ENG-1972 — Page 18

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Review: A Better Tomorrow

Hong Kong has crammed a great deal of progress into a short historical span. Other places have had the luxury of being able to develop at a leisurely pace over centuries but Hong Kong has come of age only in the last few decades. Its growth has been by any standards phenomenal.

In 1841 when the British first arrived, it was regarded as a ‘piece of useless granite with no water and nothing to commend it'. But Hong Kong is as hardy as the tight scrubby bush which clings to its slopes. It is above all a survivor through typhoons, floods, and trade embargoes. It responds to challenge, it rises above adversity.

Hong Kong for long has been a problem of people—too many people. It has also been a problem of space-lack of space. Typically, however, Hong Kong has turned the problem of people into an asset. People are its wealth. They provide the brains, the enterprise, the muscle for industry. Hong Kong has imaginatively solved the problem of its space shortage. It has carved down mountains and dumped them into the sea to become good flat land for building. In the face of world embargoes, it changed its role from an entrepôt to a world trade centre. It bustles with activity, it pulses with life.

To the casual visitor, it is a shoppers paradise, bat-winged junks in a dazzling harbour, glaring neon signs, the world of Suzie Wong, clattering mahjong tiles and 24-hour tailoring. To the late Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, it was one of the most vivid and exciting cities he had seen. 'It seems to have everything'. To another author, Harold Ingrams, commissioned by Her Majesty's Colonial Office in 1950 to write a book on the territory, it was 'altogether a splendid place humming with vitality and progress'.

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But to the people who live here, it is more, much more. For many of the older people, it is a place which has offered them a second chance to earn a living, and to raise a family in a stable environment. To the younger people more than half the population—it is an expanding community of growing affluence. And there is a growing expectancy among them for something more.

The last review reflectively regarded 10 years of progress in Hong Kong and marked the departure of Sir David Trench after seven-and-a-half years as Governor and Commander-in-Chief. Tallying the credit record, the review's author wrote of the 'peak of prosperity and opportunity unprecedented in its history' which Hong Kong had achieved under Sir David's administration.

He went on: "The task that lies ahead is to ensure that the efforts of both the community and the government are used in the properly planned and common