Bulletin Spring‧Summer 2001

An Address by Dr . the Honourable Anson Chan, GBM,CBE ,JP On behalf of all the honorary graduates, I thank The Chinese University of Ho ng Kong for the honour you have bestowed upon us. It gives us great pleasure t o be here and we look forward to a close association w i t h this fin e university. We live in troubled times. W i t h deadl y precision, the terrorist attacks in N ew York and Washington on 11th September have rocked the very f ounda t i on of civilized society. Their reverberations have been felt throughout the wo r ld and Ho ng Kong has not been spared . For Hong Kong people , perhaps this was all too mu ch to take , following o n the heels of three years of difficulties caused by the Asian financial turmoil. Somewhere we seem to have lost our way. It is ill my view just as dangerous t o be over-optimistic and complacent as it is to be undu ly pessimistic. Hong Kong is no stranger to adversities . We coped w i t h the U N embargo on trade w i th China in the fifties , w i t h the riots of the sixties , the oil crisis of the seventies, and the currency crisis i n the eighties. Each time, we demonstrated our resilience and indomitable spirit, an ability to spring back' a 'can do' spirit that ha s earned us the respect and admiration of many countries. We can do so again provided we face up to our problems, focus on the big picture, remember our strengths and reinvent ourselves t o deal w i t h the challenges of the day. Consider our strengths: firstly Hong Kong has location and one of the best infrastructure in the region — a state- of-the-art airport, the world's busiest container port and a first class telecommunications network. Nature has given Ho ng Kong the bes t deep water port along the entire South China coast South China has been the main engin e of growth on the mainland and is likel y to remain so in the foreseeable future. We are the natural conduit for trade in the Pearl River Delta. I n addition, H o ng Kong is also a business hub for the entire east Asian region. Once the economies i n the region pick up, we stand to benefit provided we ensure that our infrastructure remains up to scratch and we keep our costs down. 53