Hongkongers should stay positive about the economy and opportunities in the city instead of "protesting so much", to set a good example to their children, a daughter of late shipping tycoon Pao Yue-kong says.
Anna Pao Sohmen also urged locals to take more constructive actions, however small, to save the environment, such as avoiding the creation of more waste.
Pao Sohmen was speaking yesterday ahead of the annual July 1 march next week, for which pan-democrats had been expecting more parents to turn up with their children. The talk at the Foreign Correspondents' Club was titled "Has Y.K. Pao and Deng Xiaoping's vision of modern China been realised?"
She recalled how her father, as owner of the world's biggest fleet in the 1970s, met China's paramount leader Deng and presented a skipping rope as a Christmas gift to British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
"He left behind his positive attitude, his pragmatic approach and, above all, his sense of humour. A lot of these are the values of Hong Kong people," she said.
Two decades after her father's death in 1991, Hongkongers should ponder "how we can be more positive about Hong Kong", she said, since the city enjoyed access to mainland opportunities and its economy was "doing much better than [in] most other parts of the world".
"Hong Kong, of course, has a lot of problems. [But] it's so important to remember the three Rs … respect, responsibility and reflect. I think we are not reflecting enough," she said.
