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A Conversation with Dr Lily Chiang

Engineering and the environment are two of Dr Lily Chiang's greatest passions. So in 1999, she decided to combine the two to establish Eco-Tek Holdings Limited, a Hong Kong listed company that draws on her technical training to find solutions to environmental problems, she told members at the Chamber's Conversation with a General Committee Member Series on August 25.

Since then, her business has supplied technologies that provide practical and efficient ways to reduce air, water and noise pollution to the Hong Kong Government, United Nations and countries across Asia, an achievement that she attributes to her strong engineering background.

Dr Chiang, who is Vice Chairman of the HKGCC, said that many people were surprised when she first followed mechanical engineering in school, as it was traditionally a male-dominated field. But she has never let such labelling stand in her way. Besides being the first female member of the Chamber's Chairman Committee, she also became the first female fellow in the Hong Kong Institute of Engineering, and the first woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in Engineering from Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

As a member of the Hong Kong Sustainable Development Council, Dr Chiang said she believes similar determination is needed to drive home the need to for more effort to be put into preserving the environment here. Many people seem to be becoming indifferent to these problems, which is also having a wider and more worrying effect of diluting the drive and determination that Hong Kong is famed for.

"We, in Hong Kong, are very fortunate to have what we have today. Most people enjoy a decent living, but I feel people now lack the commitment and passion to work for an even better quality of life and environment in Hong Kong," she said. "People have become stagnant, they seem to have lost their "can-do" spirit. We need to find ways to put the drive back into people, because they are the ones that will continue to make Hong Kong successful in the future, and they are the ones who will determine how the Earth will be for our future generations."

Although a strong supporter of information technology, Dr Chiang said in some ways the information age has not strengthened our inter-person communications, which was significantly weakened by the industrial age.

"We don't really "interact and talk" with people. This information age has empowered individuals to be more efficient and more productive, but it hasn't improved the true value of our lives," she says. "How some people are talking about the new balanced age, about how we can live an effective and fulfilling life balancing our work with our family life and our leisure time -- things that we really care about."

Double-digit GDP Growth in Q2

Hong Kong's economic outlook is positive with the double-digit GDP growth in the second quarter, Financial Secretary Henry Tang says.

Speaking on August 23 at the Hong Kong Economic Summit "Leveraging on the Mainland and Engaging Ourselves Globally," co-organised by the Chamber, Mr Tang said the economy has recovered strongly since last year. If the trend continues, he says overall GDP growth for 2004 might exceed the 6 percent predicted.

The government's latest consumer price indices, released on the same day, showed the 68-week deflation period had come to an end with a modest rise of 0.9 percent in July.

When asked about his thoughts on the latest CPI figure, Mr Tang said the general consensus of economists is that a healthy dose of inflation is good for the economy, however, he said he did not want to see the CPI increase too quickly, or to become too big, adding that it would put pressure on the other side.

On the possibility of issuing renminbi bonds in Hong Kong, Mr Tang said: "Renminbi developments are something we are always pursuing. However, the renminbi is still not a convertible currency, so with the introduction of the four banking services that we have in renminbi, we are quite happy about the results. It has been steady, it has been active and it has been very constructive, so we are looking to pursue more renminbi services."

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