Kong's growth. Something of a different order was urgently
territory's position as a major
needed to match the
international financial,
centre.
Lantau Island with
commercial and communications
There had been the usual history of abortive
planning for another site, interrupted by political or
financial crises. It was time for a bold move. A site on
associated plans for extensive port
facilities was chosen. It was naturally a big project,
worth some £8 billion and extending well beyond 1997. But
the Hong Kong budget could readily carry its share; and some
40% of the money would come from the private sector.
particular
interest
or objection.
The plan had ample publicity and was spoken of to
Zhou Nan; but the Chinese Government at first expressed no
They had other
preoccupations at the time. By the end of 1989, however,
there were ominous mutterings from Peking. They related to
cost, fears that the plan might be over-ambitious and, more
relevant, that it could leave the Special Economic Region
in a weaker financial postion in 1997. We were encountering
a more refined form of Deng Xiaoping's worries in 1984 that
we would deliberately impoverish the territory before
leaving; the airport was seen as the means by which British
companies would be enriched and Hong Kong's treasury
emptied.
In the Chinese reaction there was no doubt an
element of genuine concern about the burdens that the
undertaking would impose on the Hong Kong Region after
1997. But there was also an instinctive opposition,
enhanced by the post-Tiananmen mood, to any unilateral