The “ideas” listed in this catalogue reflect a point of view or an opinion rather than a description or a matter of fact.

Where possible, the authors of the ideas are identified. The following codes have been used to indicate the sessions from where the ideas come:

A Competition policy

B Quality of life sectors

C Innovation and technology

D Making non-traded sectors tradeable

F Dinner Forum

P Post-forum comments

Competition and liberalisation

Competition policy

1. There should be a competition law. Previously, the Consumer Council’s proposal was over-encompassing and excessively intrusive. There should be a middle ground, a sensible and comprehensive competition policy, with a form of “office of fair trading” to cover not only consumer interests, but also business interests. Anti-competitive practices such as price fixing and collusive agreements by competing producers, bid rigging, and any action that is aimed at market monopolisation, should be outlawed. Quality control is a major problem in Hong Kong and should also be covered.
2. The main issue for consumers and businesses is transparency of the market and of rules. The Consumer Council has called for, a general competition law to be introduced into Hong Kong, and a general competition regulator, not so much to intervene but to enhance transparency of the rules and of the market.
3. The purpose of the competitive policy is not to lower property prices or wages for their own sake. Despite the reportedly high costs, the Hong Kong market is still very freely competitive.
4. International, reputable think tanks such as the US Heritage Foundation have held Hong Kong as the most competitive economy. One reason is that there is no comprehensive competition law.
5. The Competition Policy Advisory Group (COMPAG) will in future allow other parties, such as the Consumer Council, to make presentations directly to them, not just written submission as at the moment.
6. A consumer need not be a shopper in a retail mall. A consumer can be a company that is buying services. One of the problems for the Consumer Council has been that it is enfranchised only to represent the retail shopper, and not the company as consumer.

Competition

7. Competition should be a win-win situation. It should be a win for the consumer, in terms of better value for money, and it should be a win for the service provider as well, in terms of more profit.
8. Competition is not always about profits. Another dimension is quality competition. In some cases, such as airlines, cut-throat competition may threaten safety. Here some kind of price regulation and opening up to quality competition may be more appropriate.
9. While some anti-competitive behaviour may be fostered by business and condoned by Government, public pressure may sometimes reinforce some anti-competitive practices, such as the public pressure against lowering wages.
10. From a global perspective, competition should be balanced with economies of scale. There are advantages in centralisation and mergers and acquisitions, to take advantage of the economies of size, for Hong Kong to be competitive globally. That does not necessarily mean one company. It could be achieved by many companies taking a coordinated approach towards the market, price, profits etc., with suitable promotion and initiatives from Government.
11. We should look at competition not just internally but from a more macro perspective. Shenzhen has been emerging as a very keen competitor to Hong Kong, with thousands of people moving across Lo Wu every day to shop, to seek service of different types.

Competitiveness and cost of business

12. Another solution in an increasingly competitive market is economies of scope, emphasising on flexibility, range of choices and innovative products. There should be a change of philosophy from efficiency to effectiveness, i.e. achieving set goals. This may mean increasing rather than decreasing resources, especially in innovative talent.
13. Some cities in the region are already doing studies on how to make their cities to be more competitive in the 21^st century. Apart from thinking about how to make us more competitive, it is also important to find out what other cities are doing to increase their competitiveness in the future.
14. A clear vision will enable the government to articulate a long term strategy internally and externally, to involve stakeholders in planning and to establish an implementation plan. Singapore’s experience in high technology entrepreneurship is worth studying.
15. The SME issues should receive more attention in relation to formulating policy for local economic and employment. There is a need for a policy in the industrial sector to enable the small and medium enterprise to sustain their worldwide competitiveness.
16. Compared with other competing economies, cost in Hong Kong whether land, rents or wages are still very high even though they have already come down. Some of these may be due to monopolies or cartels holding up costs by being not as efficient. The way to be more competitive is to bring these costs down. Accordingly, the Government should re-examine its own salary structure.
17. The legal system here is fair and impartial, but it is also very expensive and very slow. The cost to the taxpayer of the legal infrastructure sometimes seems way out of proportion to the benefit of the result achieved.
18. Although rents were expensive historically they have come down considerably and today, our rents are no higher than Tokyo or Singapore.

Monopolies and cartels

19. Hong Kong’s domestic services economy is full of cartelised, arrangements, exclusive distribution arrangements, retail price maintenance arrangements, exclusive criteria for professional services, schemes of control and so on.
20. Sometimes monopolies could be beneficial. Sometimes firms have to be given some monopoly powers as incentive for them to innovate. For example, exclusive dealership may provide incentive to promote products. Likewise, making tie-in sale illegal may be an overkill and may create an anti-business environment.
21. Competition and competition policy should be stressed in the larger context, because a big part of our services is addressed to other businesses some of which is outside Hong Kong. Even if there are local cartels they will be competing with the world. To that extent, one need not be too worried about cartels because their cartelistic power will be eroded over time, through international competition in the global economy.
22. There may be natural monopolies or monopolies that result from certain Government regulation or protection. If these companies are forced to open up, they should be duly compensated to safeguard private property rights and contractual obligations. Taking away rights of a company would be tyranny and not freedom of choice in a market economy.
23. The Government’s sanction of the banking and legal cartels Hong Kong is hard to justify. It was time the SAR Government broke up this cartel. On the deposit side, the anti-competitive interest rate caps should be removed, as proposed by a recent consultancy study commissioned by the HKMA. On the lending side, collective rate determination should be banned. The market can be relied upon to set the lead lending rates if there is sufficient competition.
24. Contrary to common belief, there is no cartel with regard to lending rates. There is a best lending rate as reference point, but what people actually pay is usually a margin over that, which depends on matters of credit, credit worthiness and repayment rates, etc. On the deposit side, the consequence of complete deregulation of will be that people with larger amounts of money will get paid more interest and people with smaller amounts of money will probably get paid no interest at all. The Interest Rate Agreement has some measure of wealth transfer from large depositors to small depositors, as well as to protect the general charges-free banking in Hong Kong.

Government, deregulation and commercialisation

25. Government will buy more services from outside rather than trying to provide them directly in-house. It has taken steps in this direction, in printing and IT procurement, care and attention for the elderly, for instance, as a means to gain efficiency.
26. The Hong Kong government should speed up privatisation, commercialisation and outsourcing, and allowing competition in municipal services such as mail delivery, utilities, port management and education.
27. There is little competition in utilities sector like gas, water and power. In terms of water, the Government is the sole provider and the leakage rate in Hong Kong is one of the highest in Asia. The advantage of competition is these areas will be increasing efficiency and lower costs to business and consumers.
28. Government is also itself an economic player. Why should government want to be more competitive through commercialisation and privatisation, if unlike businesses government’s bottomline is not profit.
29. The Hong Kong Post Office has made tremendous strides in commercialising and marketing their services over the past few years. But maybe they can go further.
30. Legalising gambling will generate a lot of resources to fill the government coffers, as well as, through cross subsidising, many other activities such as arts and culture that enrich the quality of life.
31. Singapore already allows Internet casinos on the aeroplanes, so Hong Kong should likewise consider deregulating gambling.

Opening of professional sectors

32. The range of professional services in education, legal, accounting and health care are traditionally addressed towards a local clientele. Their entrenched positions may, however, be inconsistent with international trade and WTO rules. Their costs are also becoming an important issue for consumers as well as businesses. Government policy relating to these sectors should focus on the globalisation aspect, which is towards liberalisation.
33. For some professions the entry restrictions are quite high, and arguably designed to reduce competition more than to insure standards. Competition will have to be enhanced if Hong Kong is to be at the cutting edge in these quality of life sectors.
34. On the openness of the professions like medical and lawyers, Hong Kong professionals have a close-door mentality which one should be critical of. Our professions should be open and other professionals not prevented from coming to Hong Kong.
35. Lawyers charges are pretty heavy and exorbitant, and they should be lower. One way to do this is to consider fusion between barristers and solicitors.
36. Mechanisms should be developed to allow professionals who have achieved accreditation in the OECD countries to carry out their practice here on as close to an even footing as possible with locally accredited professionals. This includes medical, legal, engineering, and architecture professionals.

Other sectors

37. The role of the broadcasting regulator is to open up the market and offer more programme choice to viewers, but not to decide whether or not business propositions are profitable, which the investors would have to decide for themselves.
38. In the area of telecommunication, more competition does not actually undermine the need for regulation. In fact, on the contrary, it actually increased it.
39. In areas like software, companies do not have the economies of scale to compete in the global market and the only way to survive in that competitive environment is if they enter alliances with the international giants. Government has a role to make Hong Kong conducive to those kind of developments.
40. The issue of parallel imports is a thorn in Hong Kong’s side, an obvious contradiction in policy that needs to be re-thought.
41. Enhancing productivity is something both government and the private sector should look into and try to improve, such as modernising the salary payment system to staff.
42. The universities should cooperate with, rather than enter into unfair competition with the IT industry.
43. Hong Kong should adopt policies to ensure as many flights from as many locations reach Hong Kong as frequently as possible, serving tourists, business people, and cargo needs. This means liberalising the air travel industry, allowing foreign carriers “onward” rights, and the adoption of a more liberal air services agreement between Hong Kong and the United States.

Quality of Life

Heathcare and internationalisation

44. In future the attention in medical technologies and investment will be increasingly more on the psychological, in addition to physical, well being. Patients should be provided with more informed choices and the decisions of medicine and medical treatments must in future reside much more with the patients and the individual.
45. Foreign clients could be brought here for our healthcare services. The Hospital Authority has a lot of expertise which it can internationalise, by packaging it and selling to wealthy clients in Asia and even Eastern Europe.
46. Hong Kong has much expertise in traditional Chinese medicine but it has not yet been packaged in a commercial sense, to sufficiently high standards, to be internationalised. Before we can internationalise it, we must get our own house in order first, locally.
47. The taxpayer subsidy in Hong Kong today for medical treatment is too high and should be reduced. The reduced subsidy could be extended also to include foreign patients, in the belief that the goodwill and the ancillary benefits would outweigh the cost.

Arts and culture

48. Other than being aimed to the people of Hong Kong, arts and culture can also play a role in advancing Hong Kong as a tourism destination.
49. To stay competitive in the arts, the customer is the key. Arts should not develop into a new “elitism of understanding” incomprehensible to most people.
50. The government re-organization which will be taking place over the next year or so will provide an opportunity to enhance our cultural sector and preserve a balance between promoting our own Chinese culture and developing the international cultural perspective.
51. The challenge of the arts is one of venue. There are no suitable venues for large international events. The venues that we have are under the control of the Urban Council who tend to focus on local rather than international events. Moreover, it is an embarrassment to Hong Kong not to have a multi-purpose opera house. The reclamation should provide an opportunity.
52. Hong Kong is not up to the standard of London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo yet in terms of adequate supplies of theatres and venues to attract high quality entertainers. Hong Kong already has some facilities like the Government Stadium and the Cultural Centre, but they are not readily available. The Urban Council’s policy of limiting usage to three months maximum is one that needs re-addressing if we are to attract high quality productions such as The Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables.
53. The existing institutional framework, in terms of venue ownership, management, availability of expertise and the way the public sector is involved in the actual presentation of arts and culture programmes, does not encourage the private sector to be involved in making Hong Kong the leading arts and cultural centre of Asia. This whole business sector may need to be reviewed comprehensively, to remove anti-competition impediments, to establish a more attractive business environment, and to encourage top quality performances and professional expertise to be exported.

Financing the quality of life sectors

54. There may be scope towards privatizing some services and introducing user pays principle, especially for government services. If the underlying demand can be identified better, some arts and entertainment programs may be viable on their own on a commercial basis. That means adopting the user-pay principle and not having to provide out of tax payers’ money.
55. In no country in the world can arts and culture be totally standalone with ticket sales or sponsorship.
56. The question with the health sector is whether the heavily subsidized public medical system can continue to be supported by a very low and narrow tax base. There needs to be a collective appreciation that something needs to be done, such as on user fees, or on some form of medical insurance, to ensure that people in Hong Kong are covered.
57. We need to think about a completely new tax, a goods and services tax.
58. A win-win solution can be created by allowing investors to have profitable investments on the other hand and take care of infrastructure developments including culture, tourism, hotel, art, museum, theatre, etc on the other. One possibility is to grant land to developers with such incentive.
59. Embracing community facilities into private sector development will also entail a cost. However the facilities are built, there still is a price to be paid.

Environment

60. Environment is also a key issue upon which companies and individuals make decisions. Businesses suffer from sickness among their staff due to pollution-induced illnesses. It is reducing the productivity of the people.
61. Hong Kong has much natural beauty. It must not be spoiled by allowing encroachment upon our country parks. It must not be spoiled by air pollution. There should be a clear statement about the air pollution, whether it is locally generated or exported from Guangdong.
62. The plan to phase out diesel vehicles in five years is too long. Hong Kong should deal with it not in five years, but in two years or less.
63. It would seem a very simple procedure not to allow re-registration if the vehicle cannot pass the annual test.
64. Much of the problem may lie in Guangdong so Hong Kong needs to act collectively to tackle the problem across the boundary. There should be intense lobbying with Beijing or Guangzhou for action to be taken. Financial assistance could be justified.
65. We cannot blame what is happening over the border for our air pollution in the streets which are caused mainly by vehicle exhausts.
66. Pollution is a visible problem but there are also others, such as food poisoning, new virus strains, etc, where the impact on health may be even greater. We should target these that really influence health first.
67. The economic impacts (costs and benefits) of pollution and environmental improvement measures should be rigorously studied.

Tourism

68. For whatever indirect tax introduced part of it can be spent on promoting toursim and enriching Hong Kong as a tourism centre.
69. Compared with other cities, Hong Kong is less welcoming to the tourists. We should make it more comfortable for tourists to move around the city, such as through improving the signage system in transport information.
70. An important aspect in the community’s collection action to benefit the tourism sector is for the community to be more courteous, to make visitors feel welcomed.
71. When introducing new concepts like Disney World, one has to also consider how far this is compatible with the ambiance of Hong Kong; if it will change the character of Hong Kong, or will it just be duplicating other places without making use of our strength.
72. The outdated viewpoint of the Security Wing of the Hong Kong Police in regard to visitors from Russia and the Middle East is a regulatory overkill, and is discouraging visitors and damaging for our tourism industry.

Quality of life and competitiveness

73. Metropolitan centres that wish to attract professionals increasingly compete against each other in terms of quality of life. In this respect Hong Kong does not measure up as well as some other centres in the region, particularly Sydney and Singapore. There is a need to improve quality of life to make it a competitive weapon for Hong Kong, but this requires collective action from government and the community, who will need to override special interests. As government has a much larger say over quality of life sectors, costing the quality of life sectors implies makes government the entrepreneur.
74. It should not be left to the government to tackle every single interest group on the matter of pollution. Support from every one is critical, such as in measures to improve emission from our vehicles. The traditional approach has been to let improvements slowly trickle through. But there has been so much growth that it is difficult to keep up with the problem. Hong Kong’s population densities are extremely high, so it cannot benchmark itself against other cities. A good quality of life here demands that we become much more efficient than most other cities. And it is important to get people involved and be willing to change.
75. Over the next ten years the population is going to increase tremendously. This adds much urgency in dealing with the present problems now. A much more visionary and imaginative approach will be needed.

Innovation and Technology

The IT vision

76. Besides technologists, we need also to pay attention to the technicians, the people who keep things running. Commissioning of hi-tech equipment is fine but maintenance is also very important if the overall performance of business and the whole economy is not to be dragged down.
77. Singapore’s manufacturing as well as Taiwan’s have been drastically upgraded in the past ten years. But there has been no corresponding upgrading of Hong Kong’s manufacturing. So maybe it is too late for Hong Kong to follow Singapore or Taiwan’s examples, although there may be market niches in high value added, high-tech manufacturing.
78. High value added manufacturing requires means more than just saying “innovation, technology”, but translating that into economic terms and measuring by outcome.
79. High tech does not displace, but rather sustain and enhance, our “traditional” service industries. The emphasis of our efforts in the short term should be to stimulate our existing industries to be more innovative and accepting of technology. The role of government should be to focus on dissemination of information and hands-on training.
80. The reality is that there is no chance of Hong Kong being an innovation centre in a significant way. Hong Kong does not need to, nor is it able to, because the business system, the education system and the culture all militate against it.

EDS and other government services

81. The electronic service delivery can improve government services and also act as an engine to pull the development of the rest of the private sector in the use of electronic business. This can be facilitated through resolving issues such as standards, the bilingual interface, and the payment methods. There will not be any exclusivity to the ESD operator. The standards and the approaches developed for the Government can be made available readily to the private sector, which can develop competing infrastructure for the provision of electronic business.
82. A big potential exists for ESD to be leveraged by the subvented sector and SME’s to apply e-business. This process should be expedited.
83. Data availability for SMEs is a problem, the geographical information system developed by government being one example. Although the data is available, it is not user-friendly and not useful without considerably more research and study. The data provided should be of better quality and there should be better coordinated among different data provider departments within government.
84. The development of GIS in Hong Kong is shamefully backward. Pricing for government information such as the GIS is too expensive. This discourages use by the public. Although the pricing is based on the principle of cost recovery, government should consider the data provision a form of service which will generate benefits to the economy.

IT clustering

85. IT vendors should translate technology into practical, usable, affordable business solutions in a customer-centered manner. The commercial sector needs to act as catalyst in expediting the usage and expanding the scope of IT application. Enterprises in Hong Kong should encourage their suppliers, their business partners to get in line with the technological change. Our collective strength should be integrated through a combination of Government leadership, capabilities from the IT vendors, insights and vision from our academic elite and linkage into our SMEs into “clusters” of integrated industry-specific capabilities.
86. Most multinational companies here are mainly operating and sales departments, and not R&D. Industrial clusters may be a way forward, but the question is who are the local companies willing to collaborate. Hong Kong SMEs are weak, partly because of a lack of connectivity with large companies.
87. Companies like IBM have, in other parts of the world, programmes of education where they cooperate very closely with certain university departments. This should be considered in Hong Kong.

Human resources for IT

88. For Hong Kong to be a self-sustaining innovative centre would require the availability of the right people to “get the loop going”. The people required will need to have a combination of technological know-how, business sense, understanding of the market and the product. An important aspect is to build a group of talents who not only understand technology but also feel that they should develop technology for local relevance. So it is important to make sure that the funding will go into companies which will be doing things of local relevance, that the technology will be resident to Hong Kong or the Mainland.
89. Hong Kong business people do not understand technology, while those in the universities do not have good business sense. One question is therefore how to improve the sense of technology of the business people in Hong Kong. The engineering schools in Hong Kong may provide some training for these people. As to the business sense of the engineering professors, there is no incentive for these professors to improve it with the present system of promotion and academic reference.
90. We must have best teachers of IT at our schools and universities. Authoring multi-media products for computer assisted learning and for broadcasting on the Internet will be a particularly important skill.
91. Graduates from tertiary institutions could form a type of “Technology Corp” and work with Hong Kong companies to raise their comfort and competence in the application and use of technology.

IT integration between Hong Kong and Mainland

92. Hong Kong is uniquely placed because of bilingual capability and the good connections with the Mainland which we can take advantage of in developing applications, services and products. Hong Kong has a very appropriate role to play as an information gateway to the Mainland in the area of our strength, the provision of content especially in Chinese.
93. Hong Kong should not be viewed as competing for R&D fundings with China, but rather the relationship is complementary. Multinationals see China and Hong Kong as one place, to compete with places like the ASEAN countries and India. The research lab may be in China but the people who work there often come to Hong Kong, whereas the overseas headquarter might not be so willing to invest in a lab in Hong Kong.
94. Hong Kong companies can play a very important role in the process of developing electronic commerce applications for China.
95. Hong Kong should also take full advantage of the unlimited supply of talents in China.

Role of Government and industry-support bodies

96. With the help of Government and big corporations, applications can be built and developed, to be tried out by government and large companies, before being deployed in the commercial world. Hong Kong Government can play an active role to parallel the existence of a defence industry in the Silicon Valley, by being the customer for innovative firms.
97. Government has to be more targeted than in the past. There are different Government departments and bureaus involved but a champion across Government is needed. The same applies to quangos who, without proper coordination, are duplicating efforts.
98. It is important for the Government to deploy resources not just efficiently, but effectively to support the SMEs to use IT to restore and gain competitiveness in this global manufacturing era.
99. There should be more spending on technological infrastructure, as opposed to physical infrastructure.
100. Government should not interfere but it should speak out and present the vision more vigorously, so as to generate the community’s understanding and support, and also commitment.
101. The Industry Department should be closed because it is irrelevant. The resources should be transfered to the TDC where the action is.
102. If the Government initiatives with respect to IT are to be credible, they must first demonstrate that they themselves can fully exploit IT and at the same time take the pain eliminating the many low-level paper pushing positions. The proposal to allow the public to access all possible services provided by the Government through the Internet should mean full completion of the transaction on the spot, not just acceptance of requests electronically.
103. It is doubtful that throwing money at the technology has any prospect of turning Hong Kong into another Silicon Valley. If Hong Kong has any such prospect, it will be as a result of its natural entrepreneurial talent, with lack of public funds unlikely to present any real obstacle. The emphasis should not be to influence the infrastructure for electronic commerce or the standards under which it will operate, but rather to exploit these tools.
104. SME’s and subvented organisations should not wait for the ESD to be up and running before they can start making use of the Internet for their businesses. They should make use of organisations like the TDC, HKPC and HKANA to help them take advantage of the Internet and related technology.
105. To translate the cluster concept into a business strategy, the commercial sector needs to collaborate with industry and trade organisations, such as the HKPC, HKTDC, HKGCC and HKANA.
106. There is a need for publicity to promote among small and medium-sized enterprises together with quangos like the Hong Kong Productivity Council and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council.

 

Intellectual property

107. Intellectual property protection is important if there is to be innovation and technology. There are very strong efforts on the legal side but enforcement still can be improved.
108. It is important that academia and businesses would bear in mind the complex legal environment before, during and after Research and Development. It would be preferable if they consider establishing intellectual property units internally, safeguarding their potential economic rights and liabilities.

 

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Education and Internationalisation

Education reform

109. Our present education system has room for improvement in the development of the initiative and the independent thought which is so necessary if we are to stimulate innovation. In doing this, we must not neglect the wishes of parents.
110. There should be a very thorough review of our entire education system, involving, besides the usual experts and officials, also ordinary parents and front-line teachers.
111. The career structure of our teaching profession should be evaluated. It is not a very attractive profession to our elite graduates. Besides being reasonably well paid, they should have good prospects such as becoming school principals, Assistant Directors of Education and even Secretary for Education and Manpower.
112. The quality of our locally produced school textbooks is very low. There should be a mechanism to enable us to have high quality textbooks.
113. Education should be turned upside down; it should be given back to the parents, rather than the professors and the teachers.
114. The world is getting more competitive. English is a must, both in secondary education and university. A longer term aim is to follow the Europeans and introduce four languages into the university.
115. Tertiary education policy has produced too many degree graduates but not enough technicians. UGC and VTC will have to get their act together to develop a concerted policy on tertiary education in Hong Kong.

 

More overseas students for the universities

116. The percentage of university enrollment from outside of Hong Kong is too low. This becomes an impediment to Hong Kong becoming a major cosmopolitan and education centre. Having more people from overseas will open up the mind-set of our students. This is also one way of enriching our curriculum in the training of human resources for Hong Kong, and will become an important factor in making Hong Kong an attractive base for multinationals.
117. We could be doing more to develop Hong Kong as a regional centre for education. There should be a market for wealthy Asians, Europeans or Americans to send their children to secondary school or to university in Hong Kong. Although this may mean extending the educational subsidy to foreign students, the long-term goodwill that would accrue and the benefit to our own students of studying in a multinational community would more than compensate.
118. There would be enormous educational benefits and enormous PR benefits to Hong Kong to draw in more overseas students, offering them scholarships. These scholarships could be jointly funded between the government and the private sector.
119. Government allows universities to admit up to four per cent of the first-year, first degree places, with 82% tuition fee subsidised by the government. But the there has not been that much enthusiasm on the part of universities to take that up.
120. Funding for exchange programmes for undergrad students should be increased. As for the postgraduate programme, the 33% quota on non-local students should be removed. The overseas postgraduate students should be allowed to stay in Hong Kong if after graduation they can find a job which is consistent with their qualifications.
121. One of the problems is the cost of actually coming to Hong Kong; not just the cost of the enrolment to the programme, but actually the living costs in Hong Kong which is a huge barrier for Southeast Asia.

 

Competition in higher education

122. The institutional arrangements of funding universities has become an obstacle to opening them up to competition. Higher education should be made more tradeable by making it more open to competition and with a consumer focus. Students should not be required to take bundled courses.
123. Institutions in Hong Kong are not doing more to export because they do not see the need, because they have plenty of money and there is no need for the academics to do extra work. Academic staff are rewarded for research and teaching but not for education administration. Exporting education would involve a lot of time but with little reward. This needs to be changed before Hong Kong can be in a good position to export education programmes. The UGC should give recognition to the lecturers and teachers who are involved in the actual running of the business.
124. Academic salaries are too high compared with the US, Canada, and Australia. We have to ask if we are entitled to such high salaries.
125. The job market in the academic market is very fierce, with very intense global competition, and Hong Kong has not always been successful in attracting the top people despite the high salaries.
126. Over 440 programmes are offered by overseas institutions in Hong Kong, amounting to billions of dollars. This is not because our local universities are not competitive on quality or price. They are not meeting the local demand because there has not been the pressure on the universities to do so, to make their own money. There is a great market locally and the institutions in Hong Kong should first satisfy part of the demand from Hong Kong.

 

Making education tradeable

127. The cost of developing a degree course is very substantial. A part of that cost can be recouped from programmes exported out of Hong Kong. Open University offers programmes and courses as well as consultancy and technical support to institutions in mainland China. The savings eventually will be reflected in lower tuition fees for Hong Kong students.
128. In making education a commodity and exporting it, the products being offered may not be at the market price but rather might be at a great discount price, especially if the mainland were to be the market.
129. In the mainland market the prices we could charge are relatively low. But the number of students could be very big, especially through the mode of distance learning.
130. There is a big demand in mainland China for the service of the academics from Hong Kong. Universities in China are especially interested in international qualifications, which tend to be in English.
131. There is a skills gap between educational services of high quality and the need to market them. The services are there, the question is to sell them. But academics are probably the wrong people to sell them.
132. In the UK and Australia, most of the universities have their private arm, “University Inc.”. That could be the path for the universities in Hong Kong.
133. Before the educational market can be enlarged to beyond the domestic economy, we must first harness Web technology and achieve a productivity and organisational change, in addition to the mindset change.
134. Should Hong Kong take the lead in setting up an international open university, through the examples of mergers and acquisitions in the private sector?
135. Education could also make use of e-commerce. To do so, Hong Kong universities need to change their mindset and become also a manager of a network of electronic channels, linking knowledge providers to knowledge seekers; in other words, they should become part of the value chain of knowledge generation.
136. Digital education cannot replace totally the human dimension. Human interaction such as group discussion is still important for stimulating ideas.

Secondary schools

137. High schools could also be internationalised by opening some of them to international students.
138. Our secondary school sector is publicly funded and managed so there will be an automatic difficulty with “subsidising outsiders”. The solution has to lie in education becoming more private-sector, with a thriving, high quality private education. Although some of that already occurs in the form of international schools in Hong Kong, our publicly funded sector is regarded by most parents as not of high quality, so the prospects of attracting outsiders is dubious.
139. The international schools of Hong Kong are successful in attracting also local children. Since these are privately funded, the government should address the question of, what are the local schools not doing that these private international ones are doing that are causing local parents to go to them?

 

Other issues

Relationship with the Mainland

140. There remain many impediments to the provision of services to the mainland, such as time and capacity restrictions on movement across the border of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, customs restrictions on the flow of goods, licensing restrictions on professional practice and the provision of financial services, etc. Hong Kong must bring to bear its most skilled negotiating resources to attempt to speed the removal of these barriers.
141. Hong Kong should have a special relationship with Guangdong and Southern China. Hong Kong should undertake a thorough study of Guangdong’s five-year plans and also long-term objective for the year 2010, so as to better appreciate Guangdong’s interests, and to generate bolder, much more innovative suggestions for closer cooperation with Guangdong.
142. Some visionary thinking for Hong Kong is needed on the relationship with the hinterland. By 2015, a large proportion of Hong Kong’s sandwich classes could be living in Panyu, Shunde or Dongguan and be commuting in daily, given that there would be good international schools, quality healthcare and a rapid transit system through the Pearl River Delta. Hong Kong needs some proactive thinking in order to get to that point.
143. Working with the Mainland of China would require first a breaking of ice. The businessmen have already led the way; the civil servants will have to do likewise.
144. China right now is going through a very important reform in their retirement protection, moving from pay-as-you-go into the savings investment system. A lot of this money can come to Hong Kong for investment and management. So the Government should commission somebody to make a study of this issue.
145. Hong Kong’s entire fund management industry is trying to persuade the mainland to use Hong Kong expertise. There is already quite a productive dialogue and there is no need for government to get in the way.
146. The government can take a lead to export its expertise to Guangdong, to enable the latter to discharge their functions and deliver their services in a standard up to Hongkongers’ expectations in terms of efficiency, fairness, transparency and accountability, and in areas spanning across education, health care, security, law enforcement, planning, housing, environmental protection, provision of utilities. Government departments can identify their own transferable skills, package them as service modules, and market and export them to a number of selected city governments across the border in a proactive manner. These service programmes can further be supplemented by physical integration of utilities and infrastructure across the border, for instance, the integration of the Guangdong and Hong Kong power grid, the integration and centralised management of the Dongjiang river water supply upgrade works, or the supply of natural gas to the town gas system. Most, perhaps all, of these government services may have to be provided free of charge in the form of “foreign assistance” programmes. When designed with imagination and through productivity gains, these are unlikely to pose any substantial financial burden on the SAR. What is more, the sense of pride and sense of achievement arising from these programmes can be a morale-booster for the civil service as a whole.

 

Government intervention

147. The example of the Financial Secretary’s Business and Services Promotion Unit, as a “ginger group” to addresses red tape issues by creating a framework for frank exchanges between the private sector and Government department heads, could be extended. Anybody who has examples of over-regulation in Hong Kong should bring them to BSPU’s attention.
148. The Administration generally should foster greater exchanges and secondment of personnel with the private sector to enhance the civil sector’s knowledge of dealing with the practicalities of business and bottom line issues. Transfers in greater numbers between the civil service and the private sector at not only the highest but also the middle levels could enhance the Government’s service capabilities, particularly in “speed to market” and “resolution of bureaucratic and red tape issues”.
149. Today’s regulatory regime is very much more intrusive than it used to be. Even light regulation acts as an impediment to the small and medium-sized enterprises that most economists now recognise as the real engines of wealth creation.
150. A “market-oriented economic policy” implies a rather higher level of intervention. Various government schemes to assist industry assume that Government, or the people appointed by Government, will spend other people’s money more wisely than the individuals or corporations will if left to themselves to spend their own money. Arguably, Hong Kong’s success in the past has been more a result following Adam Smith and the beneficial effect of many small decisions taken on the basis of self-interest than of judgments made by government on what areas of endeavour should be subsidised.

 

Visionary thinking

151. To raise the quality of life thus demands a change away from traditional patterns of doing things, to completely new and innovative ways of doing things. It is not just copying the rest of the world but setting new standards.
152. IBM became competitive by being customer-centric, putting customer first. There was a change of culture into a more results-based and customer oriented approach.
153. Government needs to look ahead, what we would be twenty years down the road. People in business should also think in terms not only entirely of their business, but rather what this community as a whole should be moving ahead.
154. The culture in the Civil Service needs to be changed, from regulating and governing, to serving the common good.

 

The Tripartite Forum

155. There should be another similar forum next year.
156. Many sensible policy proposals may turn out to be unpopular with the grassroots public and with legislators. In order to improve communication with that group, This forum should in future include legislators or political parties.
157. We should not have to wait for another year before some of the ideas can be put into action. One way is to create a task force to sit down together and translate some of the suggestions into action, and hopefully some of them could be put into the services promotionl programme.
158. Control of the forum procedure should be tightened up next year, including more stringent time control and stricter rules on mobile phones.
159. The outcomes of the forum should be submitted to the Administration more forcefully so as to create an impact on government policy.
160. For the next Forum, the moderator and the panellists must all agree on the topic to discuss, which should be established as early as possible and not be changed. The topics should have more than just a catchy title phrase, some explanatory notes would help to focus the discussions enormously. Participants from government should be briefed to speak their minds rather than toe or defend the government line, and more business people should be encouraged to attend.