TNAG-1842-FCO40-2617-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 24

34. Efficient telecommunications, both internal and external, have been another vital factor in the development of Hong Kong as a leading industrial, commercial and financial centre. The facilities. now provided by private companies acting under government regulation (mainly Cable and Wireless (HK) Limtied and its subsidiary, the Hong Kong Telephone Company) are among the most modern in the world.

They include land and submarine cables and radio links, as well as

satellite links, via both the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean

satellites, from an earth satellite station at Stanley on Hong Kong

Island.

35. The public sector investment over the years in roads, railways, water supplies, schools, hospitals and other medical facilities,

public housing and public building of all kinds has been massive.

But over three quarters of all investment in Hong Kong has been

undertaken by the private sector. Apart from the privately owned public utilities, this includes large numbers of factory buildings and their plant and equipment, office, commercial and hotel

buildings and shopping complexes, and the rapidly increasing stock

of privately owned housing. Large projects, such as the Eastern

Harbour Crossing, the Tate's Cairn Tunnel and the most recent

extensions of the container terminal, are all long-term investments,

with pay back periods extending well after 1997.

THE CHALLENGES OF THE FU TURE

36.

Despite all these achievements, Hong Kong now faces new and

even more daunting challenges if it is to continue to be the

trading, commercial and financial link between China and the outside

world. Indeed, it is because of the rapid development of its economic interrelationship with China that these new challenges are arising. The essential requirment is to ensure that Hong Kong's economic infrastructure in particular road, port and airport facilities are adequate to meet the future demands on them arising from both its domestic economy and China's growing use of Hong Kong for trade and communications with the ouside world.

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