1970s files show projects to thaw HK-Beijing chill

Proposals to build a new airport and a nuclear power plant serving Hong Kong from north of the Shenzhen River were first made well before China and Britain began negotiating the handover of the colony in the 1970s, in attempts to improve the relationship between the two sides.

The two ambitious plans, presented by some of Hong Kong's most influential figures at the time, have been revealed in secret files recently declassified by Britain's National Archives in London.

In 1980, Chung Sze-yuen, then the most senior Chinese member of Hong Kong's Executive Council, raised with British officials the idea of building an airport on the Chinese side of the border, in the hope of fostering closer ties with Beijing.

Six years earlier, Lawrence Kadoorie, who was then chairman of China Light & Power, came up with the idea of building a nuclear power station on the mainland, to build trust between the colony and Beijing.

Kadoorie's plan, which was not made public at the time, came a decade ahead of Beijing's approval in 1983 of the Daya Bay nuclear project, the 1,968 MW power station just east of Shenzhen that now sells 70 per cent of its output to Hong Kong.

These proposals were made in the late 1970s, at a time when the relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing remained frosty as the city began to fret over its future beyond 1997, when Britain's 99-year lease on the New Territories would expire.