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HONG KONG IN TOUCH WITH THE WORLD
32 international airlines operate scheduled services to about 75 destinations in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North America, Europe, Africa and Australasia. The only significant gap in services is the lack of a direct link to South America.
With some 1 000 scheduled passenger and freight services a week, the airport makes a vital contribution to tourism, business travel and trade. In 1984, by value more than a quarter of Hong Kong's domestic exports and a fifth of its imports were transported by air. Hong Kong's strategic position in Asia also makes the airport an important tranship- ment centre for the region.
The major markets for airborne exports are the United States, West Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada. With many Hong Kong-made products being small and lightweight, and thus suited to carriage by air, the territory has seen a rapid growth in air freight. The air cargo terminal, which came into full operation in 1976, had an original annual capacity of 250 000 tonnes. The expansion of trade made a bigger terminal imperative, and extensions completed in 1984 gave the terminal the capacity to handle 700 000 tonnes of freight a year.
The growth of aviation traffic through Hong Kong has also seen the development of an important maintenance service. The Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company has four hangars at the airport, providing complete airframe and engine overhaul facilities for almost any type of aircraft. It also provides maintenance and repair services for most of the airlines using Hong Kong.
Work is continuing at the airport on a $270 million scheme to expand and improve the passenger terminal building. This is scheduled for completion in 1988. The two-level extension to the building will provide additional passenger handling facilities to meet the expected increase in passenger traffic from the present 10 million a year to 18 million by the early 1990s. Other new projects include the expansion of the existing apron to provide new holding areas and better access to aircraft parked in the outer bays. This extension will allow five Boeing 747 freighters to be handled at the same time.
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The ease of travel to Hong Kong, with its 'downtown' airport, is a fundamental part of its appeal to tourists, and the tourism industry plays an important role in the economy. The vast majority - some 90 per cent of visitors arrive by air, and total receipts from tourism in 1985 were more than $14,000 million. Tourist spending is one of Hong Kong's major sources of foreign currency, and creates a significant local job market. For the future, the Sino-British Joint Declaration provides that Hong Kong will maintain its status as an international and regional aviation centre and, by implication, its appeal as a centre for business and communication.
Sea Transport
Historically, Hong Kong's best asset has been not its small land area, or the more than five million people packed into it, but the stretch of water between the Kowloon peninsula and Hong Kong Island. The 5 000 hectares of Victoria Harbour form one of the world's great natural anchorages, along with San Francisco, Sydney and Rio de Janeiro. Not only does much of Hong Kong's trade depend on its ocean links with the rest of the world, but the harbour provides the major link between the Island (to local people, Hong Kong side) and Kowloon (Kowloon side), to the point where they make some 130 million trips a year on ferries, travelling to and from work, or visiting the outlying islands at weekends.
The harbour has been in turn naval base, trading centre and tourist destination. Even today the arrival of a big passenger liner, such as the Queen Elizabeth 2, can draw crowds to the Star Ferry pier and the Ocean Terminal. While the boom in air travel has meant