Sam, our Foundation Chair, has set us a challenge for Rotary Foundation giving this year and immediately pledged a $500 contribution. President Lydia followed with a $100 US contribution.   

Be prepared, bring your cheque books or your credit cards over the next few weeks.  Give generously and with a view to making our club target to have every single member give something to support one of the best and most efficient charities in the world – our own Rotary Foundation.

 
 
We were happy to welcome back to the fold our roving reporter, Sam Wong. He had two arenas to discuss, the first essentially being the enjoyment that one should gain from being a Rotarian, and secondly his return from the maelstrom that is Hong Kong. His talk on the Foundation  (doubly important at this time in the Rotary Year) was erudite and to the point (by coincidence your correspondent was on the previous day in attendance at the Victoria Rotary Club and heard much the same plaint of a decline in contributions, and indeed interest, perhaps arising because of the comparative decline in North American membership numbers). While he was doubly persuasive on the ‘fun’ that Rotary connotes, his commencing his talk by invoking what 3 year-olds hold to be paramount, and then ending with a direct reference to Grandma Dianna, he perhaps combined those elements to render the general direction of his comments a mite opaque … in sum, it was,  when boiled down, a plea for our members “to get with it”.
 
The second part of his message was directed to what everybody now observes as a very confusing, and probably physically dangerous, situation in China,  and in Hong Kong in particular. Starting from the point of departure from the Commonwealth, he looked to the legal system and the circumstances of 1997 when the Handover (by now, almost the formal title for the change in the sovereignty) occurred. Many will remember that occasion, when many British politicians inflated their rhetoric to the point of urging that the UK deny the return to Chinese suzerainty, if necessary by force. The question of two entities co-existing amicably with two disparate systems was at the time quite a potent one (at the time Hong Kong’s GDP was approximately 30% of China’s as a whole), a characteristic which has long since dramatically changed, the Hong Kong economy now representing less than 3% of the “national” GDP. Its status is therefore now not nearly as important an issue as was the situation in 1997.
 
One rather noisome member of the audience brought up the point that the Economist (the Bible of common sense political and economic knowledge)  opines that Hong Kong in fact is not now much of an issue at all. Above all,  the Communist oligarchy wants there to be One China for all purposes, and as the importance of Hong Kong has declined, so the significance of Taiwan has risen, the island(s') successful resistance to the worldwide clout of Beijing demonstrating that one small enterprise can effectively flout reality by steering an alternative course. Thus, too heavy-handed a treatment of the popular sentiment in Hong Kong will likely redound to China’s ultimate disadvantage. It need hardly be added that Sam disagreed with this view, to the extent of the discussion carrying on for longer than our learned President may have wished. But it was a stimulating presentation.
 
Your correspondent is reminded of the part of Kissinger’s ‘Years of Upheaval’ where he describes a discussion that he held with Zhou Enlai (doubtless over a maotai) about the import of the French Revolution and what its importance in world affairs. The Zhou Enlai response encompassed the sensibility of the Middle Kingdom: “it’s too early to tell” he intoned. So be it.