The world should be more accommodating about China’s rapid development while Hongkongers must become better equipped to face global challenges and avoid complacency if they want to prevail.
These were the takeaways of Anna Pao Pui-hing, daughter of late shipping tycoon Sir Pao Yue-kong, from a letter written by President Xi Jinping who took the rare step of engaging the business community as he urged Hong Kong entrepreneurs with familial ties in the mainland port city of Ningbo to make greater contributions to the nation’s modernisation.
Xi’s remarks on Tuesday were in a letter written in response to Hong Kong business leaders who are descendants of pioneering Ningbo-born entrepreneurs in the city, including Pao and Ronald Chao Kee-young, eldest son of the late industrialist Chao Kuang-piu.
The president expressed gratitude to the businesspeople for their continued support of their hometown and country, including establishing businesses and schools, while asking them to leverage their respective strengths and actively take part in the country’s reform and opening up.
In an interview with the Post, Pao said she was overwhelmed to receive the letter, which showed Xi’s concern for Hong Kong’s development under the country’s beneficial policies.
“Basically, I feel quite humbled with this letter because it takes so many people and so much hard work to actually arrive in today’s China. It’s the 75th anniversary of the founding of our nation. It takes a lot of considered thoughts and so on,” she said.
“And so I think if we live in the world with everybody thinking a little bit more humbly and not going around to conquer another country, and not going to think inside a box and say we are better than them, I think the world would be better.”
Despite Xi’s letter being a reply to Ningbo-born entrepreneurs in the city, Pao said, the president was actually addressing all Hong Kong people as his open letter was issued at a critical time when more local businesspeople were losing confidence in the city’s economic prospects.
“I feel humbled because we Hong Kong people have a lot more to learn and as China is a developing country, it’s humbly learning,” she said.
“China is very eager to learn in all sorts of areas, but I think the whole world should be a little bit more accommodating in this learning process, and also learn from how China developed within such a short time, catching up with the rest of the world.”
Xi said in the letter that building a strong country and rejuvenating it through modernisation required all Chinese to unite and work together.
From that, Pao, who founded a non-profit international Chinese school in Shanghai, the YK Pao School, with her son Philip, advised Hongkongers to become better equipped in areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics and research and development, and avoid being complacent to ride out the difficulties.
“I feel it more when I am reading it. I think Hong Kong’s young people have to learn how China leapfrogged the industrialisation period and rose towards the 20th century.
“We in Hong Kong should be asking questions. Is our English good enough to face the world? Is our Chinese good enough to face China? These are questions.
“I think he’s reminding us of this entrepreneurial spirit … But sometimes in our achievements maybe we have become a bit too complacent. I have to warn Hong Kong people not to become the frog in the well.”
The president’s reply coincides with the 40th anniversary of late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s 1984 call to mobilise the global “Ningbo bang” – usually formed by merchants – to develop the port city. In Chinese, bang means a cluster of people who are bonded together by the same goals and ideals.
In March 1980, Pao Yue-kong met Deng in the Great Hall of the People, and they discussed topics such as China’s modernisation and Sino-American relations, according to Anna Pao’s 2013 memoir of her father.
Following a series of obstacles, the Zhao Long Hotel, paid for by Pao, came into existence in 1985, and its opening ceremony was attended by Deng and some high-ranking officials. The Deng and Pao families gradually became intimate and dined together on several occasions.
Ningbo, a city in Zhejiang province, where Xi served as party secretary from 2002 to 2007, is known as an important port and an industrial hub on the mainland.
