Abstract
Tin Shui Wai new town in Hong Kong, known as the “city of sadness,” has been narrated by the “Tin Shui Wai Myth” that attributes its urban problems to the planning failures after the colonial government rescued the developers, including a Chinese red capital, from a market slump in the early 1980s. This myth creates misunderstandings, which confuse recent debates about new town development and regional integration with China. To debunk this myth, this article, based on archival research, analyzes the scalar politics of new town planning and explains why the government decided to purchase the land and develop it in a partnership with the developers. It sheds new light on how the regional dynamics in South China after the economic reforms prompted China and Britain to react to the new town proposal at interconnected and contested spatial scales, before the diplomatic negotiations about this British colony’s future officially started.
While diplomacy is usually regarded as geopolitical relations in which state powers negotiate and interact at the international scale, such a perspective tends to be relatively abstract and overlooks the concrete significance of urban space to it. The historical account of the significant episodes in the transition period of Hong Kong from a British colony to a special administrative region in China mostly begins with two key moments: Governor Murray MacLehose’s ice-breaking visit to Beijing in 1979, and the meeting between Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher which marked the beginning of Sino-British negotiations in 1982. But what happened between these two moments is often neglected. In this article, I aim to not only discuss this gap period of diplomatic relations but also argue that there is a rarely discussed urban history engaging with scalar politics, with a particular focus on the planning and development of Tin Shui Wai (TSW) new town.
Being a home to nearly 300,000 people, TSW in the New Territories has been dubbed the “city of sadness” for its urban and social problems (Figure 1). The dominant narrative, which I call “Tin Shui Wai Myth,” attributes these problems to urban planning failures after the government purchased back the land lease from a consortium that included a Chinese red capital developer, China Resources Company (CRC), to rescue it from a market slump in 1982. 1 A myth is not only a commonly believed but inaccurate narrative, but also, following Alan Smart, having “a mythical quality in the more positive sense.” 2 I argue this myth inaccurately implies the colonial government should solely bear the responsibility and neglects the current regime’s interests involved, though the development benefited the Chinese state enterprise and facilitated regional integration with China. Consequently, this myth positively resonates with the authority of Hong Kong government under Chinese sovereignty to push forward new development and integration projects as long as proper planning procedures are claimed to be followed. This myth has not been challenged thus far and continues to confuse the debates. This obscures the wider implications of new town development processes and its potential for producing new knowledge about colonial urban governance in Hong Kong and the diplomatic relations between China and Britain.
Map of Hong Kong showing the locations of Tin Shui Wai and other places mentioned in this article.
In this article, the time frame under consideration is from the first development proposal in 1979 up to the making of its first master plan in 1983. Being leased to Britain, the land lease of the New Territories, the largest proportion of land in Hong Kong, was to expire in 1997; therefore, the land leases of individual land lots were affected because of the leasehold land system. This legal problem of land gave rise to growing political and economic concerns after the Second World War, especially as time proceeded. As I will show, soon after MacLehose’s 1979 Beijing visit, approving the red capital’s new town proposal was believed to offer political advantages to the colonial authority in handling the pressing land lease problem for realizing governance goals. Red capital refers to the firms owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese state in Hong Kong, which emerged soon after the establishment of the Party in the 1920s, as the history of CRC can be traced back to the Party’s investment in Hong Kong in the 1930s. 3 These firms increasingly influence the local economy. 4 Following rounds of liaising and negotiation lasting almost three years, the colonial government publicly announced the TSW project in July 1982, two months before Deng and Thatcher, the leaders of the two states, met to initiate Sino-British negotiations. This process shows the issue at stake was neither a planning mistake nor an effort to rescue the developers, but a series of political calculations through which different actors at various geographical scales attempted to tease out how the two state powers would handle the question of Hong Kong’s future. TSW was the first-ever new town planning exercise in Hong Kong that largely considered China’s interests, revealing the ever-changing regional dynamics during the economic reform. These scalar politics were reflected in the plan-making process.
Scale, often taken-for-granted as “the nested hierarchy of bounded spaces of differing size,” 5 is embedded in the conventional imaginary of the colonial governance. Conventionally, the political order in colonial societies has been described as being “coercively imposed from above by the colonial authorities,” 6 implying a top-down model of power relations and assuming a passive role of the colonial government. However, viewing scale as a priori downplays the workings of power. One must beware of the danger of simplifying the historical account into a linear narrative of, for example, how London instructed MacLehose to work out the policies. As Yep suggests, we need to “go beyond the formal constitutional order in deciphering the relationship between London and the colony before 1997.” 7 Constitutional subordination does not imply the colony accepts all the instructions. Disagreements and debates between scales involve certain political contingencies. 8 A more contemporary understanding of scale considers it as a political construction, being constituted by objects and processes as the territorial expression of evolving power relations. 9 Work on territoriality suggests that human adopts spatial strategies, such as territorial planning, to affect a geographical area for conditioning political spaces. 10 Scalar politics pays attention to the “strategic deployment of scale by various actors, movements and organizations.” 11 Empirical research, accordingly, looks into “the contested processes through which different scales are interconnected to each other via shifting power relations.” 12 In other words, it traces how various actors strategically associate a specific category of scale with the territorial and material relations. As Shin discusses, local-central state relations often engage with scalar politics. To realize certain goals, visions, and plans, actors at the local scale would sometimes bypass the upper scale and directly jump to a more superior scale, without diminishing the nation-state scale. 13 Different actors negotiate with each other to test the limit of their power and plan for their desired future. In this article, I demonstrate TSW’s engagement with scalar politics is reflected in the planning process, displaying how the local scale has been tied with multiple scales. Undoubtedly, TSW has its material conditions as it is bounded and fixed at a location in a physical and absolute view of land. The scales of TSW are, however, multiple. Because of the land lease problem, the development of TSW at the local scale has been tied with the international, national, and regional scales during a political process to favor various interests.
To tell such a story, I used declassified archival materials from the British National Archives and Hong Kong Government Public Records Office to reconstruct the process of decision making. It is noteworthy that, in the British Archives, correspondences relating to TSW were filed into folders on “Future of Hong Kong” maintained by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), instead of folders about urban development. This implies that TSW was considered extraordinarily significant to the colony’s future. Recent archival studies on Hong Kong reject the taken-for-granted and fruitfully produce rigorous analyses, offering new insights into the colonial governance. 14 As the archived materials were intended for exclusive internal uses among government officials, they are informative for understanding the motivations undergirding decision-making processes. Nevertheless, they have an official nature and speak for Britain’s interest; therefore, to verify the accounts, wherever possible, I also compared them with the materials representing Chinese and Hong Kong voices, including CRC archives and politicians’ memoirs. In this article, following the usual practice, the word “London” is used as a metonymy for the decision makers and state leaders in the government of Britain, while “Beijing” refers to those of China.
This article proceeds in four sections. In the next section, I briefly introduce new town planning in Hong Kong, which frames the urban context of TSW. Then, based on recent archival works, I revisit the political context in the 1970s, known as the “MacLehose Years,” to clarify the political agenda of the colonial governance, which was significant to understanding those decisions relating to TSW. These two sections are intentionally concise for making room to report my original research on the scalar politics of the TSW project in detail within the diplomatic context between Britain and China. I conclude this article by discussing the implications of this story in terms of advancing the understanding of Hong Kong’s transition period and recent controversies, as well as the urban dimension of diplomacy, which engages with scalar politics.
Tin Shui Wai Myth
Except for one church site, leasehold is the only land tenure in Hong Kong since the 1840s. 15 During the nineteenth century, the Qing Empire perpetually ceded the Island and Kowloon and leased the New Territories, for ninety-nine years starting from 1898, to Britain. The colonial government, as the landlord, utilized this same legal mechanism to govern the whole territory. 16 After the Second World War, especially after the 1970s, the development of new towns decentralized the rapidly growing population from the ceded area to the leased area. 17 It was almost the only practical planning solution to the population problem, but the planning and development process was not without difficulties. The colonial government needed to deal with the customary land practices in indigenous villages, meaning that the land disputes were subject to not only the leasehold tenure but also consents from all village managers and the cultural traditions. 18 Another difficulty is the financial problem because developing new towns is a huge commitment in the long run, including the cost of land reclamation and urban infrastructure. Yet, the outcome of these planning exercises is seemingly satisfactory, as most of the new towns are planned with appropriate land use zoning and developed “as self-sufficient integrated communities, alleviating the burden of the core urban districts.” 19 It is a popular discourse that residents in new towns, such as Sha Tin and Tai Po, are proud of their local identity, and these towns are usually modeled as successful planning cases. On the contrary, TSW is described as the failed new town. During the early 2000s, several family tragedies in TSW drew public attention to its urban social problems. 20 The government officials labeled it as “city of sadness” 21 and sought solutions by providing more social supports and conducting planning reviews.
This exceptional case of a “failed” new town has attracted the interests of researchers who identified two major problems with its urban planning. First, spatial mismatch and lack of community facilities are considered as consequences of technical planning failures. Remotely located in the northwestern corner of the New Territories, TSW’s low proximity to urban core and major employment centers made daily commuting costly and time-consuming. 22 Residential land use dominates one-fourth of area, having an above-average ratio of public housing among the new towns. 23 This problematic explanation assumes urban planning as a mere technical activity, and planning failure could be avoided once a scientific and comprehensive procedure is followed, while neglecting that urban planning is a process of dealing with territorial politics. Second, the proliferation of unaffordable retail businesses controlled by private developers and the lack of job opportunities are regarded as outcomes of a deal between the colonial government and the consortium in 1982, as a government-commissioned analysis conducted by academics 24 and the journalistic reports 25 suggested. This accused the colonial government of favoring the business sector, without contextualizing planning and deal-making processes.
Yet, these findings leave out the historical geography of the land of TSW and the two state powers—China and Britain. Virtually no attempt is made to explore why and how the agreement was reached, except Wing-Shing Tang’s work. 26 Undoubtedly, Tang has made an enormous long-term contribution that called for critical reading of new town planning in Hong Kong. But I argue that his argument which was articulated in mass media has also contributed to creating the myth. Tang argues that the colonial government rescued a failed private investment to secure the land development regime of Hong Kong. The conventional imaginaries about the colonial governance, that the colonial government at the local scale has a relatively passive and minor role in diplomatic negotiations, limited his analysis, which will be addressed through the lens of scalar politics in this article. Of immediate interest, his analysis relies on an earlier work by Roger Bristow who asserted that the colonial government inevitably decided to rescue this project from the market slump. 27 Bristow offered an analysis quickly in the 1980s when TSW was still undergoing sorts of controversies. His conclusions made sense for him, provided that he could, at the time of writing, only collect information from sources at his reach. But the narratives from this, with the absence of the two state powers in the discussion, became mythical.
In examining the history of new towns, Bristow correctly documented that the government bought the developers’ landholding in TSW and developed it together in 1982. However, two problems are noteworthy. The first is the location. He asserted TSW was in the “general area” of the development areas recommended by the Special Committee of Land Production in 1977.
28
Although the succeeding policy and academic studies followed Bristow’s account, a careful reading of the report and its map undoubtedly reveals the area in the south to TSW was instead recommended.
29
This is important for explaining the developers’ decision making, as will be demonstrated. The second problem is his unjustified assertions about the land resumption. Bristow quoted some reports to assert that the government originally proposed to postpone the TSW project due to other infrastructural commitments, including the new airport. Here, yet, this was only the advisory committee’s suggestion. Bristow then attributed the change of government’s decision, from project postponement to land resumption, to the property market downturn; hence, “the Government was thus forced by political considerations to intervene.”
30
Bristow did not give any evidence here. He continued, “the consortium resisted this initial reaction, arguing that on viability grounds it required all or nothing for the scheme,” but he could not explain, if the consortium was facing difficulties, why it was able to have the bargaining power to negotiate with the government. Bristow then wrote,
31
[t]he property slump of that year pressurized the developers to settle, and as the Government knew that serious negotiations with China on the future of Hong Kong were about to get under way, they were already aware that any collapse of the Tin Shui Wai scheme, given that Chinese involvement in it, would be highly and seriously embarrassing.
But, once again, no evidence was given. This is how the partial and mistaken myth was made. Then, why did MacLehose’s government decide to resume TSW and develop it in a partnership with the consortium? Answering this question has to begin with clarifications about colonial governance and its ultimate goal, which allow us to better understand the political reasons behind the decision.
Revisiting the “MacLehose Years” through Archives
People termed the 1970s as the “MacLehose Years” to give credit to Governor MacLehose, who entered the office in 1971 and left the colony in 1982, for initiating many reforms. MacLehose received loud applause for bringing sudden changes as widely perceived. This stereotypical imaginary persisted until the recent archival research told another story. The archives show the Governor, who was left with the last word in decision making in the British coloniality, 32 did not resolute as what we commonly think. 33
Above all, the political agenda throughout MacLehose’s governorship was to widen the gap between Hong Kong and China by transforming the colony to an advanced status, which China could hardly absorb and which can only be governed by Britain to sustain its long-term interest. 34 It was because, during the reorganization of world order after the Second World War, the land lease problem concerned Britain who desired to safeguard this colony for their interest in Far East. This question was even urgently pressing when MacLehose was appointed. As an experienced diplomat, he continued the ongoing tasks with his “government in a hurry” 35 for approaching a special status of Hong Kong after 1997. MacLehose had repeatedly communicated with London about this ambition during his tenure. In his view, advancing Hong Kong into a model city was the only way for Britain to keep Hong Kong because this colony was not defensible if China decided to take it violently, as what Britain had learnt from the pro-Communist-China 1967 riots against the British colonial rule. 36 Similarly, Lui also found the China factor had put forward the longer term planning and social reforms, but it was also a political constraint. 37 Maintaining the equilibrium in Hong Kong from which both Britain and China could gain was important for MacLehose.
For realizing this governance goal of his tenure, MacLehose launched a ten-year housing program in 1972 to construct public works that are essential to modern life. 38 Constructing new towns was crucial to achieving the aim of accommodating 1.8 million people in public housing estates in ten years, but two major uncertainties might hinder the progress. First, the demands for urban infrastructure posed a public finance challenge. The second uncertainty was the land lease problem. Bankers worried the fifteen-year mortgage of real estate could not go beyond 1997, and developers were afraid that their land leases could not be renewed upon the expiry. 39 Meanwhile, the financialization of the real estate market, that enabled the local capital to compete with the British capital in the game, created land demand. To entertain its governing partners in the business sector, MacLehose’s government established the Special Committee on Land Production in 1977 to conduct a land study, which excluded land that might involve clearances, the Lantau, Hong Kong Island, and country parks. 40 That means, only the potentials of developing New Territories were studied. 41 But developing the New Territories was concerned with the land lease problem, urging MacLehose to raise it to China.
Meanwhile, a series of changes happened in China—the death of Mao Zedong, the end of Cultural Revolution, the rise of Deng Xiaoping, and the announcement of economic reform and modernization. MacLehose maintained a friendly distance with China and recognized the Xinhua News Agency (Hong Kong Branch) as an unofficial Chinese government representative in this colony. In 1978, he raised the land lease problem to Wang Kuang, Xinhua’s new director; but Beijing decided to postpone the answer due to the principle of “taking long-term views and taking full advantage.” 42 Yet, the Chinese leaders invited MacLehose to visit Beijing for seeking support from Hong Kong to their economic reform. London and MacLehose considered it as an opportunity to discuss the land lease problem. Being the British Ambassador to China, Percy Cradock wrote in his memoir that he was personally not particularly optimistic about the outcome, but MacLehose’s government had a contrasting view by suggesting that “the Chinese were concerned primarily with economic reform and that nationalist considerations came second.” 43 This view from the man-on-the-spot framed the tactics of the British side. 44
During their meeting on March 29, 1979, although MacLehose would like to mention to Deng the question of Hong Kong’s future, it was Deng who first raised this question. 45 Deng told MacLehose that he hoped Britain not to raise the problem too early and he had no policy about Hong Kong yet, but whether or not Hong Kong would maintain the status quo or be resumed by China, there would be special policies so the investors can rest their hearts at ease. 46 In fact, one must note that, on the contrary to some analyses, 47 Beijing had no ideas about handling the question of Hong Kong, and the preliminary proposal of the basic policies only began to emerge in mid-1982, according to various memoirs. 48
Immediately, MacLehose responded to Deng that sovereignty was the long-term matter for the Chinese and British governments, but “the question of New Territories leases was one which could not be dealt with by general assurances and would not wait.” 49 MacLehose proposed to replace the expiry date of the leases with the phrase “as long as Britain administered the New Territories” because this was a very concrete issue in the legal technicalities of land lease in Hong Kong. As Cradock wrote, this idea of blurring the 1997 deadline came “either from the Governor or from one of his advisers” and was to be presented as “a technical and commercial matter, as a means of sustaining investment.” 50 Here, Deng “appeared to accept that all that was proposed was the removal of the terminal date in leases, and that this required no Chinese action and did not conflict with the Chinese position.” 51 Deng’s response was ambiguous as it meant neither agree nor disagree. MacLehose subsequently explained the same proposal to other key cadres, including Huang Hua, the Foreign Minister, and Liao Chengzhih, who had responsibility for Hong Kong affairs. No one endorsed but also no rejection. Britain found that the Chinese leadership simply did not understand what the land lease problem was, as David Owen reported, “Deng evidently found it difficult to grasp the English legal concepts involved.” 52 This is convincing because, otherwise, the Chinese leadership had no need to invite the professionals from Hong Kong to advise on the reform of land law in the 1980s. 53 Interestingly, as Carroll writes, “MacLehose returned to Hong Kong relieved and optimistic.” 54 Cradock recalled in his memoir that, after the Beijing visit, “[t]he Hong Kong government still hoped that economic realities would press upon the Chinese and bring them round to a more co-operative attitude.” 55 Lui’s archival research reports a similar observation that, as both the British Labor Government, until May 1979, and the succeeding Conservative Government had not yet thought about political transition which was later only triggered by the Sino-British negotiations, MacLehose was confident that Britain can undoubtedly rely on the three treaties to continue the colonial governance. 56
In November 1979, MacLehose and Wang Kuang met. MacLehose still remained his optimism and expressed his willingness to contribute Hong Kong to the modernization of China and promised to plan some cargo facilities for exclusively serving China’s shipping business as an “exceptional arrangement.” 57 With this opportunity, MacLehose also raised the land lease problem. MacLehose’s government perceived a message that Wang “was advising us to wait until the political and economic scene in China, and in Guangdong in particular, had stabilised further.” Wang also suggested having more investments on both sides of the border could help assurances. MacLehose then asked “whether ‘investment’ included ‘real estate,’” and Wang replied, “it included both, and both in the New Territories and on Hong Kong Island.” MacLehose wanted to keep what had been discussed confidential and did not wish the members of the Councils would know anything about this meeting, and Wang agreed. In December, Xi Zhongxun, the Chairman of Guangdong Revolutionary Committee, visited Hong Kong and, regarding the land lease problem, “appeared to be following the same line of thought as that of Wang Kuang.” 58 It is noteworthy that the Chinese state is internally complex and contested, and these speeches from the local cadres might not necessarily reflect the mind of the central leadership but the interests of the local forces who strived for better performance amid the economic reform. Nevertheless, these exchanges encouraged MacLehose to continue his task. The above political context is significant for explaining scalar politics in planning TSW after MacLehose had received the development proposal in January 1980, to which I now turn.
Scalar Politics of Planning
In this section, I report an analysis of the scalar politics by which I argue that, as discussed, the new town planning process was an exercise of various strategies adopted by different actors, under the conditions of imperfect information and shifting power relations, who attempted to link up the territorial events to specific categories of scale for realizing their respective goals and visions. In what follows, I begin with the territorial history of TSW, documenting how the developers obtained the right to hold the land and why they chose this piece of land. Then, I move on to report how the governments of Hong Kong, Britain, and China reacted to the consortium’s new town proposal. It is situated within the aforementioned urban and political contexts of the colony’s future. These contexts were full of uncertainty, as each side knew little about others. The intention of each subtle act by one was unknown to other involved actors, so the actors wanted to tease out what others were thinking about at multiple scales. Yet, the story will reveal that their attempts during the negotiations were simply a contingent sequence of misunderstandings, and they failed to correctly guess the unknown, which somehow led to the making of urban plans.
As will be seen, this development proposal at the local scale had been associated with the international scale, where London treated it as a rehearsal of the diplomatic negotiations over their colonial governance, which might possibly happen. Soon after London knew that the participation of Beijing was less than minor, and that the local developers had exaggerated their self-claimed capacity as representing the interests of Beijing, Britain realized it was impossible to resolve the land lease problem with this episode. But MacLehose’s government did not give up this proposal because they believed TSW could be an unusual opportunity to facilitate regional development in South China and thus favor China’s economic reform, which could in turn offer advantages to sustaining the colonial governance as it was the goal of his tenure. These dynamics at multiple scales resulted in legal changes, infrastructural development strategies, and a new town urban plan at the local scale.
The Land of TSW
Before it was named Tin Shui Wai, the area was a muddy embayment named Ha Tsuen Wan. It became part of the new grant lots owned and managed by the colonial government because the Tang clan, the indigenous villagers who settled nearby and had been practicing oyster farming there, did not claim their customary rights to this wetland during the land survey at the beginning of the twentieth century. Villagers did not declare the land titles because of taxation concern 59 and their trust in the validity of their customary land rights from the Qing Empire. 60 In the 1910s, the Chiu family moved from the unstable South China to Hong Kong and proposed to reclaim this 500-hectare wetland. The government approved and leased them the land, considering it as an opportunity to weaken the Tang clan who had fiercely opposed the colonial government when it was taking over the leased area. 61 This was how the government utilized the leasehold system to restrain the local forces. The Chiu family named the land Tin Shui Wai, where large-scale rice production and commercial fishponds took place successively until the 1970s. 62
As mentioned, the Special Committee recommended to develop the areas near TSW, that is, Fung Kong Tsuen and Lau Fau Shan. The report disclosed that the Public Works Department consultants were already conducting planning studies there as part of the Yuen Long new town development project. This internal information was made publicly known with the publication of this report, implying the government might invest to provide infrastructure and public works in this area soon. This report hinted the developers who were eager to tease out the government’s plan of urban development. Cheung Kong Holdings, established by Li Ka-Shing in 1971, also followed this report and deployed its resources. Cheung Kong had been acquiring land in the New Territories and started to place their hands on TSW in 1978. It took around two years to purchase more than half of shares of Luen Tak Company, which owns some 52 million sq. ft. of agricultural land at Tin Shui Wai, Yuen Long. The area thus attributable to the Group is about 25 million sq. ft. Preliminary plans for the development of this site are being made and the Group believes that this project has considerable potential.
63
Cheung Kong had an ambitious plan about TSW as a map in their annual report showed residential, commercial, and industrial sites shall be developed there. Meanwhile, a shareholder of Luen Tak challenged Cheung Kong’s purchase, but the court decision in 1978 ruled that the purchase was legal. 64 This prompted Cheung Kong to invite partners to this project, including Wheelock and Trafalgar.
Moreover, Cheung Kong in 1979 invited a partner that no one could have ever expected—CRC, which was established by the Chinese Communist Party in prewar Hong Kong. 65 A proportion of shares of Luen Tak Company was sold to CRC in 1979. 66 It was the first time for CRC to step into the real estate market. Four developers then formed a consortium named Mightycity, in which CRC was the leading company holding 51 percent of shares. Following some further transactions and legal procedures, Mightycity successfully obtained the ownership of Luen Tak Company at a court-ordered auction and, thus, became the sole landholder of TSW. The land was de jure still under a lease between the colonial government and Luen Tak, but after Luen Tak’s composition was changed, Mightycity became the de facto landholder. As the land lease problem became a pressing concern, the participation of a Chinese state owned enterprise in a project in the New Territories attracted the colonial government and London’s attention. When David Wilson, the political adviser to the Governor, reported this to London, 67 he characterized the auction as “essentially a legal technicality” and labeled the consortium as “a powerful grouping.” 68
The land of TSW had three favorable conditions for development. First, geomorphologically it was a flat area, and the 1977 report hinted that the government was planning to develop the surrounding areas. Second, the land was held by a single lessee, which made it easier for the developers to obtain. The consortium started to purchase Luen Tak’s shares by approaching an intermediary agent surnamed Chiu among the shareholders, 69 and it was only able to acquire 93 percent of the shares, but the law allowed it to seek the court’s order for a public auction of the remaining shares. 70 Third, being neither tso nor tong land held by the indigenous villagers, TSW’s legal status was merely subject to the government lease. The complexities of the customary land system, entailing the legal requirement of obtaining agreement from every single manager of the village community and the cultural concern about Fung Shui, were avoided.
Consideration Began at the Local Scale
After informally expressing the development intention to the Secretary for the New Territories in late 1979, the consortium officially sought an approval for this new town proposal in 1980. The government felt that “the consortium is very anxious to cooperate with Government.” 71 After some exploratory meetings, the Executive Council discussed it on May 20, 1980, and then continued on July 7, 1981, and May 4, 1982, and drafted the agreement to be signed with Mightycity on May 18, 1982.
For the government, the proposed development did not violate the overall planning strategy because TSW “lies
What rendered the proposal apparently complex was the involvement of the private developer with Chinese state background as the largest shareholder in the consortium at this politically critical moment after MacLehose’s Beijing visit. As the consortium already leaked their proposal to the general public through mass media, the government interpreted this might raise political concerns. It is noteworthy that the government conversely raised the land lease problem to the consortium. The developers would only have around ten years to sell the property, so the government asked, how they propose to deal with this question. They have not yet been prepared to give an answer, but it is not considered that the decision on whether permission should be given to develop should be linked to their answer.
75
The Executive Council decided that the government would cooperate fully in the development study.
Britain Brought the Plan to the International Scale
On the surface, the Executive Council seemed to have downplayed the political issues implied by the involvement of the Chinese red capital. But London and MacLehose indeed perceived the development proposal as a political move and regarded it as an opportunity to achieve their colonial goal, which was not made known to the Executive Council. MacLehose was often reluctant to disclose the politically sensitive information to the Legislative and Executive Councils. 76 The political concern was clear when David Wilson wrote, TSW “is probably the largest area of developable land in the New Territories under single ownership,” and “[w]e know much less than I would wish about the reasons behind the involvement of China Resources in this land deal.” Yet, Wilson as an experienced diplomat on Chinese affairs suggested that the evidence “tends to suggest that China Resources are in it purely to make money. They may not even have considered the political implication.” 77
My following analysis shows the later reaction from the Chinese state affirmed Wilson’s opinion. But the local developers in the consortium, who self-claimed as CRC’s representatives, misguided Britain’s action. John Wu of Trafalgar Holdings, who was the only contact person between the consortium and the government, made two suggestions to the government. First, the payment of land premiums involved in land use change should be spread over twenty years which would go beyond 1997. Second, there was no need to put the usual clause about the expiry date on the land lease because the consortium believed the status quo of Hong Kong would be maintained after 1997. For Wilson, these two “interesting” suggestions were unanticipated, and he requested London to study their implications. 78 Although Wu self-claimed to be instructed by CRC, Wilson did not fully trust him because this could not be verified and, more importantly, he could not know “whether China Resources have any higher authority for what they are saying.” 79
London did not put their heart at ease. London made clear, while land premiums and land use change are “a matter for the Executive Council at the local scale,” the political implications of the land lease concerned London. 80 Edward Youde, the then-Deputy Under Secretary for Asia and the Far East, alerted MacLehose to the significance of 1982 due to the fifteen-year confidence crisis, and he should “use concrete cases (eg Tin Shui Wai) to build up an arrangement which would allow for land leases to run beyond 1997.” 81
Around that time, some local businessmen proposed to locate the new airport inside China. Both MacLehose and London suspected this proposal was endorsed by Beijing and were interested to see how Beijing was thinking about this. After Shenzhen was designated as a Special Economic Zone in 1979, London recognized an evident Chinese policy of encouraging eventual “symbiosis” of Hong Kong with southern Guangdong, through the development of industry etc around Shumchun and, perhaps,
London instructed MacLehose’s government to consult them before any liaising with the Chinese government unless issues are “purely technical.” 83
Thus far, London did not directly exchange with the Chinese leaders, and MacLehose’s government also did not do so with CRC. When Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary, was planning to visit Beijing in March 1981, MacLehose suggested to raise TSW and land lease problem, and “if Tin Shui Wai leases were to be discussed in Peking, the project as a whole should have been approved by ExCo.” 84 But Britain did not need to wait until Carrington’s visit because of a dramatic development. After almost a year of paper talk, MacLehose’s government finally knew about China’s attitude through Edmund Lau, the General Manager of the Hongkong and Yaumati Ferry Company, who talked to Liao Chengzhih in Beijing in December 1980. Liao was “annoyed” by the involvement of CRC in TSW because CRC did not consult the Chinese leadership through Xinhua on this subject at all. Liao hoped the colonial government would not issue a beyond-1997 land lease. 85
This unexpected discovery prompted Britain to reformulate their strategy. Wilson, for the first time, talked to the Xinhua official about TSW. Li Jusheng, Xinhua’s Second Director, “denied that China Resources either had authority to ask for a special kind of lease or that they had done so.” 86 This had somehow ended Britain’s internal discussion. As Wilson remarked, “at the political level, the Chinese do not at present wish to use this opportunity to deal with the leases issue in an indirect manner.” An FCO official made a handwritten comment on Wilson’s letter that “[t]his is discouraging.” CRC was only motivated by the relatively low land cost in TSW. 87 Perhaps what was more shocking was Li’s viewpoints about Hong Kong. Li said, although China denied the “unequal treaties,” they constituted the present reality of Hong Kong. And, although CRC was a Chinese state enterprise, it operated as a company in accordance with local regulations, so it respects the legal framework of Hong Kong. Li suggested that “[t]he ‘large questions’ would certainly have to be discussed at some time and would be discussed. But the time was too early for this.” TSW was a “small question,” and Li hoped the colonial government not to use this to deal with the larger question. Li further criticized that “the third party,” which conceivably refers to the consortium, “must have misrepresented the position.”
Lu Ping, a key Chinese diplomat on Hong Kong affairs, even commented it was “the British Fantasy” to solve the land lease problem by developing TSW, and the Chinese leadership was angry about CRC’s unpermitted investment: “you cannot take this land even if it was much cheaper because this concerns our basic stance.” 88 The archives of CRC also prove that they eventually reported the proposal to Beijing in late December 1980, which had then been challenged. 89 Probably for this reason, after Li’s meeting with Wilson, CRC for the very first time proactively sought a meeting with the colonial government in January 1981. CRC clarified that “they wished to develop the area in co-operation, and in accordance with the policies of the Hong Kong Government” and “had not thought about the leases aspect.” CRC also emphasized that TSW was a normal project, and they were willing to follow the normal practice of the government. 90 In short, Wu’s suggestion on beyond-1997 leases was not backed by the Chinese state. Ironically, Wu went to Beijing with a hope to meet Liao about this matter, but Liao did not entertain him in person. When London felt “these reflect the wishful thinking and fertile imagination of Hong Kong Chinese,” 91 Wilson commented that John Wu had “an over-optimistic interpretation of Chinese reaction,” and thus they should consider lease arrangement only if the suggestion “came from or through an official Chinese organization.” 92
After treating it at the international scale, London decided to rather tie back the local scale to TSW. While it was being handled by London, MacLehose clearly did not really have a say. Britain was obviously too optimistic and thought there was political significance about the land lease problem behind it. As the relevance to the land lease problem had been clarified, London instructed MacLehose to follow their normal procedures to process the proposal unless China were to have further moves. The urgency to approve the project before the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Beijing did not exist anymore. But TSW continued to be political because MacLehose tied the regional scale to this project.
Spatial Integration with Shenzhen at the Regional Scale
MacLehose wanted to advance Hong Kong to a superior British colony which benefits China. He did not forgo the opportunity to favor China by contributing TSW to the Pearl River Delta at a regional scale, offering economic and political advantages to Britain. As reported to the Executive Council on July 7, 1981, the development study proposed to develop TSW in three phases over eighteen years, including residential and industrial development. 93
MacLehose’s government was more than willing to cooperate with the developers. To reduce public works’ burden, while receiving land premium, government’s consultant proposed to grant land of equivalent value in the existing built area and retain the land of TSW as a land bank. But MacLehose’s government opposed because of political advantages from “having a major developer with the backing of the China Resources Company involved in a large-scale, long-term project in the New Territories.”
94
Although the government firmly stated that “it is known that China Resources participation is motivated
For this reason, the government insisted to follow the consortium’s proposal to allocate part of TSW for private development, while the government would pay for the public works that connect to TSW and for resuming land for public housing and land bank. This significantly rejects the myth which wrongly perceived the land resumption as a sudden and inevitable decision to rescue CRC from a slump. The fact is that the government from the very beginning had been spending effort to persuade the consortium for allowing it to participate in the project to gain political advantages.
In MacLehose’s consideration, the political advantages were not only about the government’s capacity to cooperate with China but also about the ways of supporting China’s economic reform. To understand the latter, MacLehose considered how the TSW proposal and potential cross-border development could altogether generate a greater help to facilitate the flow of goods, people, and money between Hong Kong and China, which was believed to be a necessary step to secure Britain’s interests in Hong Kong. Thus, regional development strategy also concerned MacLehose’s government to consider the transport infrastructural demands within the territory and with China. The existing road-based traffic corridor in the East (Shatin-Taipo-Lowu corridor) was considered inadequate. There was a proposal to build a new airport; though some local businessmen suggested locating it in China as mentioned in the previous section, the government preferred to construct it in Lantau Island, the largest and undeveloped island in Hong Kong located at the mouth of the Pearl River. For better access from the Kwai Chung container port and the proposed airport in Lantau to China, the government was planning a Western Corridor. For the government, the developers submitted a timely proposal because “the emphasis of development should be shifted to areas served by improved western corridor routes which would, in turn, provide improved traffic links to China.” 97 TSW spatially acted as a transportation hub for this Western Corridor. It also served the water-based traffic with the planning of a new port in Tuen Mun, currently River Trade Terminal, serving South China along the Pearl River. The first urban plan of TSW in 1983 allocated a considerable proportion of industrial land as storage and warehouse. 98 If TSW’s development followed this plan, the Terminal might have a higher usage rate now. 99 As part of the Western Corridor strategy, TSW was planned as a hub between China and the world, forming the network between the nodes at the factories in South China, the trading companies in Hong Kong, the customers abroad, the proposed airport, the container ports, and the warehouses. In short, as MacLehose’s government suggested, “multiple benefit [sic] from unavoidable investment in infrastructure” would be achieved. 100
As noted in the second section, limited resources in public finance had been a key constraint in urban development in Hong Kong. Public housing provision and new town development in the 1970s have “pulled ahead of the necessary complementary improvements to transport systems.” 101 But the government never thought about forgoing TSW. Instead, TSW “may have to be given continuing priority, possibly at the expense of other more urgent or deserving undertakings.” 102 Although the government worked to liaison with the consortium, how the government should prepare for the public financial accounts for this unavoidable infrastructural investment in TSW became a challenge for John Bremridge, who became the Financial Secretary in June 1981. 103
In view of rising public works demand and inflationary pressure on the construction industry, Bremridge had to better manage the public works program. The Legislative Council approved Bremridge’s proposal to establish a Capital Works Reserve Fund (CWRF) with effect from April 1, 1982. 104 The principles were to abandon the “annuality” approach and to adopt a project-based approach to finance the public works. CWRF is funded by transferring a proportion of money from both the general recurrent revenue and land sales in the public finance accounts. 105 Judge Godfrey in his judgment of a dispute about TSW declared that introducing CWRF and relevant procedural changes was “central to the history of the reclamation of the land at Tin Shui Wai.” 106
Large Question at the International Scale, Small Question at the Local Scale
In May 1982, a few days before Edward Youde took over MacLehose’s office, the Executive Council approved the agreement. 107 The managerial officials of CRC signed the agreement on behalf of Mightycity on July 29, 1982. The agreement followed what MacLehose’s government had been proposing since the beginning. After the government resumes the land from Mightycity, the northern part would be retained as a land bank and the southern part would be developed, in which a part would be leased back to Mightycity for private development and other parts would be public housing and social facilities. Interestingly, the government assured the public that TSW had nothing to deal with politics, and the Chinese government and the Guangdong Province were not consulted. 108
Nevertheless, TSW still has its political significance as revealed by two observations. First, the expiry date of land lease in 1997 was not publicly disclosed, although the government re-leased the land to Mightycity on a ninety-nine-year lease term commencing in 1898 and the development phases would go beyond 1997. The government might not want to further trigger the confidence crisis. As Judge Godfrey commented that [o]ne important matter of background, not touched on in the press release, does however need to be added; that is that, in 1982, no-one could be certain what rights would subsist in land in the New Territories after 1997. (It was generally believed in Hong Kong in 1982 that rights in land subsisting in 1997 would, in one way or another, be extended so as to continue after 1997. But it was to be 1984 before the uncertainty was resolved.)
109
Second, in August 1982, CRC wrote to Beijing that “after our negotiation with the British Hong Kong government over the land development of Tin Shui Wai for more than one and a half year, with several twists and turns, both parties finally signed the agreement on 29th July.” 110 CRC trickily emphasized that the area for private development would be serviced land which the government would grant to them free of charge and bear the infrastructural cost. 111 This might have misled Beijing because the land was not free of charge, though the land premium was deducted from the government’s payment. CRC also justified that their involvement in TSW had put the investors’ hearts at ease.
Whereas TSW was a small question about local development, it was strongly associated with the large question between Britain and China. This explains why the deal must be reached in July 1982, two months before Thatcher’s Beijing visit. As the CRC archives documented, Thatcher told Deng that “the question of Tin Shui Wai has been solved” before the Sino-British negotiations started.
Conclusion
This article explains why the colonial government had to resume TSW and develop it in a partnership with the consortium. It debunks the “Tin Shui Wai Myth” which is shown to be a time-capsule account that detaches the vital scalar processes from the facts. Through the lens of scalar politics, the account goes beyond the static conception of scale in analyzing the socio-spatial dynamics of new town planning and development. While legal arrangements and political reactions reconfigured and transformed the inter-scalar relations, the land lease, which had been enacted, modified, transacted, and contested, mattered in shaping spatiality and power relations. These power relations created the scalar politics, shifting between the governor and London, between the government and developers, between red capital and Beijing, and between Britain and China. As a result of the scalar politics, the land transaction in 1982 had nothing to deal with market slump.
This planning episode adds new knowledge to this chapter of “the gap period” between those two critical moments in the story of Hong Kong. First, this case study reveals a spatial dimension of diplomatic relations. Diplomatic negotiations are not only high-level interactions between state powers about territorial disputes, political agenda, or ideological conflicts but could also have impacts on, and being influenced by, the ongoing urban transformation within the territory. Second, it enriches our understanding of the local politics of colonial governance, especially the distance between the governor and the local people. While some in Hong Kong might feel nostalgia for the colonial days with improved living quality and rapid economic growth, this case demonstrates how the colonial authority’s decision-making process had foregrounded their self-interest, excluding both the public and even the closely related members in the Councils from knowing the real political calculation and plans. The local people could play central roles in neither the planning process of TSW nor the Sino-British negotiations. Third, the case of TSW sheds light on the political economy of Hong Kong and China in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. At the beginning of the economic reform, both sides knew very little about another across the border, giving rise to many fantasies of securing interests and earning from the business environment. Only through real interactions and confrontations, they could learn more about each other before adopting the right strategy to realize their desired objectives.
What motivated the developers to invite CRC deserves a remark. Albeit staying in the background, Li Ka-Shing and other developers, I speculate, wanted to assess the investment environment in the 1980s. Undoubtedly, these people later became co-opted into Beijing’s united front and are still influential in the urban politics of Hong Kong. But, before that, they were feeling the full brunt of the lease problem because they had been hoarding land in the New Territories. While China had no idea about the problem at all, and Britain was seemingly optimistic to rely on the treaties, the perception that both China and Britain remained silent alerted the local capitalists to the great uncertainty. As it was clear that CRC has a strong background of the Chinese state and wanted to make money, these developers attempted to take advantage of CRC to tease out possible solutions. They self-claimed to be the representative of CRC. CRC enjoyed favorable conditions that Cheung Kong promised CRC can share the profit without taking responsibility for the financial cost. Consequently, CRC, whose decision originally annoyed Beijing, withdrew from the project after the sovereignty transfer, when Hong Kong’s confidence crisis was settled on the surface.
Planning failures cannot explain TSW’s problems. The 1983 master plan of its southern part included a balanced land use pattern, which could facilitate a reasonable urban life. But urban planning and development are full of uncertainties. The later development of TSW was complicated by its historical geography. For example, border disputes between China and Hong Kong in the late 1980s delayed the supply of reclamation materials, 112 decreasing industrial demand due to rapid industrial relocation to mainland China led to modification of the plan, and a very large proportion of land bank in the northern part was used to build public housing without adequate provision of social facilities because of the altered political agenda of housing provision after the sovereignty transfer in 1997.
TSW was the first time for the colonial government to consider the factor of benefiting China in plan making, which is now normalized in Hong Kong under the new constitutional order of “One Country, Two Systems.” Recent debates on new town development in Hong Kong frequently aroused fears about creating another TSW based on the problematic myth. As the government under Chinese sovereignty agrees and blames the colonial government for TSW’s problems, it can readily be acquitted of those charges against the controversies of regional integration with mainland China by assuring a good plan-making process. In view of the current controversies about regional development and integration between mainland China and Hong Kong, debates should be politicized to decipher what lies behind urban plans. This is to ask through what processes, and for what reasons, land injustice in Hong Kong was produced and is perpetuated (for example, the tremendous reform of CWRF during the negotiations). 113 Likewise, scrutinizing the underlying stories is necessary for analyses of urban plans, everywhere in the world, in urban planning research.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The British national archival materials used in this research could not have been collected without the generous support from the Decoding Hong Kong’s History Project. I thank Ha-Chi Yeung, Kin-Fung Tong, and Kim-Ching Chan of Liber Research Community for their assistance. I also thank Wing-Shing Tang, Anne Haila, Lachlan Barber, Jean Ruegg, Hendrikje Alpermann, Tai-Lok Lui, Ray Yep, Hyun Bang Shin, Adrian J. Bailey, Chun Yang, and Hon-Chim Chiu for their comments and criticisms on my earlier writings and works from which this article originated. This article benefited from the feedback of the audience on its earlier version presented at the 9th Meeting of the East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography (EARCAG) in South Korea in December 2018.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
