About 400 prominent people in Vancouver including business executives, senior government officials, community leaders and academics this evening (January 22) attended a colourful Chinese New Year Reception hosted by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.

Among the guests attending the occasion in the lavishly decorated ballroom of a waterfront hotel in the downtown area were the Secretary for State, Asia and Pacific, Mr. Raymond Chan; the Chinese Consul General in Vancouver, Mr. Song You Ming.

Adding colour to the reception were 32 uniformed officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who gave a performance of precision marching in the spacious ballroom.

They will be taking part in the Chinese New Year Parade in Hong Kong on January 28. Arrangements for the RCMP to take part in the parade was organised by the Hong Kong Tourist Association in Canada.

In welcoming the guests to celebrate the year of the tiger, the Director of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Canada, Mr. Donald Tong, said the RCMP would be taking part for two consecutive years the New Year Parade in Hong Kong.

"This is a concrete sign of the special friendship between Canada and Hong Kong," he said, adding that both places have many things in common such as July 1, a day when Canadians celebrate the Canada Day and Hong Kong people mark Hong Kong's return of sovereignty to China.

Mr. Tong said since July 1997, many landmark events occurred in Hong Kong. These included the successful conclusion of the G7 meeting and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Hong Kong, and the economic and financial crises in southeast Asia and the outbreak of "bird flu".

"I am glad to say that we have been able to keep the bird flu under control. All along, we have been adopting a very transparent system of information flow which is made available to both the Hong Kong public and the international community," he said.

"The World Health Organisation and the US Disease Control Centre have been brought in early to look into the cause and help stem it from spreading."

"We are making good progress and no new cases have been reported in the past two weeks. We are hopeful that the whole issue would be satisfactorily resolved soon."

As for the economic woes in the region, Mr. Tong said that one thing for certain that Hong Kong will not embark on is to give up the US-HK linked exchange mechanism.

"This linked system has served us well over the past 14 years. It has provided the basis in which Hong Kong has come through many international crises: the 1987 stock market crash, the 1989 June 4 incident in Beijing, the 1992 exchange rate mechanism turmoil, the 1995 Mexican peso crisis and the current regional currency crisis," he said.

He asserted that Hong Kong's US$96.5 billion in foreign currency reserves - the third largest in the world - and our healthy banking and financial systems as well as our strong economic fundamentals, are factors which will enable the territory to maintain the link and thwart any future attempts to speculate on its currency.

Mr. Tong concluded that he was confident that Hong Kong's economy would be one of the first, if not the first, to recover very quickly.