With our long history and strong credentials as a free trader, and as a beneficiary of its fruits, Hong Kong is in a better position than any other economy to speak up for free trade and open markets, Chief Executive Donald Tsang says.

Speaking at the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce's 12th Annual Hong Kong Business Summit, "Heading into 2006: Hong Kong & the WTO", Mr Tsang outlined four reasons Hong Kong was keen to host the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference that would kick off in 11 days.

"For all its complexities and challenges, we take it on with pride and with good Hong Kong relish," he said. 

The administration believes Hong Kong is capable of handling whatever happens both inside and outside the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre, he explained.

"We also take it as an acknowledgement of our competence as a world city that we have been entrusted to do this job. Clearly, the member economies of the WTO believe we can handle whatever challenges that arise."

He added: "As a responsible world citizen and, as a champion of the multilateral trading system, we want to do what we can to see it consolidated and strengthened.

"Fourth, the former President Bill Clinton, in this very place, described Hong Kong as 'Exhibit A in the case for global interdependence and its benefits.' We want to show the world the results of those benefits."

He recalled Hong Kong's history. In the 1860s - the decade in which the chamber itself was formed - the Government had adopted a laissez-faire economic policy, "treating Hong Kong as a marketplace open to all, with minimal intervention. A free and open trade policy naturally followed," he said.

"The policy choice of free trade, I suspect, was more a matter of convenience than intellectual reflection or ideological conviction. Even if they had wanted to, the people governing Hong Kong in the 1860s, thousands of miles from London and in those harsh circumstances and conditions, would unlikely have found the resources to manage and regulate trade. The influential hongs, whose raison d'etre was trade, naturally sought maximum freedom and minimum intervention or minimum taxation."

He noted that in 1866, two-way trade between Hong Kong and the Mainland reached 110 million sterling pounds - "Not a huge amount by today's standards, but quite respectable for a place with a population of only 115,000."

Fast-forward to 50 years ago, just a few years after the General Agreements on Tariffs & Trade, or GATT - the precursor to the WTO - was adopted, in 1955 Hong Kong's imports and exports totalled $6.3 billion.

Last year, nearly half a million vessels visited Hong Kong, about 120 times more than in 1866. Trade in goods and services now accounts for over three-and-a-half times Hong Kong's domestic wealth. Services make up nearly 90% of our GDP. Some of Hong Kong's key services sectors, such as logistics, banking, insurance and accounting, prosper by servicing external trade and the wealth that it generates.

Today, Hong Kong's total trade stands at $4.13 trillion, he said.

He admitted there were drawbacks to free trade.

"Joining the global economy can mean painful restructuring. For example, our unemployment rate climbed as high as 8.6% in mid-2003, after SARS, before declining to the current 5.3%. And we face a tremendous challenge in a knowledge-based services economy to get back to a level considered full employment," he said.

But the pay-off more than makes up for it.

"Our per-capita GDP, for example, has soared over 80-fold since 1955, to more than US$24,000 today. Our life expectancy is now among the highest in the world, and our infant mortality rate has fallen dramatically in the past 50 years from 66.4 per 1,000 live births to 2.5. The number of public hospital beds has risen eight-fold since the 1950s, and expenditure on education has increased 1,200 times," he said.

That is why he is confident a successful outcome of the Doha Round would not only bring greater prosperity across the world, "but in particular in those parts of the planet where one in five of our poorest fellow human beings live on less than US$1 a day.

"I hope the EU is listening. I invite those critics of globalisation who are genuinely concerned about the welfare of the poorest and weakest to reflect on whether the world would be a better place without this rules-based multilateral trading system."

In closing, he invited his audience to help make the pitch for trade liberalisation whenever they have the opportunity.

"Hong Kong is renowned for achieving progress through teamwork. I am confident that we will show the world that team spirit this month, while showcasing the myriad ways in which Hong Kong has benefited from globalisation."

To read the full text of his speech, click here.