HONG KONG PUBLIC WORKS SCHEMES

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28938, 4 July 1959, Page 10

HONG KONG PUBLIC WORKS SCHEMES

Government Spending

Millions

[By lAN McCRONE]

While the Members of Parliament in Westminster ask “What’s going to happen when the lease runs out?”, the Hong Kong Government is plunging deeper into the long-term of developing the new territories.

* “The Lease,” which came up in a recent House of Commons debate, has now become an hour-glass which the British Government could be forgiven for glancing at every time expenditure on the territories is mentioned.

But it seems to be causing more of a flutter among the members in Westminster than the men on the spot, who within a week of the debate were announcing a string of plans to spend more and more money in the territories.

“The lease” is a document granting to Britain for 99 years 355 square miles of Chinese territory bordering Hong Kong and Kowloon, across the harbour. It was signed in 1898. It does not cover Hong Kong Island or the tip of Kowloon Peninsula, up to the appropriately-named Boundary street, which were ceded outright. The territories are a sort of safety-valve for the over-crow-ded, water-short, land-hungry 32-square-mile British colony. Even the optimists doubt whether Hong Kong could exist without the territories.

Just after the debate in the House of Commons, the Hong Kong Government began issuing a spate of press statements on projects for the new territories, pointing out how much money was being invested there. A Government spokesman denied that there was any connection between the two events, but the information makes it very clear that the authorities in Hong Kong are not yet letting any thoughts of the lease running out deter development. Estimates of expenditure for 1959-60 list public works planned, started and nearly complete in the territories at 1105 million dollars (about £STG7O million), and 182 million dollars (£STG 11 million) will be spent on them this year.

Mr E. F. Burton, vice-president of Engineering Transport Aircraft Systems, and Mr V. V. Holmes, advanced-«design engineer for Douglas, say they don’t think the supersonic airliner is so close.

Problems dealing with the public nuisance and annoyance aspects must also be solved before the airliners can utilise supersonic transports. The “sonic boom” will introduce a new operational problem. Only 80 Mach 3 supersonic air transports would be required to replace the 308 odd large subsonic jet transports which have been ordered by the United States domestic airlines. If pgjvate industry were required to absorb the entire cost of developing supersonic airliners, production costs may run as high as £6 million to £9 million an aeroplane, they think.

Douglas has just announced the DC-9, a smaller version of the DC-8 for shorter distance' routes, and that shows the way the company is thinking. On the other hand, Mr Peter Masefield, president of the Royal Aeronautical Society and managing director of Bristol Aircraft, is now in America talking about new planes which will cross the Atlantic in two hours. In a published interview he said there are only two ways to look at the problem of supersonic airliners: “Should the British Government dig into the taxpayers’ pockets for the £370 million it would take to research and build supersonic aircraft to supply a market that would need only 20 such planes? “Or should they spend the money on space research, let the Americans build the new supersonic airliners and then buy them for 8.0.A.C. at £l2 million each.” Mr Masefield said he feared that if the initiative swung to America in the production of supersonic airliners, Britain’s best technologists would be flying across the Atlantic as fast as present-day airliners could take them. In the future he sees faster-than-sound airliners with high fares and 400 to 500 m.p.h. machines with cheaper fares.— Associated Newspapers Feature Services.

Only a fraction of these amounts will be for the sole benefit of the territories. Most of the money will €o on huge reservoir schemes for the use of the colony as a whole. However, 1 million dollars (£5TG62,500) has been earmarked for purely local improvements like roads, bridges, irrigation channels, schools and clinics in different parts of the territories.

Two of the most costly schemes are the Tai Lam reservoir, a huge catchment system already in operation, and the Shek Pik reservoir project on Lantao IsIjkid.

Preliminary work has already started on Shek Pik, which is designed to store millions of gallons of water on barren Lantao and pipe it 10 miles under the sea to Hong Kong Island. Among the difficulties to be overcome here is the removal and resiting of two whole villages. An even more ' ambitious water conservation plan is being studied at Plover Cove, a flve-mile-long seawater inlet near Tolo Channel. Preliminary surveys have shown that it is feasible to link up a number of small islands and dam off the entrance to the cove, which is five or six fathoms deep, pump it dry and fill it with fresh water brought in from, hill slopes miles away. One of the engineering headaches here is that the fresh-water level would have to be considerably higher than the surrounding sea-level to ensure “positive” seepage: that is, to ensure that fresh water seeps out, rather than sea water seeping in. Already under way is the reclamation of land from the sea to Taipo for building factories and housing the people who will work in them.

Private enterprise has not overlooked investing in the area. A big dyeing and textiles finishing works is being built in. a swamp, and a movie company is laying out the equivalent of £STG6OO,OOO to build a film studio near Clearwater Bay.

A new source of wealth was suggested recently—a silk industry from the mulberry trees growing on the rocky hills. An American-born Chinese thinks that a thriving silk cocoon industry could be built up quickly and yield employment to thousands of refugees. ■ This would probably have to be done by “outsiders.” The traditional new territories farmer still likes to stick to the not-too-hard-to-work rice as his basic crop. But in recent years, he has been quite happy to rent some of his land to enterprising “outsiders” who produce cash vegetable crops for the never-ending demand in the Hong Kong and Kowloon markets.—Reuter.