HOW DO YOU think New Yorkers might react if a Hong Kong entrepreneur who had previously passed through New York only on flying visits and spoke no English were to lecture New York businessmen in Cantonese on how their city could become a financial centre for the United States if they modernised their ways?
The reverse happened on Tuesday with a fly-through American executive lecturing members of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce in English on how Hong Kong might become a trade centre for China and I am told, strange to say, that the audience treated him with attention and dignity.
To my way of thinking, any measure of self-respect should have produced from at least one person in that audience the vocal equivalent of a rude bodily noise directed at Mike Eskew, the chairman of parcel delivery service UPS.
For starters, he opened his remarks by saying that Hong Kong was one of the first Asian cities in which UPS established operations. He then went on to describe our city as a hub for goods, information and funds with a strategic position as a gateway to China for foreign companies.
Oh, I see, Mr Eskew, and that no doubt is why you recently chose to move your regional headquarters out of this gateway and to Shanghai. We did not notice. Lay on the honey talk.
He then went on to describe modern manufacturing methods in tones of the amazed consumer who has just discovered them: 'Today I can go online and order a single computer and have it configured exactly the way I want ... The CPU might come from Singapore, the printer from Hong Kong (my emphasis), and the monitor from Taiwan.'