ENG-1990 — Page 32

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SHAPING UP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

and to art. These are areas that can help to build the identity of the Special Administrative Region. Success in sport and a cultural identity are great contributors to community pride. They also involve activities that take many young people abroad and widen their perceptions of the world at large and often give them a better appreciation of things at home.

With increasing leisure will come the ability to pay for new recreational and cultural activities. Much of the present organisation depends heavily on voluntary work. As the activities become more sophisticated there will be an increased demand for full-time trained staff to plan and run them. More people will want to take holidays away from home and there is scope for expansion of the small number of camps into holiday resorts.

For many years the Urban Council has built recreational facilities and the new towns were equipped with them from the start. Some of the institutions needed for upgrading performance are already in place. The Jubilee Sports Centre, the Academy for Performing Arts and town halls in the new towns were built in this first flush of mass interest in leisure activities. Much more will be done in the future to stimulate more local participation.

The speed of development of entertainment media makes it impossible to say anything very meaningful about the way it will go in the long term. I am not sure why Hong Kong has only two radio and two television stations while Hawaii, an island community of a million people, can tune into 32 radio stations and 60 television channels. We are making a great meal over increasing access to television and one more licence will be given for radio. This can be only a beginning.

The increase in leisure will have one of the most profound effects on the quality of life. I say this because of my experience in moving from our five and a half day working week to a five day week when I worked for a time in London. A two day weekend every week, sometimes extended with a public holiday, really opens up the opportunities for activity not concentrated on work. Such indolence may be unheard of in Hong Kong now but it will not be many years into the next century before this is commonplace.

Staying Well

The basic health statistics of Hong Kong are quite outstanding. Life expectancy at birth is now 74 years for men and 80 for women, infant mortality is 6* per thousand live births. These figures are better than those of Britain or America. Infant mortality statistics are a good indicator of general health. In 1950, out of every 1000 babies born live, 100 died before they were one year old. In 1960, infant mortality was 42, in 1970 20, in 1980 12 and in 1990 it was down to 6*. I have watched these figures improve over the years as we used to be attacked by politicians from abroad who would criticise social conditions in Hong Kong. To have cut infant mortality by half every 10 years until it is now one sixteenth of the figure it stood at forty years ago is a measure of the remarkable improvement in the general health of the population. This has been achieved partly by great strides that have been made in medical knowledge but also through the improved standard of living generally.

Part of the success is due to a hospital building programme that has produced over 22 000 hospital beds. The management of these hospitals is to be placed under the new Hospital Authority. With better primary health care there is less need for hospitalisation and it is hoped that improvements in productivity will be achieved as the Hospital

* Provisional figure.