If China refuses to renew, as she has a clear legal right to do under the terms of the 99-year lease, she will get much more than the land itself. With it will come the colony’s only modern airport, practically all its productive farmland, its chief industrial centers at Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong, by far the greater part of its reservoirs and water-supply system, from one-third to one-half its population and all its mineral resources except a few quarries and clay pits.
“It would be folly to try to foresee what will happen in thirty-five years,” said one of the colony’s principal officials in 1962. “In this age of fission and fusion, it’s impossible to see even five years ahead.”
On one point, there is little doubt among the colony’s officials: without the New Territories, Hong Kong would be untenable.
Outside of the colony, the 1997 deadline looms like doom; inside, it is just another of those far-off worries, like an epidemic or a catastrophic typhoon. Everyone knows it is coming; meanwhile, they go on making money, putting up new factories and hotels and planning gigantic public works.
Some of the colony’s leading businessmen expect the Chinese Communists, or any other power ruling the mainland in 1997, to drive a tough bargain for the New Territories and then renew the lease for another 99 years.
Red China, which holds all the cards, hasn’t tipped its hand.
CHAPTER FOUR
Industrial Growth and Growing Pains
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”