(d)
RESTRICTED
Covering SECRET
granting land to the consortium on new land formed in the Western Harbour and Lantau.
4. In short, you will see that there would be heavy Government subsidies involved. Moreover, the proposal was always quite sketchy in terms of engineering facilities and cost estimates. It offered no information on phasing and programming works, the availability and amounts of private sector money, or the required payments in cash or in land from the Hong Kong Government.
5.
These are all points that I made at the last round of talks to Chen Zuo’er. He, in fact, ran two criticims past me on that occasion. His first accusation was that the Lantau Fixed Crossing was an extravagant exercise and that it would be cheaper to build Shum Ma Bridge rather than Tsing Ma Bridge. I explained that this entirely ignored that the Shum Ma Bridge would necessitate a double-deck road over the water along the coastline from Kwai Chung to Shum Cheng. This was bound to be very expensive and there were also serious environmental and navigational problems. The judgement of the Hong Kong Government was that any potential advantages in the Shum Ma proposal would be more than offset by the severe transport, environmental and other problems that would be caused.
6.
The second accusation, in fact, was that the Chek Lap Kok reclamation was, at HK $30 billion, far more expensive than the HK $10 billion apparently mentioned by an architect publicly in May. But, again, I explained to Chen that, as he would have seen from the papers which had been given to him by the Hong Kong Government, the reclamation proposed by the Hong Kong Government would cost nothing like as much as the architect was claiming. As he knew, the airport scheme was backed-up by detailed studies and consultancy reports. Indeed, there have been eight consultancy reports since the early 1970s.
Your ever
Adnew
R A Burns
Copies to:-
CCW Adams Esq, PEP/OT1, DTI JP McIntyre Esq, H M Treasury
A25ABE
RESTRICTED
Covering SECRET