By Norm Jacknis
9/16/98 11:00 PM Hong Kong

Getting up before 5 AM so we could catch an early morning flight to Hong Kong was the way Tuesday 9/15 started. After a lengthy trip to the airport and even lengthier processing at several different checkpoints, we were off to our last stop before home, Hong Kong. The flight itself took three hours -- China is a very big country.

The new Hong Kong airport, which opened up just two months ago, was impressive. Getting into Hong Kong was more so.

This city-state clearly has one of the most densely packed populations on earth. Yet it could be an American city, perhaps Miami or Honolulu considering the climate and palm trees. While Beijing was modern in comparison with what we expected, Hong Kong was what we were used to, living in the New York region.

We got into our hotel rooms in the afternoon and looked around town for a couple of hours. Then it was off to a four-hour dinner meeting with David C.Y. Lam, the General Manager of Everlite Company.

Everlite is the manufacturing agent for Westchester-based Zelco. Since Zelco is an entrepreneurial company, we were especially interested in how they were doing business in this part of the world. We discussed how the relationship was established and the role Everlite plays in arranging for manufacturing in China itself. We will take back what we learned from this conversation as we talk about business opportunities in China with other Westchester-based enterprises.

On Wednesday, September 16, our major event was a meeting with MasterCard International (another Westchester-based company) and Hong Kong - Shanghai Bank. MasterCard controls the major smart card company in the world, Mondex. In each region, Mondex has turned over responsibility for smart cards to one or more companies. In Hong Kong, that responsibility belongs to Hong Kong Shanghai Bank. Since Hong Kong is way ahead of any other place in the use of smart cards, we wanted to learn directly from those with real world experience.

The County Executive, the Westchester County Association team and I took the Hong Kong subway to the corporate headquarters of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank. By the way, this company owns Marine Midland.

We met with the woman who was responsible for the planning and execution of smart cards in Hong Kong. She was very informative about what worked and what didn't work. We discussed the various possible uses of smart cards in Westchester, including Playland, Parks, libraries, the Bee Line, electronic filing of legal documents, etc. She was very enthusiastic about these projects and indicated that these would fall into the profile of successful uses of smart cards.

We ended our trip by going to Hong Kong airport on Thursday, September 17, to catch the plane back to Kennedy -- via Seoul, Korea. Although we used up most of day in the process; somehow we still ended up arriving on Thursday.

As a group, the delegation was pleased with what it saw and with the friendliness of the Chinese people. We accomplished a lot of work and set into motion a number of initiatives.

With the economic reforms allowing for private enterprise and market competition, the attention of most people (especially the younger generation) has turned to making money. To paraphrase the old line, the business of China is business. Although the majority of Chinese living in the rural areas have not seen vast increases in wealth, those in the cities are participating in an economy growing by leaps and bounds. We clearly saw the future growth of China and want to ensure that Westchester gets its fair share of that growth.

But now, we are all pretty well exhausted and longing for the comforts of life in Westchester. Thus this is the last dispatch from the delegation.