Hong Kong Secretary Henry Tang Addresses the World Pension Forum: “Recreating the Hong Kong Miracle”

May 10th, 2004

Excerpt below reproduced from GovHK Press Release.

Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to join you today and to welcome you all to Hong Kong. I understand many of you have travelled half-way around the world to be here, attracted by the double-billing of Hong Kong and Shanghai, China's two great commercial cities. My congratulations to the World Pension Forum for such a visionary approach.

Hong Kong - Asia's world city

You have chosen as your theme 'Recreating the Hong Kong Miracle'. This is very flattering but, at the risk of sounding immodest, perhaps I should counter by asking: "Which one?" Here in Hong Kong, Asia's world city, you will find an unmistakably Asian city with a distinctly Western flavour - free and open; cosmopolitan and safe; local savvy combined with global know-how and connections. But, getting to where we are today has not been easy. It has involved several successive re-inventions: from a simple trading entrepot, to a competitive manufacturing base to a premier service hub, serving regional and worldwide commercial activities, including freight and logistics, trade and tourism, and, of course, international finance.

Our success as a society and an economy rests on a unique combination of economic fundamentals and institutional strengths. Some of you might have been familiar with our rule of law; a free and open market; complete free flow of capital and information; a level playing field; and a clean and efficient administration. Adding to this is our strategic location as the pre-eminent two-way platform to and from the Mainland, and our state-of-the-art infrastructure providing physical and virtual connections to the rest of the world. And you have the key ingredients of the Hong Kong success story, or the 'Hong Kong Miracle' as you have so kindly put it….

See link for full text of the speech.