A COMPLETELY NEW PORT
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from Hong Kong, in a traffic which it was impossible to suppress totally, remains unquantifiable. At all events the embargo was a blow which, if not deadly, was certainly crippling.
Hong Kong's remarkable response to this crisis was the development of a manufacturing capacity which helped to raise the economy to its present high international rating, Number 10 in the world. This recourse undoubtedly saved the situation, but the 1960s were nevertheless a worrying decade. Acrimonious non-relations persisted between the United States and China; and Hong Kong was not spared the side-blasts of what amounted to ideological frenzy in the People's Republic. Thus it came as a great relief to the community when in 1971, with the fever of the Cultural Revolution abating, Washington and Beijing began to replace acrimony with dialogue. Entrepôt could now revive.
Such was the background when, in 1973, a team of Hong Kong government engineers (led by Jim Robson, as Director of Public Works) accepted an invitation to visit their counterparts in Guangzhou. It was a friendly and successful visit, which was reciprocated. (In Hong Kong the guests from Guangzhou were intrigued and appreciative members of the audience at a public performance of a light opera rich in political satire, 'The Mikado.')
In both cities, the subject of discussion was water supplies. In Guangdong, the Hong Kong group had the chance to observe how the flow of a major river had been diverted and led back upstream and over a mountain, enabling its water to be piped into the Hong Kong system. In Hong Kong, the Chinese engineers visited High Island, where the territory's largest reservoir was then being carved out of the sea.
If the main topic was water, it was not the only one. In fact both sides went to pains to demonstrate and explain other infrastructural features and schemes. A contact had been made and a dialogue begun, out of which personal friendships grew.
As China reopened its economy to the outside world throughout the 1970s and 1980s - a policy to which the leadership in Beijing has repeatedly reconfirmed its commitment - so such contacts multiplied and extended over a wide field of activities. Hong Kong planners have observed with interest the development of schemes to expand the ports of Shekou, Huangpu and Zhuhai Shi in the Pearl River delta and estuary. They see these developments as complementary to, rather than directly competitive with, the enlargement of Hong Kong's deepwater capacity.
China, it should be added, is already taking an active part in the implementation of Hong Kong's port development strategy. The consortium which made a successful bid to build and operate Terminal 8 includes two Chinese state-owned companies.
Thus, our retrospective glance reveals that an essential part of the background to the development of the Grand Design consists of eighteen years of technical and professional contacts and consultations with China.
Making It Work
Despite the gratifying discovery of submarine sand deposits, Hong Kong remains generally poor in natural resources. The truism that the harbour and the people are the territory's two main assets holds good today and will be no less valid tomorrow. A fine new port will be as effective as the people who man and operate it.
In recent times, the community has become more fully aware of the debt owed to the workforce of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly those who toiled at looms and other machines in the early years of manufacturing. In the 1970s new labour legislation, new