Chief Executive Carrie Lam

There are several reasons I want to come this year. One is really to thank the Asian Youth Orchestra (AYO) for last year's world tour. Last year's world tour was part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government's celebration of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. When I was still in the Government as the Chief Secretary for Administration, I thought what a wonderful occasion for us to showcase young musicians in AYO and also for us to demonstrate the powerfulness of friendship in the Asian region to the world, because Hong Kong is Asia's world city. This is a wonderful place to have this AYO initiative. So last year, with our sponsorship and Cathay's sponsorship, AYO was able to tour the world, going to places that have not been toured previously including wonderful places like Vienna and places which I don't understand why you go, that is Toulouse in France, which is very famous for aircraft. I didn't realise they have also a very nice concert hall that you could perform.

So I want to give you a brief summary of the evaluation report submitted to me about our collaboration with AYO last year. These world tour performances have really made us very proud, because they were widely reported in the local newspapers wherever you travelled to and performed and the average attendance in all these world tour concerts was 85%. But actually, for many of the performances, the attendance was 100%. It was a result of the arithmetic as there was one occasion that the attendance was 60%. It's nothing to do with AYO musicians - must be something to do with the venue. But otherwise I was so delighted to realise that it was 100% in Beijing, it was 100% in American cities and so on. It was very well attended with a very good response even at the very professional level. It's not only just because a bunch of young people coming they gave you a good response, but they gave you a very good professional appraisal of the very high standards of this youth orchestra.

So much for the 2017 world tour of AYO, which I am extremely grateful, because after your tour Hong Kong will be perceived not only as a financial centre, but really as a city with very talented young musicians being brought together from different parts of Asia.

Now, coming back to this year's tour, it is also very unique because it's the first time that I read from the brochure that there's this Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area. This is now such a topical issue in Hong Kong - this is a bay area economy like the Tokyo Bay, San Francisco Bay, and the New York metropolitan area. AYO really catches up with the government work, so there is a tour to three bay area cities including Hong Kong, Zhongshan and Guangzhou. I want again to thank AYO for giving this added value to the AYO's tour with the inclusion of some of the cities in the bay area.

There's also a further reason that I've come, which is to thank AYO for supporting my first official visit to Japan in my capacity as the Chief Executive later this year. This is the biggest official visit of the Chief Executive in 2018. Although I've been to Europe in June, actually the destination with the biggest delegation for this year is Tokyo in Japan. Together with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, we'll be organising a lot of Think Global, Think Hong Kong promotion activities, conferences, gala dinners and so on. I suddenly had this idea - because if you read the history of AYO there is a very strong Hong Kong-Japan collaboration. If we could bring part of AYO to Japan during my official visit that would be a wonderful thing.

I can announce here that during our official visit to Tokyo later this year, and of course with the strong support of Ambassador Matsuda, AYO will do two things for us. About eight AYO musicians from Hong Kong will perform at the gala dinner attended by very important business people in Japan, and on top of that AYO will do a concert in Japan, in Tokyo, bringing together around 30 alumni musicians who have been with AYO previously. They are brought together and these Hong Kong musicians and Japanese musicians with very close bond and friendship will perform for us while we are doing our business promotion in Tokyo. That is a wonderful idea, resembling the spirit of AYO, and also tells this year's participants that if you do well, we'll bring you back as alumni for future performances.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam gave these remarks at the 28th Asian Youth Orchestra Summer Festival & Rehearsal Camp opening ceremony at the Academy for Performing Arts on July 16.