Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
schemes in Britain, placed the site on the market as a single entity, thereby
restricting its sale to a few very large international corporations. In April
1988 a sale was announced to Concord Pacific Developments, whose largest
share-holder was Li Ka-shing, patriarch of the wealthiest family in Hong
Kong.
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Sale would be accomplished through his property company Cheung
Kong Holdings, with key secondary shareholders two other Hong Kong
property tycoons and their companies, Henderson Land and New World
Development (Gutstein 1990; Olds 2001).
The interest of the Li family in the Expo site shows the intricate interrela-
tions of family affairs, property investment, education, and international
migration. The Li's had begun some small scale property investment in
Vancouver and other Canadian cities in the late 1960s, and soon after began
to spend holidays in Vancouver's Oakridge neighbourhood, where a small
Chinese-Canadian middle-class had gathered by 1971 (Olds 2001,
Figure 2.1). This district would become a major reception area for the first
wave of wealthy migrants from Hong Kong in the 1980s. The Concord Pacific
project was to provide practical training for Li's elder son, Victor, groomed
for an international career when he took Canadian citizenship at the age of
18 (Olds 2001). After his Stanford engineering degree, Victor returned to
Vancouver and in 1988 at the age of 23 he began serious business school
when he was named Director and Senior Vice-President of the vast Concord
Pacific site with its 25-year build-out horizon. Neither the move nor the
investment was long term, however. Victor was recalled to Hong Kong in
1993 for a more senior task in the family business and the Li family began to
sell off its Concord Pacific holdings as the land appreciated in value.
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The Li's were significant models for many other migrant families. As I was
told by a Chinese-Canadian real estate agent in 1998, 'where the big fish
swim, the smaller fish follow'. Investment in real estate, often, though not
always, accompanied by immigration, itself frequently education-related,
became commonly entwined themes in East Asian migration to Vancouver
and Toronto. So too Victor Li's abrupt return to Hong Kong revealed a
mobile transnational model that would be imitated by many others. Shortly
after the Expo sale to the Li family, the warmth of the welcome for capital
and migrants from East Asia was reinforced by the swearing in of David Lam
as Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia in September 1988 (Roy
1996). Lam, born in Hong Kong, was a successful property developer in
Vancouver and a respected Christian philanthropist. His appointment was
the symbolic counterpart to the economic presence of the Li family. The
clear and intended message was that the doors to Pacific Rim investment
and immigration in British Columbia were wide open. In the dismal years of
the first half of the 1980s, an official report bewailed 'a shortage of entrepre-
neurs' in Greater Vancouver and a 'misunderstanding of the Pacific Rim's
potential' (GVRD 1985: 3). Five years later all this had changed.
