HONG KONG: A HARD-EARNED SUCCESS
understood that nobody would admit to doing good business, but not difficult to assess the real situation. And there was a well-used appeal system to non-officials, in this case Urban Councillors, who in those days had supervision of the resettlement programme and kept us on our toes. Transparency of the rules and the right to appeal have continued to be a hallmark of the administration to this day.
Comparing 1966 to 1994
Looking at the whole period since my early years, the following table provides some interesting comparisons of economic and social indicators in 1966 and 1994.
Population (million)
GDP per capita (US$)
World league of trading economies
World league of banking centres
World league of foreign exchange reserves
Hang Seng Index (year high)
Size of Government Budget (HK$ billion)
Cargo throughput:-port (million tonnes)
-airport (thousand tonnes)
Number of manufacturing workers (thousand)
Number of workers in service sector (thousand)
Number of tourists (million)
Unemployment rate (%)
Number of trips by Hong Kong residents
* travelling abroad (million)
Number of public housing flats (thousand)
Home ownership (percentage of households)
HOS/PSPS
private vi
Number of university graduates
Car ownership (number per thousand population)
Number of telephone lines per thousand population"
Number of fax lines per thousand population
Outward international telephone traffic (million minutes)
1966
1994
3.7
6.1
686
21 760
23rd
8th (1993)
15th (1979)
4th
29th
6th
79.7
12 599
2
145
10
141
22
1 291
728 (1971)
446
639 (1971)
2214
0.5
9.3
4.5 (1971)
2.1
0.1
32.6
260 (1971)
685
0
10.3
14.7 (1971)
33.6
893
14 300
15
51
62
506
0
41
2 (1968)
1 304
Some of these comparisons are truly dramatic; developments which may take centuries in other places have been realised within the short span of one man's career in Hong Kong. It is worth looking at some of these achievements, starting with the Airport Core Programme.
Hong Kong's $158.2 billion Airport Core Programme (ACP) is setting world standards for the imagination and scale of the concepts, and for the speed and budget-consciousness of the construction. The total cost of the ACP is a staggering 81 times the government budget in 1966. The Tsing Ma Bridge is only one of the 10 infrastructure projects in the ACP, focused around the new airport at Chek Lap Kok, which will help Hong Kong's externally- oriented economy to continue to expand. The bridge itself dramatically illustrates our ability to succeed. It will be the longest suspension bridge carrying a railway as well as a road, and it will become a major landmark and a tourist attraction in its own right.
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