卫奕信总督、增建大屿山机场、扩增大学对香港的影响？

 1986年12月5日上午，香港总督尤德爵士被发现死在英国驻北京大使官邸的房间里。

尤德当时正在对首都进行工作访问。

这位总督耗尽了他的精力，代表香港人进行了无数次默默无闻的白厅之战；他的粤语说得很好，在当地享有相当高的声誉。

但他的身体很虚弱，几年前曾做过心脏手术，他的朋友们把他的突然死亡归咎于无休止的工作和旅行带来的压力。

他的去世促使人们慌忙寻找替代他的人选，直到公务员的目光落在威尔逊身上。

事实证明，他是一位优秀的总督，但他没有得到应有的认可。

在他的五年任期内，卫奕信有条不紊地为香港的宪政发展、基础设施和高等教育奠定了基础，为香港回归后十多年的繁荣稳定铺平了道路。

他是一个品行无可指责、宗教信仰平静的苏格兰人；在经历了几十年的激烈争论后，他的继任者彭定康说，他无法想象威尔逊会做出任何不光彩的事情。

这一观点概括了大多数人对这位总督的看法。

按照公务员守则，他是一双安全的手。

 

Then, on the morning of 5 December 1986, the governor of Hong Kong, Sir Edward Youde, was found dead in his room at the residence of the British ambassador in Beijing. Youde had been on a working visit to the capital. The governor had worn out his energies and fought countless unsung Whitehall battles on behalf of the people of Hong Kong; he spoke Cantonese well and enjoyed considerable local esteem. But his health was weak, he had undergone cardiac surgery some years earlier, and his friends attributed his sudden death to the strain of ceaseless work and travel. His demise prompted a flustered search for a candidate to replace him, until the eye of the civil service fell upon Wilson. He would prove to be a good governor, one who has not received the recognition he deserved. In his five years in office, Wilson methodically laid the foundations of Hong Kong’s constitutional development, its infrastructure and its higher education, paving the way for more than a decade of prosperous stability after the handover. He was a Scot of irreproachable character and quiet religious convictions; looking back after decades of bitter controversy, his successor as governor, Chris Patten, said he could not imagine Wilson doing anything dishonourable. It was a view which summed up most people’s view of the governor. He was, in civil service code, a safe pair of hands.

 

威尔逊回忆说："我们没有讨论过任何关于总体战略的问题，比如我们是否会违背《联合声明》或类似的东西。

'绝对没有。

绝对没有，没有这样的问题。

这都是实际问题，比如你如何处理让香港人离开中国的问题。

‘We didn’t have any discussions about overall strategy, like would we go back on the Joint Declaration or anything like that,’ Wilson recalled. ‘Absolutely not. There was no question of anything like that. It was all practical, like how do you deal with getting Hong Kong people out of China.’

 

总督不是一个政治家，但他发现对他的政治要求越来越高。

起初，他以公务员的超然态度，将伦敦和世界各地的反应--"绝对不能接受，必须与中国断绝关系"--视为造成行政问题的因素。

'白厅决定暂停会议。

这是可以理解的，但对我们香港人来说没有什么帮助。

威尔逊认为，他有责任驾驭这场风暴，然后作出决定，以保障香港的未来。

'我们要做什么？机场是经典之作。

我非常强烈的观点是，我们继续前进，通过机场和高等教育的大规模扩张，表明我们对香港的未来有信心。

 

The governor was not a politician, but he found the political demands on him intensifying. At first, with a civil servant’s detachment, he regarded the reaction in London and around the world – ‘absolutely unacceptable, must break off with China’ – as something that created administrative problems. ‘Whitehall decided to suspend meetings. Understandable but not very helpful to us in Hong Kong.’ Wilson saw it as his duty to navigate the storm and then take decisions to safeguard the future of Hong Kong. ‘What were we going to do? The airport is the classic. My very strong view is we go ahead, we demonstrate we have confidence in the future of Hong Kong with the airport and a massive expansion of tertiary education.

 

我认为可以这样说，当我在1997年展望未来时，我希望能够为实现一个在所有关键方面都能通过主权转移而生存下来的香港做出贡献，在这个范围内，你可以尝试确保机构得到加强。

他笑着说："努力确保香港的基础设施能够继续下去。

我想说的是 "高度自治"，尽可能的独立，也就是说，不要在关键的交通方面依赖大陆。

'这就引出了机场。

‘I think it’s probably fair to say that as I looked toward the future in 1997 what I hoped to be able to contribute towards achieving was a Hong Kong which in all its key aspects survived through the transfer of sovereignty, to the extent you could try to make sure that the institutions are strengthened. Try to make sure that Hong Kong’s infrastructure enables it to go on,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I intend to say “with a high degree of autonomy”, with the greatest degree of independence possible, i.e. do not become dependent on the mainland for your key transportation. That leads on to the airport.’

 

位于大屿山附近的赤腊角的新机场是一项巨大的工程，需要多年才能完成。

政府没有几年的时间来防止优秀人才离开这个城市。

威尔逊回顾了这一挑战："我们正在失去相当多的优秀人才，特别是在天安门事件之后，香港的一些优秀人才由于对未来的担忧而迁出。

因此，他说，有必要尽可能地加强教育机构，增加大学学位的数量。

在这一点上，他取得了成功：香港科技大学坐落在清水湾海边一个青翠的校园里，于1991年10月向第一批700名学生开放。

 

The new airport at Chek Lap Kok off Lantau Island was a huge undertaking that would take years to complete. The administration did not have years to prevent an exodus of excellence from the city. Wilson recalled the challenge: ‘We were losing quite a lot of talented people, and particularly after the Tiananmen incident some of the talented people in Hong Kong [were] moving out because of their worries about the future.’ Therefore, he said, there was a need to strengthen as much as possible the educational institutions and increase the number of university places available. In this he succeeded: the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, set in a verdant campus by the sea at Clear Water Bay, opened its doors to the first group of 700 students in October 1991.

 

在精英阶层中，一些传统上占主导地位的中国商业王朝更倾向于让劳动力只接受所需水平的教育，以完成平凡的任务，这不是什么秘密。

对于某些亿万富翁可能会因为出现了一个有政治素养的、活跃的公民群体而指责他的想法，威尔逊一笑置之。

他们可能很好，但你需要更多而不是更少的受教育者......有意地，来自传统上没有接受过高等教育的家庭的人大量增加。

 

It was no secret among the elite that some of the traditionally dominant Chinese business dynasties preferred the idea of a workforce educated only to the level required for them to perform mundane tasks. Wilson laughed off the idea that certain billionaires might blame him for the emergence of a politically literate, active citizenry. ‘They may well, but you need more, not fewer, educated people … there was, deliberately, a huge increase in the people who were from families who weren’t traditionally going into tertiary education.’

 

这两项基础设施决定都带来了后果。

起初，是昂贵的新机场导致了多年的争论。

中国的谈判代表不时地宣称新机场没有必要，怀疑这是一个挥霍储备的阴谋，指责规划者阴谋将合同授予英国公司，并对每一项技术、地质和航空计算提出质疑。

该项目耗费了行政人员的时间，耗尽了双方的政治资本，最终在中国的勉强同意下才得以进行。

一旦机场建成并获得普遍赞誉，回报将是物质的和明显的。

但是，在他们出生前很久，总督就决定扩大大学和理工学院的学费，这创造了新的、自信的和热爱自由的一代香港人，他们将在这个城市的历史上写下新的一页。

 

Both infrastructure decisions were pregnant with consequences. At first it was the expensive new airport that led to years of argument. Chinese negotiators at intervals declared it unnecessary, suspected a plot to squander the reserves, accused the planners of scheming to award contracts to British firms and challenged every technical, geological and aeronautical calculation. The project consumed executive time and exhausted political capital on both sides before it finally went ahead, with grudging Chinese consent. The rewards would be material and manifest once the airport was completed to general acclaim. But it was the governor’s decision, taken long before they were born, to expand access to university and polytechnic tuition which created a new, assertive and freedom-loving generation of Hong Kongers who would write a fresh page in the city’s history.