"The price-to-earnings ratio of the mainland market is staggering, reaching 50-60 fold…I think people should be more cautious about their investment, if it collapses, it will definitely affect the

H-share of Hong Kong."

Li Ka-shing, Chairman of Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd. in an interview with Wen Hui Po, a Hong Kong-based daily

"The government should make more adjustments between supply and demand, in which supply should be emphasized to channel excessive influx out."

Professor Yang Chaojun, head of the Finance and Securities Institute of

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

"Corporate America has been here for decades, or at least 15-20 years, and we've been behind the curve...We have to engage, we have no choice."

Greg Tarpinian, Executive Director of Change to Win, who, along other leaders of the second largest U.S. coalition of unions, kicked off an

ice-breaking China visit on May 18, ending a decades-old boycott of China unions by American labor groups

"Over the past 10 yearsthere have been some bumpy moments-politically andeconomically-but some of the more dire predictions I remember so

vividly from 1997 have not come true. ‘One country, two systems'

has worked."

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, in a May 21 speech at the British Chamber of Commerce during her visit to Hong Kong

"Every hour, three species disappear. Every day, up to 150 species are lost. Every year, between 18,000 and 55,000 species become extinct."

Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the UN Conventionon Biological Diversity, blaming human activities for causing the greatest wave of extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, on May 22, International Day for Biological Diversity

"On top of the money we already pay for U.S. forces in Japan, to pay further expenditures is unheard of anywhere in the world and that

will not gain the understanding of the people of Japan, either."

Shokichi Kina, an opposition lawmaker from the Democratic Party, before Japan's lower house of parliament passed a law on May 23 to fund the reorganization of U.S. forces in Japan and help move thousands of Marines from the country's south to the U.S. territory of Guam

"We now have endorsed the concept of preemptive war where

we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own

security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there, or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered."

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in a telephone interview with the Arkansas

Democrat-Gazette released on May 19