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What keeps you awake at night?
Silly things, I suppose. I worry too much actually. I tend to get worried about small things because the small things could get you into trouble if they develop into big cracks.
If I have identified in the course of the day something that ought to be addressed then that tends to keep me awake throughout the night. That’s why you can see I have grey hair.
I’m just someone who worries about everything.
How many holidays do you take a year?
Well, in the past few years there has been so much going on. I don’t take a lot of holiday, but in total I suppose I take a few days every now and then, and in the year I suppose I take two or three weeks – which is quite a lot. I don’t usually take more than one week at a time.
Do you find yourself worrying when you are on holiday?
Nowadays because of the efficiency of the telecommunications system and mobile phones, you don’t get much peace and quiet anywhere, but that’s part of the job.
Is it true that on the night Deng Xiaoping died you were rung up to begin defences?
I was rung up in the middle of the night and informed of the sad news, but we didn’t really have to plan for an onslaught or anything like that. Contingency plans are in place all the time.
It does not actually require me to press any buttons at all; the mechanisms are already there. I don’t think any monetary system should depend on the activity of a particular person.
Do you care whether you’re popular or unpopular?
Oh I do care, but I don’t care to the extent of going out of my way to be popular. My job involves taking unpopular decisions every now and then.
Quite often in fact. For example, on the banking supervisory side, you always have to be on people’s backs about the risk they are taking and advise them how they should manage it.
I think the best thing is for someone to approach the job in a professional way and in time gain the respect of the community even though the decisions you take are unpopular.
In fact, I hate politics and I don’t really want to play politics. For a central banker, the best politics is to do your job properly.
Would you have imagined 10 years ago that Hong Kong would be a relative oasis of stability in the months after the hand-over?
If you told me 10 years ago that there would be a wave of speculation in Asian currencies, I would have said that Hong Kong would be among the first to be affected. We didn’t have such a robust mechanism back then.
