President Xi Jinping met with a delegation from Hong Kong and Macao visiting Beijing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening up of the country in the Great Hall of the People yesterday, and delivered an important speech.　　This meeting, which was full of nostalgic affection yet also inspiring and heart-stirring, is bound to play a major part in guiding and promoting Hong Kong SAR's future development and better integration into the nation's overall development.

　　In his speech, President Xi highly praised Hong Kong and Macao compatriots for the contributions they have made and the roles they have played in the 40 years of reform and opening up, including making investment in industries and donating funds for education.　　In fact, President Xi should also be credited for Hong Kong people's contributions.　　In the first half of the reform and opening up period, President Xi Jinping had worked successively in Fujian, Zhejiang and Shanghai - the provinces and municipality where Hong Kong business people have made the largest amounts of investment and donation, many of Hong Kong industrialists being vanguards and pioneers to support the reform and opening up.　　With great familiarity, President Xi mentioned the names of quite a few of them yesterday and cooperative projects he personally had planned and promoted.

　　Looking back at Hong Kong and Macao compatriots' participation in the reform and opening up, President Xi in his speech summarised six effect this has produced.　　The first is to lead in making investment in industries, the second to demonstrate market economy by example, the third to help promote structural reform, the fourth to bridge the two ways of opening up, the fifth to pilot reforms, and the sixth to provide experience in urban management.　　This six-point summarisation highly sums up the roles Hong Kong and Macao compatriots have played in the 40-year reform and opening up, especially in the early stage.　　These are indeed "dare-to-pioneer" and irreplaceable roles in promoting the nation-wide implementation of reform and opening up.　　Without Mr. Henry Fok Ying Tung investing to build the Zhongshan Hot Spring Resor and White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, the Mainland would have sooner or later built five-star hotels, though surely there would have been more difficulties and it would have taken a longer time.　　Mr. Henry Fok once recalled during his lifetime that Deng Xiaoping had once said: why the Soviet Union's reform failed but China succeeded?　　It was because we had a Hong Kong and Macao.

　　More importantly, in the 40 years of reform and opening up, Hong Kong has built an unprecedented close relationship with the country in economic development, and Hong Kong compatriots' feelings toward the Motherland have become unprecedentedly profound.　　The nation's development has stepped into the right track, people's living conditions kept improving, and the nationa's strength and international status kept increasing.　　In the due course, Hong Kong has taken the opportunity to rise, becoming an international hub of finance, trade and shipping.　　In this way, Hong Kong has carried on and furthered its own prosperity while making contributions to the country's reform and opening up.　　This shows Hong Kong and the Motherland are as close as flesh and blood and share weal and woe.　　Moreover, the country's reform and opening up and Hong Kong people's participation have laid an indestructible foundation and created favourable conditions for Hong Kong's return to the Motherland in 1997 and the formulation and implementation of the "one country two systems" principle.　　Without the reform and opening up, without Hong Kong people's coming to understand, through the process of participation, the country's strength and the glory and pride of being a Chinese, Hong Kong's return to the Motherland in 1997 would not have been so smooth.　　All is just like what President Xi pointed out in his speech yesterday: in the 40 years of reform and opening up, Hong Kong and Macao compatriots are the witness as well as the participant, the beneficiary as well as the contributor.　　Both Hong Kong and Macao compatriots and the Mainland people are the creator of the great miracle of the country's reform and opening up.　　The course of the country's reform and opening up is also the course of Hong Kong and Macao being increasingly integrated into the overall development of the country to share the glory and greatness of the Motherland becoming increasingly prosperous and strong.

　　(To be continued)

　　13 November 2018