ENG-1995 — Page 24

1 THE WAY WE ARE

A personal reflection by The Baroness Dunn, who between 1976

and 1995, was variously a Member of the Legislative and Executive Councils, becoming Senior Member of each body. She was also Chairman of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council for nine years. In the private sector, Baroness Dunn achieved prominence as a business executive.

In late 1995 Baroness Dunn announced plans to relocate in the United Kingdom with her husband, the former Attorney General Mr Michael Thomas, where she will continue to work on Hong Kong's behalf as a Life Peer in the House of Lords.

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INTROSPECTION is not a Hong Kong characteristic. It is certainly not one of mine. But as I prepare for a new phase of my life based in England, and as my beloved Hong Kong moves steadily towards the final page of a remarkable chapter and the first page of a new one, I find myself reflecting more and more about our society.

What is it about Hong Kong that enabled it to become the world's eighth-largest trading economy? The world's largest container port? The world's largest producer of timepieces? The world's freest economy out of 140 economies studied by the American research institute, the Heritage Foundation? What magic enabled its people to achieve in the short space of 50 years a GDP per capita of more than US$24,000 higher than some European Union nations -to be able to expect an average_life span of 75 for men and 81 for women, and for some of them to rank among the world's league table of the richest and most successful?

When I travel the world, one of the questions most frequently ask of me is how I, a Chinese woman, managed to reach the top of the corporate and political ladders of a traditional and conservative society. Outside Hong Kong, even in advanced and enlightened Western countries, my professional and political career is considered exceptional. In Hong Kong, it is commonplace. Look at Anson Chan, Rosanna Wong and so many other Hong Kong women who have reached the top of their professions on merit.

I think there is a straightforward reason for our success and a more complex one. The straightforward reason is that, in Hong Kong, government provides the framework for a free-enterprise system to operate efficiently, while the entre- preneurial flair and hard work of a highly motivated immigrant population enable them to take full advantage of its opportunities.

We have a low and simple system of taxation. We have a trusted legal system and courts of integrity and independence. These features have provided confidence for entrepreneurs to invest their capital and labour. And the community has prospered as a whole.

The more complex reason for our success is something more difficult to define. It is the set of values, beliefs and principles upon which we have become accustomed to base our dealings with one another and our attitudes to those who govern us.

For instance, when we talk of freedom we do not mean absolute liberty to follow our own wishes or instincts without any restraint. When we talk of a free society I think most of us mean a society in which each individual is free to pursue his own interests within the bounds of what society as a whole has come to accept as reasonable. Nowadays we accept also that a society cannot really be a free society

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