TNAG-1307-FCO40-1664-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1984 — Page 18

to Rotary Club Hong Kong South at he Hong Kong Country Club

1997

Before I start I better give you my qualifications for holding

forth about 1997 and all that. Although the colour of my skin.

and the shape of my nose mark me as a member of the 2% minority

population, I have now lived in this part of the world for 36

years. And during 30 of those years, I worked in Chinese

companies under Chinese bosses or with Chinese partners and

therefore a lot of Chinese manners, customs and even superstitions

have rubbed off on me. I represent part of the genius of Hong

Kong (I am not claiming to be a genius myself) which mixed a

cocktail of East and West and came up with a brand new type of

I have also paid my dues to Hong Kong by a great

entrepreneur.

deal of hard community work. Moreover, although I am fairly

ancient, I was not around when the British took Hong Kong, and

I was also not around when the New Territories lease was signed

and can therefore really not be blamed for either.

Although this is not part of my argument in parenthesis here I

would like to make a plea to all concerned, but especially to

Peking, not to ignore the minority I represent in it's future

planning. I believe we have proved over the years that we have

something to contribute to the ingredients of this pressure.

cooker we call Hong Kong.

After this somewhat long winded, but necessary introduction,

let me get to the point: As far as China is concerned the 1997

problem is deceptively simple. Hong Kong is geographically a

part of China, it's population is 98% Chinese (but mark this

well: consisting of many different Chinese nationalities),

was obtained by Britain under duress and therefore it must

it

Chi