Q:

A:

wasn't a project of such a size that was going to affect the financial running of Hong Kong, that this project is

going to do. And that time there was talk of an airport. There had been talk of a new airport in Hong Kong since the

late 1970s. In the early 1980s it was shelved for a number of reasons, the economic situation wasn't right, I think it

was shelved in 1983. Now that it has been brought forward

again and it is a project that is going to transfer this

boundary of 1997 and one has to take into account that

neither the Hong Kong Government, nor Britain wish to leave

behind a situation in Hong Kong that would be at all

detrimental to the people of Hong Kong and China did not

wish to inherit Hong Kong back from Britain where it didn't

have finances to support itself, because there in the Joint

Declaration you will find that China is going to take no

money out of Hong Kong, Hong Kong has to be self-sustaining

and China wanted to make sure that the situation was not

going to be one in 1997 where it had to go and put money in to keep Hong Kong going. Now in that particular clause that you have referred to, and it is only one small part of the Memorandum of Understanding, achieves what Hong Kong,

Britain and China want.

So can you assure the Hong Kong people that this agreement will be the only one, the only agreement of this kind, which concerns about important projects, Hong Kong projects which will straddle in 1997?

Well I don't know what the Hong Kong Government are going to produce. I don't actually run Hong Kong. That is the Hong Kong Government. In this particular incidence, this is a one-off project, it is a very important major investment, a huge asset for Hong Kong in the years to come, it was agreed that a Memorandum of Understanding of

of seeing to this nature was the best way of taking that to

matter.

that

Q:

So is it correct to say that you don't know at this time

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