Opinion | Gordon Wu: a true visionary, or destroyer of worlds? Either way, Hong Kong does what he wants eventually
- Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s vision for Lantau Island is hardly original, Wu has been lobbying for it since the 1980s
- Rejected by the British, the developer’s master plan included an international airport, and a bridge linking the city with Zhuhai
Depending on your view on reclamation and infrastructure development, Gordon Wu Ying-sheung is either a true visionary decades ahead of everyone else, or a builder on steroids bent on destroying Hong Kong’s natural environment.
It may have taken a long time, but the construction tycoon’s vision is slowly being realised amid the most controversial infrastructure projects of the past two decades. He thinks it, we build it – eventually, anyway.
So, that could take decades and he might not have derived financial benefits directly. Admire him or hate him, the guy clearly believes in his ideas and is not in it just for the money.
The latest criticism is that the 82-year-old founder and chairman of Hopewell Holdings is trying to piggyback off the government’s Lantau Vision Tomorrow, which proposes to reclaim land of up to 1,700 hectares east of Lantau to cater to 1.1 million people.
Unveiled by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor in her policy address, it is an expanded version of an earlier draft and closely approximates, in scale and timeline, to an independent proposal made by former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa’s Our Hong Kong Foundation.
Wu claims he has an even better plan – which is more ambitious than both the government and the think tank’s – to reclaim more than 3,000 hectares, enough to house Hong Kong with a future population of 10-11 million.