Victor Ho, a visitor to Hong Kong from the United States, says "In the US highly qualified Asian executives are never promoted beyond middle management" ("Differing views on the importance of English in Hong Kong", August 8).
That is incorrect. In the list of Fortune 500 companies I counted 16 Asian CEOs, 3.2 per cent of the total. The Asian population of the US is about 4.4 per cent, so there is a slight under-representation, but hardly the glass ceiling of which Mr Ho complains. And it is simply not true that Asians are "never promoted".
Ho says the rationale for the glass ceiling is because Asians are soft spoken.
If a non-Asian made that claim it would rightly be judged an ignorant stereotype. It is equally ignorant coming from a US-based Asian. Mr Ho has clearly never been to a Hong Kong restaurant at festival time.
His muddled thinking somehow leads him to the conclusion that English is not important [in Hong Kong].
True, it may not be the only, or even the major, reason for Hong Kong's success. But is one of our unique selling propositions. It is one that our motherland is eagerly embracing. Why would we want to ditch it?
