Question:
3-
will an agreement be signed on the Financial Support Agreements on the airport and on the railway?
Governor: I wish that an agreement on the FSAs had been at the same time as we agreed the funding for the airport overall last autumn or at least I wished that we could have signed such an agreement very shortly afterwards. Director Lu, when he was in America a few months ago, had said that there would be an agreement within days. Alas that didn't happen. I don't think, to be frank, that anybody should lay the reasons for that at the door of the Hong Kong Government. We've been getting on with the job of completing what is the largest civil engineering project in the world as rapidly as we can. I very much hope we'll get an agreement on the FSAs soon because frankly it's a distraction to have this hanging over us when we are trying to deal with the project as rapidly as we can. And if we can't do that who suffers? Hong Kong and Southern China.
Question: It doesn't sound very optimistic then?
Governor: I know having spent three years almost as Governor of Hong Kong that it's unwise to sound too optimistic about things which should be very straight forward as one might send the wrong signals to the community. I hope that we will soon be able to reach an agreement. I don't know, to be candid, why we haven't managed to reach an agreement already. But I hope that we will soon reach an agreement which will be in the interests of the people of Hong Kong, both in providing them with the new airport that we need, ask the residents of Kowloon, as rapidly as possible and a new airport at a reasonable cost as well.
Question: What's your basic message to the people of Hong Kong two years before the magical year?
Governor: My message to the people of Hong Kong is a very simple one. Hong Kong is one of the outstanding success stories of the last 50 years. A largely refugee community, which has without any natural resources to speak of, created an economic miracle in an open, free, plural society governed by the rule of law. I think that if people want as much as I believe they do that to continue, it will. We've had an agreement with China which underpins the transfer of sovereignty in 1997 and which guarantees Hong Kong's way of life for 50 years after 1997. It's clearly overwhelmingly in China's interest that that should be the case because Hong Kong is so superbly successful, representing now about 26 per cent of China's GDP. But not only is it in China's interest, it's in the region's interest. in the world's interest that that should continue. I believe that the international community will be watching what happens here very closely. And I think they will see the people of Hong Kong who have taken so much turbulence in the past in their stride managing the transfer in 1997, thanks in large measure, to their determination and their commitment to the values of a free society.