Hong Kong's new airport at Chek Lap Kok, designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster (who also designed London Stansted Airport), took six years to build and cost USD$20 billion. Claimed by its builders to be the biggest civil engineering project in history, the terminal building is the largest covered space in the world.

There can be few airport developments in the world to match those in Hong Kong. It has been estimated that in the Ice Age some 15,000 years ago the sea was up to 100 meters lower than it is today and what is now Hong Kong was an inland region located far to the West of the South China Sea. In the past century and a half the people of the territory have been busy claiming back some of the land taken away by the seas when the ice melted.

Chek Lap Kok was originally a small mountainous island, which has been flattened and extended into the South China Sea to four times its original size. The suspension bridge carrying railway and highway links from Hong Kong island is the longest of its kind.

The airport project was at first bitterly opposed by China but Britain speeded up its development after the Tiananmen Square incident in Beijing in 1989. Beijing suspected Britain of trying to drain Hong Kong of its fiscal reserves before the handback of the Colony to China. But as the timetable slipped because of the political squabbling between the two countries Beijing realized that the airport would be inaugurated under Chinese, and not British colonial rule and enthusiasm for the project grew.

The construction of Chek Lap Kok was not without problems. Cracks began appearing in the airport's runway as reclaimed land underneath the tarmac settled. Later it was found that the glass cladding in the terminal was faulty and needed to be replaced.