評論
打印
Thank you very much, Mr. Chipman, and thanks to all of you for being here today. I also wish to acknowledge and thank Mr. Ronnie Chan, chairman of the Asia Society, and Mr. Norman Chan, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
十分感謝你，奇普曼先生，謝謝諸位今天光臨。 我還感謝亞洲協會主席陳啟宗先生和香港金融管理局總裁陳德霖先生。
And I am so pleased to be here and to have this opportunity to speak with you today, and it was made possible by the U.S., Hong Kong, and Macau chambers of commerce and the Asia Society. And I thank the chamber very much on a personal level for its support of the U.S. Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. I have been called the mother of the pavilion, which is actually one of the nicer things I’ve been called during my very long public career.
今天，我十分高興來到這里并有此機會向諸位發表講話。這項活動是由美國、香港和澳門商會成員和亞洲協會安排的。我個人向美國商會支持上海世博會美國館表示十分感謝。我被稱為美國館之母，在我漫長的公共生涯中，這的確是一個比較令人喜歡的稱呼之一。
And I am delighted to be back in Hong Kong, a city I have admired ever since I first visited about 30 years ago when my husband, who was then governor of Arkansas, led the first ever trade mission to East Asia from our small state. Hong Kong stood out then, as it does today, as a symbol of the open exchange of goods and ideas. People were drawn to this place from every part of the world, even far away Arkansas, as evidenced by a good friend of ours from Arkansas, Nancy Hernreich Bowen, who is here with us today.
很高興再次來到香港。約30年前，我丈夫任阿肯色州州長時曾率領這個小州的第一個貿易代表團前往東亞訪問，當時我首次訪問了香港。自那時以來，我一直十分欽佩這個城市。當時，香港作為開放商品和思想交流的象征，具有十分重要的地位。今天，香港依然如此。人們從世界各地被吸引到這里來，甚至從遙遠的阿肯色州，我們來自阿肯色的一位好朋友南希∙赫恩賴奇∙鮑恩今天也在座就證明了這一點。
Now, since that time, Hong Kong has changed a great deal. Certainly, the skyline attests to that. And after all, few things have stood still in East Asia. But one thing about Hong Kong has not changed — the principles that find a home here. Under the “one country, two systems” policy, this remains a city that bridges East and West and looks outward in all directions, a place where ideas become businesses, where companies compete on the merits, and where economic opportunity is palpable and real for millions of people, a place that defines the fierce and productive economic competition of our time.
從那時以來，香港發生了很大的變化。毫無疑問，香港的城市風景線就是明證。畢竟在東亞極少有固定不變的事物。但香港有一點沒有變——這里深入人心的一些原則。在“一國兩制”政策下，香港仍然是連接東西方的橋梁，依然是一座向四面八方開放的城市。在這里，各種構想轉化為各種工商活動；公司憑自身的實力相互競爭；數百萬人民切身受惠于實際的經濟機會；通過激烈的經濟競爭提高效益的時代特征得到充分體現。
That is why businessmen and women continue to flock to Hong Kong, and an opportunity to meet some of the Americans who have called Hong Kong home for 20, 25, even 30 years. And it is why I have come here today to talk about how the nations of this region and the United States can intensify our economic partnership on behalf of ourselves, each other, and the world, and how together we can work toward a future of prosperity and opportunity for people everywhere.
正因為如此，男女工商業者繼續涌入香港，一些美國人也因此有機會在香港安居樂業長達20年、25年乃至30年。正因為如此，我今天來這里談談本地區國家和美國可如何為自己、為彼此、也為全世界加強我們的經濟伙伴合作關系，如何共同為一個繁榮的未來和全世界人民獲得機會而努力。
But before I talk about where we need to go together, let’s consider how far we’ve come. The economic rise of the Asia Pacific region is an astonishing historic achievement that is reshaping our world today and into the future. In Hanoi, bicycles and water buffalo have given way to motorcycles and internet cafes. Small Chinese fishing villages like Shenzhen have become megacities with their own stock exchanges. And while much work remains to improve labor practices and expand access to the formal economies, the numbers tell a powerful story.
但在我討論我們需要如何共同努力之前，讓我們首先回顧一下我們已經取得的進展。亞太地區的經濟崛起是驚人的歷史性成就，對當今世界和未來都產生了深刻的影響。在河內，自行車和水牛已被摩托車和網吧取代。深圳等中國小漁村已變成擁有證券交易所的大城市。盡管在改善勞工待遇和擴大進入正規經濟的途徑等方面還有大量工作要做，但有關的數字令人震撼。
Thirty years ago when I first came to Hong Kong, 80 percent of the people of this region lived on less than $1.25 a day. By 2005, that number had dropped to 20 percent. In the Lower Mekong Region countries, per capita GAP has more than tripled in the last 20 years. And in Thailand alone, the poverty rate fell from 42 percent in 1988 to 8 percent today. Never in history have so many people climbed so far, so fast.
30年前我首次前來香港之時，本地區80%的人口依靠每天不到1.25美元的收入生活。到2005年，這個比例已下降到20%。在湄公河下游地區的國家，人均國內生產總值在過去20年中提高了兩倍多。僅在泰國，貧困率就從1988年的42%下降到今天的8%。有史以來，從未有如此眾多的人口如此快速地獲得這么顯著的改善。
