PERHAPS HONG KONG'S business leaders remain shell-shocked by the devastating financial reverberations of the regional economic crisis. Or perhaps they are just very comfortable in the warm bath of currency stability provided by the local dollar's link to its United States counterpart.
Whatever the reason, they seem a bit edgy at the prospect of change.
Local tycoons became unsettled in June when talk circulated that Beijing was thinking about widening the exchange-rate band within which the yuan is allowed to trade.
'Rather excited' is the term Joseph Yam Chi-kwong, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's chief executive, used on Monday to describe about 30 Hong Kong business leaders who met with Premier Zhu Rongji in late June.
Their nervousness is odd, particularly since the financial markets responded to those same liberalisation rumours with no skittishness whatsoever. In fact, yuan-denominated A-share markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen climbed to all-time highs in late June, and the US-dollar-denominated B-share markets reached one-year highs.
Nevertheless, the tycoons were sufficiently tense during their meeting with the mainland's economic tsar that Mr Yam says he was subsequently asked to examine the impact on Hong Kong of changes to the mainland's exchange-rate regime. A report was dispatched to Mr Zhu, through Governor Dai Xianglong of the central People's Bank of China, in July.
