'I was quite happy in Shanghai, carrying on the way I had through most of my adolescence. I was academically unambitious and spent most of my Shanghai nights in pursuit of worldly pleasures. Under Japanese occupation, that meant violating the curfew, as I regularly did.

'It was a perilous pastime,' he said, his address laced with his customary wry, often self-deprecating humour.

'My father, apprehending the danger, adroitly arranged for me to be 'Shanghaied' to Washington . . . 'Your mother advises me that you have a mind,' he wrote me. 'My advice to you is to find it and fill it. There is nothing for you at home'.'

Among those who laughed loudest was Georgetown's most famous alumni, President Bill Clinton. 'I thank you for your generosity. I loved your speech,' Mr Clinton said, before praising Mr Hotung's 'noble' efforts in East Timor, where he has provided a hospital ship to help refugees from the recent violence. The pair met briefly later, the latest in several exchanges during Mr Clinton's eight years in office.

For Mr Hotung, it was a fine moment. 'I'm sure they wondered 'who is this derelict?' . . . But it seemed to all come off rather well,' he said later.

Three years ago, decades of private effort in building links between leaders in Beijing, Hong Kong and Washington were put at risk when Mr Hotung found himself caught up in congressional investigations into foreign influence-buying under the Clinton administration. A US$100,000 political donation by Mr Hotung's US-born wife, Patricia, and a meeting between Mr Hotung and then-deputy national security adviser Sandy Berger were dragged up in congressional hearings. A grand-jury investigation followed. Republicans, led by prominent Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, could smell blood as they sought to link mainland interests to a string of White House coffees and campaign contributions arranged by prominent Asians. An internal White House memo preparing the ground for Mr Hotung's meeting was revealed. It described him as 'fabulously wealthy' and a 'bit off the wall'.

As a US citizen with money in her own right, Mrs Hotung was acting within her rights. No action was taken, and she confirmed to the Sunday Morning Post last week that she is once again donating, this time to the presidential campaign of Vice-President Al Gore.

Relaxing in a Washington office after the speech, Mr Hotung said in a rare interview that he would not be letting the affair stop his work. 'It was a very difficult time,' he said, acknowledging an extensive investigation but skirting the details. 'I am glad it is all over.'

Mr Hotung is now again busy building up his links in the US capital in his quiet, low-key fashion. The latest Georgetown donation is his second to the institution, and it is likely to be followed with more as the Eric K. Hotung International Law Centre swings into operation. The centre will include an international library and faculty offices, as well as academic and research programmes. It will sponsor places for young mainland students and officials keen to acquire the international legal training that entry to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will demand.

Like many close to the Sino-US relationship, Mr Hotung is happy WTO entry is imminent but knows it will not be without its challenges, for both Hong Kong and the mainland. Reflecting on a tough year in Sino-US relations, he said he was confident things were moving in the right direction. He likes to quote President Jiang Zemin, one of several mainland leaders he knows personally. Mr Hotung has, pointedly, never invested in any business interests on the mainland but runs several charity ventures there. 'I'm philosophical . . . There will be difficult times and cloudy days, but things are moving in the right direction. Everything will come together,' he said.

Corruption, he believes, is among the biggest challenge facing the mainland, despite high-profile attempts to crack down, and this could continue to imperil any new business relationship with the outside world.

On Hong Kong, Mr Hotung said things had gone better than he feared before the handover. 'I was expecting much more of a backlash,' he said. 'I was expecting more 'nights of the long knives' . . . It has been much more sanguine.' The leadership on the mainland had been successful in keeping provincial leaders and 'other riff-raff' from flooding into Hong Kong and seeking to meddle. Even so, he is still concerned that 'people close to the top' in Beijing had been allowed to exert too much pressure on Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa at times.

Mr Jiang, he said, was now taking a much greater interest in making sure things were working as they were supposed to.

'Mr Tung is a solid leader . . . Left alone he would do a great job,' he said.

Mr Hotung said a second term for Mr Tung would prove useful for him to take advantage of all he had learned in the past three years, but Mr Hotung said he would have liked Mr Tung to have been more 'dynamic' in meeting the fears of ordinary Hong Kong people.

The Government's new 'modus operandi' still needed to be strengthened. 'Some things have been unacceptable to the Hong Kong people,' he said. Mr Hotung singles out judicial independence, particularly questions surrounding the failure to put former publisher Sally Aw Sian in court along with her executives following the fraud probe at the defunct Hong Kong Standard.

The mainland's imminent entry into the WTO only intensified the need for Hong Kong to act with a new sense of dynamism and independence. Suddenly, people seemed uncertain, he warned. 'I have read that Hong Kong is the lowest-child-producing place in the region. It is an indication that people are not confident,' he said. 'Hong Kong must act out its role as an independent place . . . We will have to do something about the education system and English . . . We are going to lose a great deal of our competitiveness.'

Despite his concerns, Mr Hotung seems outwardly to be a content, relaxed soul. He seems to delight in the well-told anecdote, and he has a few. A functional white-cotton handkerchief thrust with mobile phone into the breast pocket of his blazer hints at a disarming lack of pretension. Large jade cuff-links are the only outward hint of his great wealth.

Together with his wife, now in a wheelchair after a stroke, Mr Hotung travels to Washington four or five times a year. He stays in a large six-bedroom home on the banks of the Potomac that he purchased from Senator Ted Kennedy for nearly US$6 million. With nine bathrooms, tennis courts and its own river access, Mr Hotung was happy to pay well-over-the-market odds - another point that raised congressional eyebrows.

The deal made headlines when one of Mr Hotung's Gurkha guards found himself pinned to the wall by a mysterious force, thought to be a female spirit. Reports surfaced that Mr Hotung had ordered a complete redesign to re-align the property's feng shui. If anyone suffered bad feng shui, several local wags suggested, it was Mr Kennedy, one of the US' most controversial politicians. No alterations have yet taken place.

'When we completed the deal, he called up and said we'd better have dinner . . . I said I didn't know whether such a bright and erudite scholar would want to spend time in the company of a C-minus graduate from Georgetown. I'd completely forgotten that he'd been kicked out of Harvard as a younger man,' Mr Hotung said with a chuckle. 'We had a few drinks and got on very well. He is a very nice man.'

Mr Hotung seems to delight in a bit of local political gossip and seems happy that the dark days of 1997 are behind him so he can enjoy the capital to its fullest. 'It is always good to be here,' he said. 'Washington is the Rome of our age . . . All roads lead to it.'