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2.10.69.
CONFIDENTIAL
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VISIT OF DEPUTY UKDER SICHSTARY OF STATE
(SIR LESLIE MONSON)
TO HONG KONG, OCTOBER. 1969
REORGANISATION OF LOCAL ADMINISTRATION
Note No. 5
A study of local government reorganisation was launched by the present Governor in 1966, A Background Note covering the existing local government system and the various proposals for reorganisation is attached.
2. Initially there was a tendency for improvements in the machinery of local government (or local administration as Hong Kong prefer to call it, with one eye on China's susceptibilities) to be seen sa:-
(a) a means of associating people more closely with the
conduct of public affairs in a Colony where progress towards representative and responsible central institutions of government cannot be achieved;
(b) a safety valve for political aspirations that might
develop in a community increasingly throw in on itself in the twenty years since the communists came to power in China, and containing a fast growing propertion of people educated on western lines.
Certainly Ministers have tended to see the present exercise in this way in the past and have presented it accordingly in
Parliament.
3. It is doubtful whether the Governor has ever strongly believed that the development of local administration could relieve any pressures that may build up within the Colony for representative and responsible government; it is thought that the presentational advantages of an improved and extended system are probably foremost in his mind, Problems of electoral apathy and the characteristic Chinese disposition to avoid involvement with authority tend to stand in the way of the development of sound and effective local authorities (as also
CONFIDENTIAL
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