Hong Kong: Gateway to Asia

or declining world centre?

Nancy Smith is president of Smith Marshall Inc., a Toronto-based communications consultancy firm.

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In the 1980s, as the only Canadian on the u.s.-dominated board of PROMAX International (then known as bpme), I was assigned the role of international chair, partly because I was a committed traveler, but mostly because I was the only "foreigner" on the board.

My job was to expand international membership, and enrich the association through the participation of television, radio, syndication, satellite and cable services from around the world. For me it was a labor of love.

Initially I concentrated on the English-language markets. In 1987, at the end of a conference presentation I was doing on Australian broadcasting, two young Chinese men approached the podium and suggested I should focus my next presentation on Hong Kong. And so I did.

Working with Aaron Lee and Ko Ping Yeung, both of whom then worked for broadcast leader tvb in Hong Kong, I traveled to Hong Kong and discovered a sophisticated industry distinguished by high-quality production and world-class studios and facilities.

My visit was just prior to the licensing of cable and satellite services, and tvb was the unchallenged champion of television viewing, with a 90% share. It also owned and operated TV City, the largest studio facility outside of Hollywood, generating 5,000 hours of original programming annually, making it the largest supplier of Cantonese-language programming in the world.

I was fascinated by the extremes of Hong Kong, the old and the new, the unabashed wealth alongside crowded housing, and the extraordinary diversity of the 5.5 million residents.

After an absence of five years, I returned to Hong Kong last month, and discovered it is everything it was, only more. In fact, "more" seems to be the word that best describes this over-the-top society. Land is being reclaimed to create room for more prime office sites, highways expanded, billions of dollars poured into a new airport, and cable and satellite services developed and expanded at an unprecedented rate.

I received tremendous support in organizing meetings in Hong Kong from Alex Choi (in Toronto) and Cathy Jim (in Hong Kong) of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office. They arranged appointments for me and provided information that greatly enhanced my trip.

In these meetings I discovered there are very mixed emotions in the business community around the impact of Chinese rule. Many believe changes will be minimal, while others feel doomsday is just around the corner.

Whatever their opinions, most agreed that for business planning purposes, 1997 has already arrived. Virtually no major decisions are being made without the agreement of the Chinese government, and nowhere is this more evident than in the communications industry.

One of the most interesting meetings I had was with James So, secretary for Recreation and Culture, the minister responsible for broadcast policy in Hong Kong. He is on a mission to convince the world that Hong Kong is the only base to consider for the launch of new electronic media services in Asia, services that have the potential to reach a staggering two-thirds of the world's population.