HONG KONG Peering through the smog across the harbor from the towers of Hong Kong's central business district, one can see a desolate area amid the high-rise hotels and apartments of the Kowloon Peninsula. This stretch of reclaimed land has become a metaphor for a struggle for the soul of the city. Worth several billion dollars, these empty 40 harbor-side hectares, about 99 acres, are supposed to become an expression of Hong Kong's official commitment to culture, as well as money-making. The official plan is for hundreds of millions of dollars to be pumped into a "cultural district" of theaters, museums, galleries and concert halls. But instead of becoming a focus of civic pride, the project has become a battleground, with most of those with track records of engagement with the arts lined up against the project. Critics say it is another monument to mammon being bulldozed through by a nontransparent government with a tendency for cronyism. The project has become another focus for activism in a city where quality of life issues, including pollution, harbor protection and the environment, have moved to the center of politics - or as much as possible in a state with limited franchise. The reclamation itself so narrowed the harbor that the tides race through it and the disparate wakes of ferries, tugs and tows make it a crowded and uncomfortable waterway. The reclamation cannot be undone, but the question now is over its use. It may test whether the government is committed to improving quality of life or to using a smog-screen of "culture" to award this valuable land to a favored developer. The reclamation was once designated for a park. Green space is in short supply in Hong Kong's urban area. But instead of an urban lung, the land has now been designated for intensive development. This creation would, its supporters claim, be both a breathtaking piece of architecture and demonstrate Hong Kong's commitment to the arts. The government decreed that it should be developed as a single unit with the developer paying for the cultural aspects by acquiring rights to build apartments and commercial space. It put forward an outline from Norman Foster, a prominent architect, for a vast canopy to cover the whole of the culture area within which developers could make their own proposals. Recently the government announced that of five proposals it received, three, all by consortia including the top six local developers, would be considered further. This apparent progress toward realization of a vision of a city of culture was greeted with much cynicism. The front page banner headline on a leading Chinese newspaper was: "Pretend culture, fake consultation, real apartment sales." The suspicion was understandable. Five years ago the government announced a plan to create a "Cyberport" to attract IT industries. Without tender it awarded the deal, and its valuable land, to a company controlled by a son of Hong Kong's best-known developer. Cyberport in reality has become just another office/residential development. The public will be allowed to comment on the short-listed designs but not have any access to the commercial terms being proposed. All that is known is that the average building to site area ratios proposed are twice the guideline. In rewriting the competition rules to suit the developers, Hong Kong's price for a few developer-controlled cultural venues looks set to be more high rises - and more pollution. A leading brokerage house says the contract will be "extremely lucrative" to the winning companies adding up to 50 percent to their share values. The short-listed developers have started talking up their new-found commitment to the arts and throwing around their supposed connections to big names elsewhere - Guggenheim, the Pompidou Center and Beijing's Palace Museum. But artistic groups that would be the primary users of the cultural venues complain of inadequate consultation. One not complaining is the art gallery-owning sister of Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive. She backed a museum of ink-painting, which has already been included. Cynicism may yet be misplaced. Hong Kong may get a magnificent piece of architecture and fill it with cultural excellence, local and foreign. But a government that surrenders control of cultural ambitions for 30 years to property tycoons, whose concern for architectural aesthetics is not evidenced elsewhere in Hong Kong, is asking for scrutiny.