ROUNDTABLE WITH DISTINGUISHED WOMEN

             Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center
                            July 3, 1998

    (TRANSCRIPT OF OPENING REMARKS BY THE FIRST LADY AND THE 
                       SECRETARY OF STATE)

PARTICIPANTS:       FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
                    SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT
                    BETTY TUNG, WIFE OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE C.H.
                         TUNG
                    ANSON CHAN, CHIEF SECRETARY FOR 
                         ADMINISTRATION
                    CHEUNG MAN-YEE, DIRECTOR OF 
                         BROADCASTING, RADIO TELEVISION HONG 
                         KONG


(FOLLOWING AN INTRODUCTION BY MRS. TUNG)

SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Thank you very much, Mrs. Tung.  And Anson 
Chan, I'm very glad to see you here, and I would like to thank 
all the panelists very much for coming.  I know that your husband 
is the head of the town, but it seems to be run by women. 
(Laughter.)  So it's great to see everybody here.  It's wonderful 
to be here to be able to learn about the dramatic changes taking 
place in Hong Kong from the people who are making things happen.  
I was here a year ago for the ceremony, and it's wonderful to be 
back and to have a chance to see you.  I also would like to thank 
Mrs. Tung for this beautiful scarf.  Women's intuition knew that 
purple was my color. (Laughter.) 

As women in your respective fields, you are pathfinders, and in 
that, we all have something in common. Since President Clinton 
named me as the first female Secretary of State, I have found 
some important benefits to working closely with women colleagues.  
The understanding is there, and we all face the same challenges, 
and frank and honest talk, and a commitment to take each other's 
phone calls.  There are now nine women foreign ministers in the 
world, and I always take their calls first. (Laughter, applause.) 

But as leaders in fields from politics and law to finance and 
journalism, you are showing the way not just for the next 
generation of women, but for the future of Hong Kong and the 
region. And those of you that are in the government have managed 
Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty with great aplomb, 
maintaining the confidence of citizens and business alike.  And 
this is a process we have watched with great interest, and I'm 
eager, as is the First Lady, to hear all your thoughts about what 
lies ahead. 

Those of you who work as lawyers, advocates, and journalists are 
helping to ensure that every citizen enjoys full and equal 
protection under the law.  And as you know, the United States 
strongly supports those efforts to maintain and expand the rule 
of law.  In the United States and Hong Kong and elsewhere, a 
legal system is always a work in progress, and what you do here 
has important implications for the future.  And I know that those 
of you working in finance or business find yourselves in truly 
uncharted territory these days, as Hong Kong copes with the 
effects of Asia's financial crisis.  I want to stress our support 
and our confidence in what you are doing. 

In all these areas, you are accumulating experience that may be 
of value elsewhere in China, and that will certainly be 
invaluable to those who follow you.  When women and men take on 
new challenges and try to make themselves agents of change, they 
usually find that there is no manual on how to do it.  And nobody 
knows that better than our First Lady. 

Our First Lady, I think, has managed in a most remarkable way to 
combine her professional life with that of First Lady of the 
United States.  She is someone who has had a career in many of 
the areas that you all represent in one form or another.  She has 
been a professor, she has been a lawyer, a legal aid advocate, 
and so when we've visited legal centers she is able to ask the 
most penetrating questions because she's been there.  She also 
has had a great interest in children, and she is someone that 
American women look up to.  She is also a woman that is, I think, 
America's best ambassador abroad. She has traveled widely 
representing the United States in an incomparable way, showing 
the fact that American women are strong and smart and determined, 
and that our partnership with the men is something that makes 
things work.  It is my great pleasure to introduce to you the 
First Lady of the United States and my very good friend, Hillary 
Rodham Clinton.

(Applause.)

MRS. CLINTON: Thank you very much.  Thank you Madeleine, thank 
you Betty, thank you all for taking time out of your very busy 
schedules to be here.  Let me just make a few quick points, 
because I came to listen more than to talk.  I'm very anxious to 
hear from the extraordinary women gathered on this panel, and as 
I look at this audience, I see more extraordinary women who have 
made an accomplished contribution to what has gone on here in 
Hong Kong.

There are several reasons that Secretary Albright and I are here 
together at this meeting.  The first is that we both believe 
strongly that the voices of women and the contributions of women 
have to be recognized at the highest levels of government, of 
business, and throughout society. One of the commitments that 
Secretary Albright made and that she and I articulated in a 
speech together at the State Department shortly after she became 
the first woman Secretary of State for our country, is that 
women's concerns and voices had to be part of the calculus of 
American foreign policy - that there were issues that women had 
a particular interest in that the United States Government had to 
pay attention to. And we have worked very hard these last several 
years to make that apparent, whether it is support for family 
planning, or an understanding of the economic dislocations that 
occur around the world that affect women primarily, or continuing 
to press for literacy and health care and other basic rights that 
are often denied women in many societies. 

Secondly, we both feel very strongly that much of what is going 
on in the world today as we move into the 21st century is being 
shaped both directly and indirectly by women: in their private 
lives, at home, as Betty referred, and in the public arena -- in 
so many different capacities. And that as women, we want to be 
supportive of these changes and of the women who are putting 
themselves on the front line to bring these changes about.

As I've traveled, both with my husband and alone, I've always 
sought out women such as the ones here, both publicly in a 
setting such as this and often privately, to learn more myself 
about what is happening in the lives of women in different 
settings, and also to learn how in either a direct or indirect 
way I personally or the United States can be supportive of the 
positive changes that are occurring.  That is one of the reasons 
why I went to Beijing in 1995 to the International Women's 
Conference that I'm sure some of you also attended, to speak out 
strongly on behalf of the basic principles that affect women's 
lives, and to try to do what we could to promote a platform for 
action that would result in transforming change. Because as we 
have had these conversations, and as I've seen changes occurring, 
it is apparent to me that we are making progress, but that the 
progress is faster in some settings than in others. 

Now when I was in Beijing and Shanghai, I had the privilege of 
meeting with a number of Chinese women who spoke openly and 
freely about what they were doing to bring about changes in their 
own particular areas of expertise and interest. So whether it was 
the panel discussion that I held in Beijing last Saturday, where 
six women were among the most spirited that I've ever discussed 
anything with anywhere in the world, or visiting the legal aid 
center in Beijing that is operated in association with Beijing 
University, or visiting a women's retraining center in Shanghai 
where many of the women whose jobs are being lost to economic 
transformation are seeking help and assistance, I was struck over 
and over again by the way that women in China are doing all they 
can to change attitudes that would hold them back and make a very 
solid contribution to their own personal development and to the 
building of a new China. 

But I was particularly struck by a private comment that a woman 
made to me, when she said, "Well, now that you have met us, do 
you think that we are like Hong Kong women?" (Laughter.) And I 
thought I knew what she meant, but I wasn't quite sure, and I 
said, "Well, now, exactly what do you mean by that question?" 
She said, "You know, assertive, forward-looking, standing on our 
own." And I said, "Yes, I think you are like Hong Kong women." 
(Laughter and applause.) But I thought that it would be better 
for me to come to the source of such a comment and to have an 
opportunity to listen to some, very few, but some of the women 
who are leaders in Hong Kong in every sector of society. 

So I appreciate greatly these women taking time out of their 
extraordinarily busy schedules to be here to talk about what is 
happening in Hong Kong, what challenges and opportunities are 
available certainly for all people, but in particular for women 
and girls growing up in Hong Kong today facing this new century. 
So with that, I would like to turn first to a woman I had the 
privilege of meeting just a few weeks ago in Washington in 
preparation for this trip, and whom I am greatly admiring of, and 
the work that she is doing and the leadership that she is 
providing. So, Anson, if you would start off the conversation, 
please.

Return to The United States and China.

Return to USIA International Home Page.