in the past. So I just hope that Hong Kong will be trusted to get on with its own affairs, not just rhetorically, not just polemically but day to day, hour by hour, and if that happens, Hong Kong will take its place as one of the very greatest cities of this and the next century.