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Discusses Britain's Cable and Wireless (C&W) February 29, 2000 sale of a stake in Hong Kong telecommunications carrier C&W HKT to Richard Li. Li's stake in Internet company PCCW and plan to provide broadband Internet access by cable or satellite in Asia; Singapore Telecom's negotiations with C&W.

Examines the February launch of the English-language daily `Eastern Express,' a paper of the Oriental Press Group which also publishes the leading Chinese-language paper, `Oriental Daily News.' Oriental Group hopes the `Express' will do for the Hong Kong English-language market what the `Daily News' has done for the Chinese one; The `South China Morning Post'; Advertising; Sale of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to Robert Kuok; Differences in the language markets.

Reports on the circulation of a consultation paper, which is the process of enacting a controversial set of laws against subversion, sedition, and treason, as required by Article 23 of the Basic Law in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong. Background on Basic Law and the return of Hong Kong to China; Idea that Falun Gong is a potential target of the laws; Fear that the laws are part of a pattern that erodes Hong Kong's autonomy and freedom.

Discusses the sentiments from an article in this week's Hong Kong papers by Xu Jiatun, once a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee. Intent to subvert communism by infecting China with the ideas of western democracy; Economic future of Hong Kong; Reforms in China; Predictions.

The article focuses on a research paper by Alwyn Young, a business professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which looks at how Hong Kong, China and Singapore became such economics giants. Hong Kong and Singapore started on a similar footing in 1945. Both were city states, British colonies making their living as trading ports. Both climbed the same industrial ladder, moving up from textiles to plastics to consumer electronics to financial services. The sources of growth in the two territories turned out to be startlingly different. In the two decades after 1970, Hong Kong's output per worker went up more than 2.5 times, Singapore's a little more than twofold. By the mid-1980s Singapore's incremental capital-output ratio was twice Hong Kong's. Hong Kong seemed to benefit so much from the better education of its people.