Count your blessings

For Hong Kong and other Asian economies, the terrorist attack on America could not have come at a worse time. The panic reaction in Asian stock markets indicates the shockwaves of horror and foreboding swamping the business community.

Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung sought to calm local fears by saying that although exports and re-exports would be affected at first, further interest cuts and a softer US dollar could have a positive effect on the local economic outlook.

Some economists even take the bullish view that the attack will galvanise Americans into action, and help put off a recession. For the time being, however, the general sentiment is that the attack was bad news for a world pinning its hopes on American resilience to stave off a global crash.

But talk of the economy seems banal and trivial against the scale of the human tragedy. There can be few Hong Kong families, from Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa to people in the farthest New Territories village, without friends or relatives in the U.S.

Hong Kong was among 26 nations which had offices in the World Trade Centre. They all suffered a grievous blow, whether or not their nationals had survived or perished in the disaster.

Hong Kong is no major player in international politics but a cosmopolitan trading city whose prosperity and stability depends on world peace. Tuesday's atrocity was terrible proof that peace is fragile. And in both human and economic terms, no one can safely say he could be isolated from the ills of a world riven for decades by terrorism and violence.

So it is not a time to focus on parochial concerns. Rather than indulging in quarrels about what is wrong with the SAR, Hong Kong people should really count their blessings, put aside their differences and work for a better tomorrow.

We are not in a position to do much to contribute to world peace. But we have been setting a good example to the world that peace and good government not ethnic, religious or ideological unity are what it takes for an over-populated city lacking natural resources to prosper.

-- South China Morning Post, Hong Kong