faces the urgent problem of determining what political and social
conditions must be preserved in order to ensure a continu. ing thriving
economy. "2 And the ethicist, we may add, can draw on all of those
problems and quite a few more characteristic of situations when
traditional communities struggle with the impact of sudden and
unprecedented wealth as well as with a technological transformation of
their society of singular proportions. Hong Kong is truly a society in
transition, a society whose time is running short and which therefore
cannot afford to wait long before it has to make decisive choices,
choices also in ethics. The time factor which is so infamous in various
ethical dilemmas applies here to the society as a whole; it may also
account for some of its not just morally significant shortcomings. II.
Ethics in a Cross-cultural Perspective The authors of this volume are
scholars and researchers based in Hong 3 Kong who have been living and
working in the territory for many years. They are not only
representative of the increased research interest in ethical issues
across the academic spectrum of Hong Kong universities, but also of the
inter- disciplinary approach which has become the hallmark of work in
applied eth- ics. As is well documented, ethics research, at long last,
has left behind its disciplinary confines and, even more so, the
philosophical ivory tower and begun to permeate the full scope of the
academic and scientific agenda.