布政司署
香港下亞厘華道
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GOVERNMENT, SECRETARIAT
PWER ALBERT ROAD
Original at: PERALE
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CHINA RESOURCES PURCHASE OF LAND IN HONG KONG
During the last two months or so China Resources have obtained the controlling interest in a company which owns a sizeable 1,200 acre site of land in the New Territories. The area in question is called Tin Shui Wai (Tian-shui-wei), directly to the West of Yuen Long and Ping Shan in the North West of the colony. At present it consists mostly of fishponds.
2.
ARA
see (122.
The infighting over control of the company during the past eighteen months has been extremely complex. I need not bother you with the details. Nor indeed do we know them all. Sufficient to say that local communists first seem to have become interested in the area in mid-1978. So too were many others, including at one stage Jardines and Wimpeys. By late October last year, China Resources had got control of about 50-55 per cent of the relevant shares, largely as a result of sales to them by Clifford Wong (a local architect who has other associations with local communists) and Li Ka-shing, one of the leading local property developers who was placed recently on the board of the Peking-based China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC).
3.
Tien Shui Wai is probably the largest area of developable land in the New Territories under single ownership. During the machinations referred to above, those concerned have had an eye to developing it as a massive new housing and possibly industrial area. Some have loosely spoken of a new town of 500,000; a more realistic figure is probably up to half that number. present the land is agricultural. Any change would need government approval and the payment of a large premium
/contd.
MAL