"PREAMBLE: RECOMMENDED GENERAL POLICY
1. Government should continue to recognise and accept the fact that Chinese people in Hong Kong marry according to the form of their choice, and any legislation which does not make reasonable allowance for this will be largely ignored. The same is generally true of dissolutions of marriages and of the care of dependants. This does not mean that the introduction of workable statutory safeguards against possible abuses would not be generally acceptable and accepted.
2. It is very desirable that after an Appointed Date all marriages contracted in Hong Kong, in whatever form, should be registered as unions between one man and one woman, and that in law no recognition should be extended to any other union contracted thereafter. But it would not be practicable to try to enforce registration by a requirement that all marriages be performed in a licensed place of wor- ship or before a deputy registrar, whether or not any other form of celebration was also permitted.
3. Concubines taken on before the Appointed Date, and their children, should continue to be accorded only such recognition in law as now exists. The same should apply to any other form of union or marriage entered into before the Appointed Date and involving more than one woman and one man at a time.”
20. In considering the various New Recommendations in the Report, the Sub-Committee first considered the Preamble: Report, p. 5. Two members of the Sub-Committee, while not wholly without doubts about the likely effectiveness of legislation (see above, paras. 8 to 10) felt that if the recognition by the authors of the Report that Chinese people would continue to marry by the custom of their choice were accepted, there would be a danger of the legislature failing to take the bull by the horns. For reasons discussed in more detail below, they came to the conclusion that if registration were to become (as it must) the formal determinant of a legal marriage, it was unnecessary for the legislature to concern itself with the
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