on the immediate question my family and friends were right. There really was no way that Hong Kong, by itself, could take those people in.
But the whole experience made me reflect very much on the whole issue of the boat people, refugees in general, and the problem of creating opportunities for people who now have none. This has become very much a part of my feelings about business, and about my goals in business.
I cannot pretend that I am completely idealistic. I would like to become a successful and prosperous business person. But thinking about the boat people in that compound has made me consider how my goals can also serve a larger purpose. It seems to me that poverty and lack of opportunity are the main cause of the troubles that face the world. Even racial and religious prejudice, I think, begin with people being afraid that there is not enough to go around. So they want those opportunities to go to themselves and people like them, and will repress other people to keep them from competing.
I hope that, by participating in international business, I can do my own small part to create more opportunities and more prosperity in the world, and so help to alleviate the conditions of poverty and hopelessness that I saw in the boat people.
2 - A. When I was about fifteen years old, a friend's father was driving several of us to a choral singing competition. It was in the evening. Traffic in Hong Kong is almost always heavy and slow, on account of the large population density, but on this evening we found ourselves barely creeping forward. Ahead we could see a bright flickering glow, and then a large number of flashing lights of the type used by emergency vehicles.
For a time, traffic was fully at a stop, while all of us craned our heads forward to see what the cause of it was. Finally we began to move forward again, and we presently came close enough to see what was the cause of the glow. A car had r...