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As a government we have remained strongly committed to
vigorous and continuing investment in the future of the territory, and
our sights are set far ahead. The ambitious new town development programmes which were planned as early as the 1960's and started in
the 1970's will be largely completed by the end of the present decade.
In the next few months we expect to unfold a new development strategy
based on regional planning studies for the New Territories and the
harbour area. We shall shortly be making decisions on an overall
territorial development strategy to provide for the needs of nearly
two million more people. The strategy will extend well into the 1990's
and the next century.
Finally let me remind you of what Hong Kong is.
To many
visitors Hong Kong is the skyscrapers, the shopa, the crowded central
district and the hotels, and the busy streets and the traces of old
China, Many are impressed by the great wealth of the very rich, and
banks and business houses. A few note the great beauty and serene
grandeur of our coasts and our large country parks. But it is much
more than that. It is a community of more than five million hardworking
people whose home it is and will remain. Their concems are the concem
of the ordinary man and woman all over the world, their job, their
family, the health and well-being of their children. They recognise
the defects of the society in which they live, and I should be the
first to admit that they are there. But they recognise too what they, as a community have achieved over the last two decades. 43 per cent of the population live in public housing in standards which are
constantly being improved. Our housing programmes continue steadily to meet the requirements of those still in need. Although the
population has grown five or six times in the last thirty years there
is'secondary education and reasonable health care for all. Tertiary
education is expanding fast. Our people are free to come and go as they will. Life is not easy. Apart from the harbour and its geographical position Hong Kong is not well endowed with nature's bounty. But Hong Kong people work extremely hard because they believe
they can, by so doing better themselves and the prospects for their
families. Hong Kong is therefore not just a free enterprise economy.
It is a community with its own strong sense of identity and purpose.
/It is
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