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Chief Secretary: HK must Stay International after China's WTO Entry
Hong Kong must keep an international outlook to benefit fully from China's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the head of the territory's civil service said Thursday.
This would include boosting the standard of English spoken in the territory, chief secretary of administration Donald Tsang said.
"China's accession to the WTO is another golden opportunity for us to grow, whatever the sceptics may claim. The whole of China is our backyard," Tsang said at a business luncheon.
However Hong Kong's people must also adopt an international outlook and ensure the territory remained a friendly Asian city for foreign nationals to stay, he said.
"That means in particular the widespread use of English," he said.
Although Cantonese and Mandarin were important, to be a successful international financial centre "Hong Kong needs to speak more and better English", said Tsang.
He also stressed the necessity of Hong Kong retaining its distinct character, saying "we will not contribute to China's growth by losing our value system and separate identity".
Tsang said he preferred to it view the economic relationship between the two as one of "interdependence" rather than the "looser descriptions including integration, a word the pessimists may see as tantamount to absorption and demise of the two systems."
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