In the next two months, celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Hong Kong special administrative region will be in full swing. We all should feel proud. Together, the people of Hong Kong have defied all the grim predictions of 1997. We have also overcome our own apprehensions. At various times during the transition, foreign observers dished out gloom-and-doom predictions. In their eyes, we were doomed to fail.
We also had our own apprehensions. There were serious concerns about preserving the freedoms that Hong Kong was enjoying and maintaining the Hong Kong dollar's convertibility, about the acceptability of the new SAR passport, the possibility of mainland professionals swarming the city, and possible retribution against civil servants, particularly those in the disciplined services.
To many people, June 30, 1997, was Hong Kong's expiry date. Nothing beyond that date was worth consideration.
Nearly 10 years on, all these predictions and apprehensions have been consigned to history. Good fung shui has little to do with our success as the first community to implement the 'one country, two systems' concept. Both Hong Kong and the central government had spent at least 15 years analysing all aspects of life in Hong Kong. The results of this work are codified in the Basic Law.
Were the first 10 years of the Hong Kong SAR all plain sailing? The answer is 'no'. While none of the 1997-related apprehensions came to pass, we were knocked sideways by challenges, which were unexpected and which we were ill-equipped to handle. The Asian financial crisis was devastating and exposed the structural weaknesses in our economy. Bird flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome were costly in human and financial terms, and there were wake-up calls about our crowded living environment.
The lesson was clear. The worst challenges are often not the ones that we stare in the face, but the ones that we choose to ignore. Now that we have firmly established ourselves as an SAR and parts of our investment markets are chalking up record prices, what lies ahead? Are we ignoring hidden challenges for which Hong Kong will again be caught unprepared?