In Peking or Hong Kong, dollars talk
By
GERRY AZIAKOU,
of Agence France-Presse,
in Hong Kong
Deng Pufang, the crippled son of the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, did not have to beg when he came to Hong Kong to raise funds for China’s 20 million handicapped. Mr Deng left the British colony with some 58 million Hong Kong dollars (SNZIS.3 million) to show for his visit.
Hong Kong’s Chinese entrepreneurs had been only too eager to shell out in Mr Deng’s worthiest of causes.
The billionaire ship owner, Sir Yue-kong Pao, who owns the world’s largest independent fleet of 130 ships, and the Hong Kong property king, Henry Fok, each reportedly contributed some five million Hong Kong dollars (JNZI.3 million). Such generosity was probably not without ulterior motives, how? ever, observers here said. Less than 13 years before Hong Kong, the world’s third-ranking financial centre, is due to revert to Chinese sovereignty, local magnates are being very careful not to displease the top brass in Peking, observers added.
“Some fat cats feel they are being watched by Peking. The Chinese leaders are suspicious of those who move their assets abroad and want concrete faith of confidence in Hong Kong’s future,” said one informed source.
“All the top business people here want to get close to China,” said Liu Yiu-chu, legal adviser of the local branches of Xinhua News Agency and the Bank of China — both pillars of Peking’s influence in the colony. Even under the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung, China maintained close links with some of Hong Kong’s capitalist elite. Since the 19505, such prominent business figures as Sir Y.K. Pao have been targeted in Peking’s appeals to patriotism in helping their “motherland.”
Sir Y.K. reportedly helped Peking circumvent the economic embargo slapped on China by the United Nations during the Korean war.
Under the open-door policy of China’s present pragmatic leadership, with a high priority in bringing in Western technology and capital, the bonds with Hong Kong’s top capitalists have become that much stronger.
Among Peking’s leading economic supporters are Sir Y.K. Pao; the property wizard, Li Ka-shing; Henry Fok; Fung King-hein, who is the head of the powerful Sung Hung Kai and Company; the developer, Gordon Wu; the multimillionaire, Kwan-cheng Wong, whose
business interests range from emporiums and ships to a plush Kowloon restaurant; and Tse-kai Ann, a textile industrialist and a former member of the Executive and Legislative Councils. “China has made a major effort over the last four years to cultivate Hong Kong’s top entrepreneurs and to encourage them to invest in China,” said Henry Fok’s son, lan, also involved in his father’s business.
He added: “We often go to China on business. We can see the progress there. For us, there is no doubt China is on the right track and that Hong Kong has a key role in the modernisation of China.”
The territory’s Chinese fat cats often serve China’s modernisation drive by acting as intermediaries between China and Western business and political circles. Sir Y.K. Pao, who advises the Chinese Government on shipping, is received with equal honours in Peking, London, and Washington. The head of the giant world-wide shipping group was knighted by the Queen and sits on the international advisory committee of Chase Manhattan Bank.
Li Ka-shing, Henry Fok — who has just been appointed chairman of Hong Kong’s Chinese General Chamber of Commerce (regarded as pro-Peking) — and Fung Kinhei have invested millions of dollars in China, particularly in building luxury hotels. Mr Li’s Hutchinson Whampoa group, an old-timer in China trade, has offices in both Peking and Shanghai. Sung Hung Kai under Mr Fung is also an active contender. Developer Gordon Wu is partfinancing a string of ventures in neighbouring Guangdong province, including a 240 kilometre-long Canton-Shenshen-Zhuhai superhighway costing 3.3 billion Hong Kong dollars.
His other Guandong ventures include a four billion Hong Kong dollar coal power plant, the recently completed China hotel in Canton and a train station in Shenzhen costing 300 million Hong Kong dollars. Some Hong Kong magnates have invested hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars in their hometowns in China, notably Sir Y.K. in Ningpo in eastern China and Mr Li in Chiuchow, Guangdong. Mr Fok, who heads Hong Kong’s Football Association, has donated 100 million Hong Kong dollars to promote sports in China. These gestures have not gone unnoticed in Peking and good contacts with Chinese communist officialdom have paid handsome
dividends for some Hong Kong entrepreneurs, observers here said. China’s leaders are also keenly attentive to financial wise words from Hong Kong business giants. Some of the country’s recent economic reforms may well have sprung from such counsel, reliable sources here said.
Mr Ann is said to have helped Peking work out its self-rule formula for Hong Kong after the transfer of sovereignty in 1997. Messrs Fok, Ann, and Wong are all members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a purely advisory body. Messrs Li, Fok, and Wong also sit on the board of directors
of the China International Trust and Investment Co., a State body in charge of attracting foreign capital to China. To reassure Hong Kong’s capitalists over the colony’s future, Peking last year sent here its top capitalist, Wang Guangying, the first Chinese citizen to set up a private firm in Hong Kong — the Everbright Industrial Company — since the 1949 Communist takeover on the mainland. Mr Wang, the brother-in-law of the late President Liu Shaoqi, has fast become one of the colony’s celebrities. His company has already signed several contracts in tourism, property, and oil pros-
pecting equipment. This and other signs of reassurance from Peking seem to have worked. Most of the colony’s fat cats, whatever their reservations, have expressed their support for the Chinese-British draft agreement on Hong Kong’s future. Under the agreement which will be signed in Peking this month, the British colony, which is home to 5.5 million people — 98 per cent of. them ethnic Chinese — is to be returned to China on July 1, 1997. Peking has pledged to leave the territory’s capitalist socio-econo-mic system and personal freedoms unchanged for 50 years.
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