by Tung Chee-hwa
Vice Chairman of the CPPCC and Founder of CUSEF
I assure you I am keeping my best for tomorrow. So I am instructed to spend two or three minutes just to welcome you. I am delighted to welcome all of you to this beautiful spot in Hong Kong to talk about a topic which has great global significance. And I hope this beautiful surrounding can give you an addition of inspirations. President Xi and President Trump met at the fringes of the G20 meeting in Osaka on the 29th of June. It is time we get together at this moment and people will say so soon after the meeting but that is exactly the point, to discuss the impact and importance to all of us. I am glad that today and tomorrow we have an opportunity to thoroughly discuss many important issues. And I hope that our discussions will not only be useful to you but that they will encourage you to take extra steps in support of a very important U.S. and China relations. Finally, I hope that at the end of this gathering, we can come away more positive and more confident about the future.
I would like to express my gratitude to every one of you for coming, for some of you coming from very faraway places to participate in this gathering. To you, to every one of you, thank you very much. Thank you.
I want to deliver an apology because Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister of Canada, he arrived here very late last night. And we were supposed to have breakfast together. But he has not been well. And as a precaution, we have taken him to a hospital. We think it is going to be all right. So wish him all the best.