TNAG-2606-FCO40-3797-International-support-from-Japan-regarding-the-future-of-Hon-1992 — Page 45

journalists, diplomats and others. What I have been impressed is the

strong will and the determination of the Hong Kong government and,

above all, the people of Hong Kong, to prepare and lay a solid foundation

for the stability, prosperity and development of the future of Hong

Kong. They are making maximum efforts towards that. The legal

framework of guarantee for the future of Hong Kong is established by

the British-China Joint Declaration and the Basic Law of Hong Kong

under the historic concept of "one country two systems". They

provide that the current social and economic systems and the life-style

will remain unchanged for 50 years. But I feel strongly that this strong

will and determination of the people is the real guarantee for the future

of Hong Kong. And as long as the people of Hong Kong move ahead with

confidence, their future is bright and the attractions of Hong Kong will

remain or rather increase. Hong Kong may be small geographically, but

the size of economy is very big, perhaps much bigger than people

generally tend to think. The size of GDP of Hong Kong is 70.9 billion US

dollars in 1990, which means as much as 19% of the size of GDP of China of

the same year, which is 369.8 billion US dollars. The size of GDP of

Guangdong Province is 30.8 billion US dollars. If you add up Hong Kong

and Guangdong Province, total size is 101.8 billion US dollars, which is

27.5% of the size of China and bigger than the size of any of ASEAN

countries. Just imagine that the economic area of the size of 19% or 27.5%

of China is situated south of her next to each other. And every one

knows the foreign currency assets of Hong Kong; 29 billion US dollars as

of the end of 1991, which is compared to that of China being 44.3 billion

8

Page 45Page 46