“Hong Kong: How did we get here? Where are we going?”

Bob Meyer, a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School, is an entrepreneur and lawyer who has lived in Hong Kong for 41 years since July, 1978 when he arrived in the then British Colony as a US lawyer with the preeminent international law firm of Coudert Brothers. Bob left Coudert Brothers in 1981 to co-found a large, public listed, international business conglomerate, First Pacific Company Limited, backed by Indonesia's then largest Chinese business group, the Liem or Salim Group. From 1985 and for fifteen years thereafter Bob was the founder and chief executive of the Special Assets investment group. He is also the co-founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Pharmalink International Limited, a nutraceutical company, and the Asean Enterprises group with real estate holdings in Hong Kong.Bob's three children were all born in Hong Kong and live in the United States. During this period Bob has seen the Chinese people of Hong Kong move from being politically apathetic when living in a colony of Britain to being very politically active in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region with its own self governance under the "One Country, Two Systems" model originally announced by Deng Xiao Ping in 1979 for the purpose of attracting Taiwan back to the Chinese Motherland. Hong Kong was the first territory to which the One Country, Two Systems model was tried in 1997 followed by the former Portuguese colony of Macau in 1999. This fact is key to understanding the current situation in Hong Kong. Today a large part of Hong Kong's population (particularly young people in the territory) is in an uproar, which Bob will explore and explain, there being 28 years left before the possible expiry of the 50 year One Country, Two Systems model for Hong Kong in2047. How and why Hong Kong changed over this period and what is the future of Hong Kong will be discussed in Bob's presentation.