FREE TRADE HAS long been flesh and blood to Hong Kong; but that Hong Kong is also important to the concept and defence of free trade is perhaps less well known.
Hong Kong's status as an entrepot means it has little room to vent the protectionist impulses that clog even the world's freest economies. The White House of United States President George W. Bush, for example, might preach the miracles of open markets and global commerce but that does not stop him slapping a 30 per cent tax on steel imports from Asia and Europe to protect a lumbering US industry - and domestic votes.
Free traders who howl at such hypocrisy still speak of Hong Kong as a beacon of hope; a glittering utopia to light the path through the long dark days of the global trading bureaucracy.
In trade circles, Hong Kong's quiet trade leadership is personified by Stuart Harbinson, the SAR's permanent representative at the World Trade Organisation's headquarters in Geneva.
A veteran of the eight-year Uruguay round to cut and simplify tariffs and rules, Mr Harbinson has become a key player in the body during the many tensions of the last few years. He has chaired the WTO's dispute settlement body, resolving an ugly banana war.
After the failure of the 1999 Seattle session to launch a new round amid rancour inside the meetings and violence outside, Mr Harbinson found himself chairing the battered WTO's General Council of trade ministers in Doha, Qatar, late last year.
With nothing short of the future of the body at stake, an ambitious new round was launched under a strict timetable for completion by January 1, 2005. There is little room for celebration and Mr Harbinson's already warm seat has just become a little hotter.
