Anson Chan
Former Chief Secretary for Administration
At the Asia Society Luncheon (April 19, 2001)
Re: http://www.rthk.org.hk/elearning/betterenglish/speech_text_textonly5.htm
Ronnie, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
First of all, Ronnie, thank you for your very kind and warm welcome. All I can say is that it is wonderful to be part of Hong Kong's history and I hope that history will be kind to me. I'd also like to thank all of you for being present here at this luncheon today at the tail end of one's career to be received in this manner and by such an illustrious gathering is an honour indeed. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I would also like to thank you and the Asia Society for your unstinting support for Hong Kong. You and all those associated with Asia Society have been stalwart in your confidence in Hong Kong during the most difficult times, and the establishment of the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre in 1990 speaks eloquently to that.
And I want to thank you also for the invitation to address this large audience today, just 11 days before my retirement from my current post in the civil service of which I have had the privilege to be a member for 38 years, 7 months and two days. This is the last major speech I shall give in my official capacity - a valedictory, I suppose - but it will not, I daresay, be the last time I speak up for Hong Kong.
As I mulled over what I should say today, quite a few thoughts went through my mind. I looked back on some of the good days and bad, the great changes, the moments of high peaks and deep troughs. But I always came back to the sense of excitement and achievement associated with Hong Kong's great post-war success in which I have been fortunate enough to have played a small part.
But how to encompass all this in the short time we have after this splendid lunch? A speech packed with reminiscences? A shopping list packaging our progress over the last 40 years? A "kiss and tell" speech revealing some real or imagined secrets or scandals from the past? Sorry, that's not my style.
So, I have decided to do what I usually do, and that is to speak frankly on a number of issues about which I feel strongly. I feel strongly about them because they are important to the people of Hong Kong, the future success of the SAR and, by extension, to the contribution the SAR can make to our nation.
In short, I want to ask the people of Hong Kong what values they want to protect and preserve in the SAR. I want to ask them to think about those things that give us the edge over our competitors in the region, including cities in the Mainland like Shanghai. And I intend to answer my own questions by saying what I believe they should be. I don't think anyone in this great hall, or outside it for that matter, will be greatly surprised to hear what I believe those values to be. I have been espousing them in one form or another for most of my public life.
But before I do so, I want to indulge in just a little bit of nostalgia. After nearly four decades in the civil service, I think I've earned at least that much. I was looking at figures the other day which drew some comparisons of life in Hong Kong back in 1962, when I joined the civil service, with the situation as it is today.
For example, in 1962 great parts of the New Territories still moved to the rhythm of the seasons of planting and harvest. Buffalo could still be seen in the paddy fields. The population stood at 600,000. Today, there are 3.4 million people living in nine modern high rise new towns beyond the Lion Rock. The fulcrum of our urban metropolis has shifted dramatically in the space of a generation.