Local businesswoman and member of the standing committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Pansy Ho, wants young people in both Macau and Hong Kong to find pride in their cultural values and identify as Chinese, she said in an interview with Chinese state media CGTN.
In the interview Ho said she was “a very good example” of this idea of adhering to Chinese cultural values, adding, “I was born and brought up in Hong Kong and throughout my life, I have lived and worked in both Hong Kong and Macau. I have been educated abroad but then I returned to Hong Kong and Macau and I loved having that ability. I believe that is [what it means to have] freedom of choice. I had choices [options] but I made a deliberate choice to return to my own country and to serve my own country,” Ho said.
The businesswoman, who is the elder daughter of the late gaming tycoon Stanley Ho, also noted that for younger generations to be able to understand and nurture Chinese values, instead of adopting values from elsewhere, “we need to revise a little some of the educational programs for young people,” she said, adding that being “international” is not to “be part of [their culture]” but rather that “we want other people to respect us and to actually embrace us.”
For Ho, the lack of access to what she calls “the true facts” and the failure to teach them to the younger generations leads young people to think that their culture is not valuable and that they should embrace other countries’ cultures or habits as their own.
“It is only fair that we should present to them the true facts so that [the youth] can make their own decisions,” Ho remarked.
Ho was also questioned on the project of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) that was launched four years ago. She said that is it a key topic for anyone in the business sector in this part of the world.
On this subject, Ho, who also chairs Shun Tak Holdings, said, “In the past [at Shun Tak] we were dedicated mostly to providing ferry transportation between Macau and Hong Kong and vice-versa but now we are advancing and elevating this and going to hopefully be able to start our plan to create a cross territories sea-to-air-to-land transportation network providing the infrastructural services to the population within the Greater Bay Area in future,” she remarked.
