XN000022-1974-02-28 — Page 3

Thursday, February 20, 1974

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11To live Hong Kong must continue to grow. Growth requires new land

for industry and for those who work in industry to live on and enjoy. The

land is there, but the problem is access to it. The provision of access in

one of our out urgent priorities hence the new tunnel to Shatin, the mutor

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road to Castle Peak, the projects to double track the railway, and build a

tunnel to Aberdeen,

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"o this project providing access to Tuing Yi leads in a field which

is vital to the future of Hong Kong.

"And it is all the more striking for being a bride, because bridges,

like chips, have a fascination all their own. However functional they cannot

entirely escape either beauty or romance. And this is the first big bridge

Hong Kong has known. In this crowded territory, with so many empty islundo,

it can curely not be the last.

"I do most sincerely congratulate and thank all those concerned with

its construction. As an act of private enterprise by a group of businessmen

it is as for-sighted and imaginative as it is generous.

"Hong Kong needs such imagination and commercial courage if it is to

maintain its extraordinary growth. It needs the combination of international

and local capital so happily evident in this company, and so fitting to the

Great international centre of industry and commerce which Hong Kong now is.

It needs too, the partnership between private enterprise and the Government

that in this case has coupled a fine bridge with the approach systers to serve

it.

"It is particularly happy for all of us that the moving spirit in

this project, as in so many far-sighted and hard-headed benefactions to Hong

Kong by his family, Lawrence Kadoorie, was knighted in the low Year List.

''I should