thoughts怎么读语音【Second,thoughts】

　　So the core questions about Hong Kong may be these: What makes Hong Kong valuable to the People’s Republic and what is necessary to sustain or expand that value? If one looks at the record since 1997, the answer that suggests itself is that Hong Kong is valuable to Beijing mainly as a means of engaging the global system in a safe way from a domestic perspective. It is not just initial public offerings that are floated in Hong Kong, which remains a valuable laboratory for the mainland.
　　A range of ideas for China’s future can be tested in Hong Kong with minimal political risk to the leadership in Beijing. This happens in many ways. Bureaucrats learn that the rule of law in Hong Kong is quite a bit less malleable than it is on the mainland. Experiments with the convertibility of the currency can be conducted without fear of nationwide consequences. And as Chinese try out their new national identity, there can be an “all-inthe-family” series of exchanges in which the Mandarin-speaking assertiveness that goes with pride in past accomplishments can be tempered with a realistic, Cantonese-speaking view of the distance yet to be traveled before China answers satisfactorily the kinds of questions that are being raised in China during the current run-up to the 18th Party Congress this fall. Such exchanges may be a bit rough and tumble at times, as is the case in the current dispute over mainland mothers giving birth to children in Hong Kong hospitals. But stop for a moment to consider what those Chinese mothers are expressing. Is it anything other than a sense of confidence in the future for their children in Hong Kong? And what is the attraction of Hong Kong’s future? What is the basis for a better chance for one’s children in Hong Kong compared to the mainland? We come full circle, then, to the core of Hong Kong’s success: Is it not the rule of law and the free market, recognizable even to the most recent or temporary visitor to the SAR?
　　From a political perspective Hong Kong remains valuable to Beijing, even if not in the way envisaged by those who first conceived “one country, two systems.”If the original intent was for Hong Kong under “one country, two systems” to be a model for reunification of Taiwan and the mainland, it was in this regard an abject failure. The two circumstances are and were fundamentally different, and crossStrait ties have grown organically without direct reference to Hong Kong’s experience. That is not to say Hong Kongers’experience is without relevance. It is relevant, but the formula for Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty does not apply to the development of cross-Strait ties since 1997. Moreover, one could argue that the Hong Kong experience was not as direct a precedent for Macau as Beijing might have envisioned. Macau has taken its own very different path based on its quite different colonial history and relationship to China. Beijing has had to become accustomed to things turning out in unexpected ways in its Special Administrative Regions.
　　Perhaps the area where China needs the most help and can most effectively learn from experience in Hong Kong is precisely that set of issues that creates the most anxiety among Hong Kong citizens. If good governance grounded in the rule of law is essential to Hong Kong’s continued success, how much more important is it for the mainland economy? After he is inaugurated on July 1, on the fifteenth anniversary of the handover, one of Mr. Leung’s most pressing and important burdens of leadership will be to balance the competing notions of this conundrum: The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is most useful to the mainland when it is most free from its direct control.