I READ with increasing incredulity the utterances of our business leaders about the Government and the economy.
You would think that it was the Government that set the pace of economic development, that through some carelessness it had let growth slip, that it should now do 'something' to get it going again.
The truth is that the Government has never run the economy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has prospered through the enterprise and hard work of its people. We have been through some really tough times in the past but it has not been the Government that pulled us through.
In 1951, when Hong Kong lived by entrepot trade with China, and the United Nations put an embargo on trade with China, it was not the Government that stimulated the growth of industry to take the place of trade. It was entrepreneurs, including the father of several of our present business leaders, who saw the opportunities and changed the whole complexion of the economy so that Hong Kong became one of the world's leading exporters of manufactured goods.
It was not the Government that suggested that wigs were a great idea so that textile manufacturers became wig makers overnight - or, when the bottom dropped out of that market, that led the conversion to electronics.
It was not the Government, in the 1970s, that saw the new opportunities created by our geographical position, our banks, our legal system and our communications (all, except the courts, run by private enterprise) to develop financial services.
