Gesture economics
UNEASILY perched at the top of the First Secretary's in-tray are the bills for the new airport. The joint liaison group (Chinese and British, supposedly charting the way towards 1997) comes back to it this week, and Jian Zemin, the Communist Party secretary, says that China supports a new airport but worries about the financial burden on a country of less than six million people. That is positively emollient by recent Peking standards — but then, when the airport was first announced it was meant to look expensive. That was two years ago, after the shootings in Tianan- men Square. The Governor proclaimed it as a gesture of confidence in Hong Kong's future — and, as usual with gesture politics and economics, the bigger, the better (though since then the numbers have shrunk.) At the same time the British side suspended the meetings of the liaison group. The Chinese, wanting to be in- volved in major decisions affecting Hong Kong when it becomes part of 'one country with two cultures', have made this vast project the sticking-point. They have stuck fast enough to push the airport down the Hong Kong government's list of priority projects, and it is said to be on the back burner — the only question being whether the gas is still on. The 140 fisherfolk dislodged from an island which is supposed to be demolished and turned into landfill are asking to go home. Last week Hong Kong got a Bill of Rights, and Peking said that it would want to think about that, too.
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