The environment has become the primary concern for Hong Kong.

This time, even the usually indifferent business sector is getting worried because a number of recent surveys have cited the deteriorating environment as a major contributor to Hong Kong's declining attractiveness to expatriate managers and professionals.

This fall in ratings is particularly worrisome when set against the rising popularity of Shanghai and a few other Chinese mainland cities.

The fear of an irreversible drain of expatriate talent, especially in the banking and other service sectors, seems real enough. Many commentators have taken the latest immigration figures, which pointed to a slowdown in the inflow of expatriates, as a flashing red light calling for immediate attention.

Indeed, the ever -thickening layer of haze hanging in the air has moved Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Donald Tsang to lament recently that he was seeing less and less of a blue sky. Tsang, who named bird-watching among his hobbies, is no doubt a fitting standard bearer of the campaign to improve Hong Kong's environment.

Success will have to depend much on the Hong Kong government's ability to forge a united front with the authorities of the Pearl River Delta area to control the emission and waste generated by the factories there. Many of those factories are either owned by or manufacturing under contracts to Hong Kong exporters.

The process, understandably, is going to be long and arduous. It takes patience and political will to resolve the many conflicts between economic growth and environmental protection. But Hong Kong can take some comfort in the fact that the central government has shown great determination in addressing the various environmental issues.

It is unfair for Hong Kong to blame all of its environmental woes on its neighbours. Worsening air quality is only one of the many manifestations of environmental neglect. Hong Kongers began seeing less and less of a blue sky long before the haze began to drift in. Many Hong Kongers cannot see the sky, blue or grey, from their apartments unless they stick their heads out of the windows and take a look straight up. They are the people who live in the lower floors of high-rise buildings surrounded on all sides by many more skyscrapers.

City planning has never been a forte of the Hong Kong government. Huge chunks of green hillsides are excavated and the harbour is filled in the name of progress.

No hill in Hong Kong is safe from being marred by blocks of high-rise apartment that look pretty much the same. Blending with nature has never been an attribute that can be ascribed to any form of architectural design in Hong Kong.

Happy Valley, where I grew up, used to be a quiet residential haven surrounded on three sides by undulating green hills. Those hills, of course, are still there. But the view is destroyed by a solitary tall building of glass and steel that sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. I wonder who in his or her right mind would want to spend tens of millions of dollars for the privilege of calling that monstrosity home.

Not far away, a bird sanctuary was completely obliterated to make way for the construction of a huge luxury apartment complex. Now, no bird sings. All that can be heard is the grunting of cars and buses climbing up the steep road.

Tsang must have felt a sense of loss, perhaps deeper than ours.

Email: jamesleung@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/16/2006 page4)