ASIA's Hope For Hong Kong

[nyeinchan@xxxxxxxxxxx]

(From New York Time) July 3rd, 1997.
By ANDREW POLLACK



But as Asian neighbors observed the fireworks in Hong Kong on Monday 
night, their thoughts were far from the issue that has preoccupied the 
United States -- whether Communist China will crack down on civil 
liberties in Hong Kong. 

"That is not our priority," said Chang Chul Kyoon, deputy director 
general for Asia-Pacific affairs in South Korea's Foreign Ministry. "As 
far as Hong Kong is concerned, economics is the No. 1 issue for the 
Korean government." 

South Korea, which became democratic only in the last decade, knows what 
it feels like to be pressed by Washington on human rights. And many 
other Asian nations still have authoritarian governments. 

The difference in the attitude toward the human-rights issue reflects 
philosophical differences over economic development. While the United 
States and Western Europe tend to believe that political freedom goes 
hand in hand with capitalism, many governments in Asia, as exemplified 
most by Singapore, believe that free-wheeling personal liberty is not 
necessary for economic development and might even be inimical to it. 

The Straits Times, a Singapore newspaper, practically gloated over the 
fact that Hong Kong had not already collapsed in the years leading up to 
this week's return to Chinese rule. 

"The British nation's surrogate mourners -- the Western media, human 
rights lobbyists and crusading politicians in Washington and parts of 
the European Union -- had intimated what they wished to see happen to 
Hong Kong in the run-up to July 1, 1997," the newspaper said in an 
editorial Tuesday. "An exodus of talent, the stock and property sectors 
on their knees, civil unrest, hostile noises from Beijing." 

But, the newspaper said, the Hong Kong stock market is at a record high, 
property prices are soaring, and emigres are returning to a vibrant Hong 
Kong from "sleepwalking" places like Australia and Canada. "And China 
will no doubt again thwart the ill-wish of its detractors in the months 
and years ahead," it said. 

If there is concern in Asia about Hong Kong's future, it does not seem 
to be so much about whether the press will remain free but about whether 
Hong Kong and China will be a harder place in which to do business. 

Optimists say they expect Hong Kong to remain a capitalist bastion and 
to influence China to adopt more economic reforms. 

"People say that Hong Kong might be China-ized, but on the contrary, we 
expect that China will be Hong Kong-ized," said Takeshi Kondo, general 
manager of the office of political and economic research at Itochu 
Corp., a huge Japanese trading company with many investments in Hong 
Kong and China. 

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the Japanese consumer electronics 
giant known for its Panasonic brand, plans to expand its Hong Kong 
operations to help manage the more than two dozen factories it has built 
in China over the last decade, said Yukio Shotoku, a manager in charge 
of China. 

But many Japanese business executives apparently believe that Chinese 
rule will make it more difficult to do business in Hong Kong, replacing 
the rule of law established by the British with China's more arbitrary 
Government decision-making. 

In a poll of companies with Hong Kong operations taken by the Nihon 
Keizai Shimbun, Japan's leading financial newspaper, 31 percent of the 
Japanese companies thought Hong Kong's business environment would be 
worse in five years than it is now, while 16 percent said it would be 
better and 52 percent predicted it would be unchanged. That made the 
Japanese companies as a whole more pessimistic than the U.S. and 
European companies, only 18 percent of which thought the business 
environment would worsen. 

China has attracted huge outside investments because its 1.2 billion 
people make it potentially the world's largest market. But it is no fun 
to do business there, what with corruption, the emphasis on connections, 
restrictions and tariffs, and the pressure to transfer one's technology 
to a Chinese company in return for being allowed to set up shop. 

Japanese automobile manufacturers, which raced into Southeast Asia and 
now control nearly 90 percent of some markets in the region, have been 
so wary about moving into China that they have fallen behind European 
and American rivals there. And some companies that invested heavily in 
China are having second thoughts as profits have proved elusive. 

Direct investment in China from Japan fell 35 percent in the last fiscal 
year, according to Japan's Ministry of Finance. Investment in Hong Kong 
continued to rise, but that, too, could change, said Dr. C.H. Kwan, an 
Asian economy specialist at the Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo. 

"The recent trend is that many companies are losing interest in China," 
Kwan said. "If you lose interest in China, the importance of Hong Kong 
declines." 


"THERE WILL BE NO REAL DEMOCRACY IF WE CAN'T GURANTEE THE RIGHTS OF THE 
MINORITY ETHNIC PEOPLE.  ONLY UNDERSTANDING THEIR SUFFERING AND HELPING 
THEM TO EXERCISE THEIR RIGHTS WILL ASSIST PREVENTING FROM THE 
DISINTEGRATION AND THE SESESSION."  "WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THEIR 
STRENGTH, WE CAN'T TOPPLE THE SLORC AND BURMA WILL NEVER BE IN PEACE."


_______________________________________________________
Get Private Web-Based Email Free http://www.hotmail.com