ENG-1989 — Page 33

A VISION OF THE FUTURE

A Vision of the Future

My aim has been to show clearly how, despite the shocks we have experienced during the year, your government is continuing to plan for the long-term future of Hong Kong. We have a clear vision of what we are trying to achieve. It is a vision that I hope will sustain Hong Kong during the present period of uncertainty and give us all confidence in our ability to overcome whatever problems confront us.

As a community we tend to take for granted what we have achieved. But we have only to look back 10 years to see just how much has been done. Hong Kong in 1979 was a very different place. Let me take a few examples:

- our relations with China were still very limited. Our domestic exports to the mainland were only worth $600 million (compared to $38 billion last year). We had only recently opened air links in December 1978, and direct train services from Guangzhou restarted only on April 4;

there was no universal franchise at any level. Only about 32 000 people had the right to vote in Urban Council elections. The only District Boards (those in the New Territories) were wholly appointed;

- only that year, junior secondary education was for the first time made free and

compulsory for children below the age of 15;

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the first section of the MTR (from Shek Kip Mei to Kwun Tong) had just opened on September 30;

we had 2.2 million tourists, about 40 per cent of the figure last year;

we-had no bank building higher than 20 stories, no Exchange Square (but four Stock Exchanges), no Academy for the Performing Arts, no Tsim Sha Tsui East, no Aberdeen Tunnel and no airport tunnel.

Let us now use our imagination to look ahead slightly more than 10 years. In the year 2000, Hong Kong will be a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China. It will have a wholly-elected legislature. The Chief Executive, and all the most senior government officials, will be Hong Kong Chinese. They will exercise a high degree of autonomy in the administration of Hong Kong. The SAR will be a leading regional and international commercial and financial centre in which foreign nationals will play an important part, and it will be playing a full role in a wide variety of international organisations.

Physically, Hong Kong will have changed almost beyond recognition. It will take about 25 minutes to travel by rail from central Kowloon to the new airport at Chek Lap Kok. On the way, you will go along the new West Kowloon reclamation and pass new port facilities at Stonecutters Island and Tsing Yi. Alternatively, you could travel from Central to the Chinese border via the new Western Harbour Crossing, Tsing Yi, the Route 3 tunnel to Yuen Long and the Lok Ma Chau bridge. Redevelopment will be beginning on the present site of Kai Tak airport. Our Convention and Exhibition Centre, by then doubled in size, will be some 300 metres inland. So will Exchange Square. The central business district will have expanded greatly onto a new reclamation with a variety of new civic, cultural and commercial buildings and with a continuous walkway beside the harbour linking open park areas.

Striking social changes will also have taken place. Our ambitious housing programme means that about half our households will be living in subsidised housing, almost 40 per cent of them in flats which they own themselves. Our revised educational targets mean that as many as 20 per cent of our 19-year olds may be studying in Hong Kong for first degrees and another seven per cent for other tertiary level qualifications. Our strategy for fighting

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