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holidays in order to keep up their income to the minimum necessary to live." One of the worst phenomena in Hong Kong is the widespread use of child labour. The 1971 census figures show that 35,925 (approximately 6.9%) of the children between the ages of 10 and 14 (i.e., 10 or over, but under 14) were des- cribed as being "economically active";56 3,099 of these are listed as "students", who presumably were working part-time, leaving 32,826, or 6.3%, who only work. Of these, almost two-thirds (23,380) were girls. A total of 12,449 were employed in textile manufacturing - the vast majority being girls (10,092). In addition, the census showed 23,234 children of school age between 6 and 10 who were not at school; some of these may well have been carrying out economically productive work of some kind, though the census does not provide information on this either way. In brief, in 1971 there were about 36,000 children aged 10 to 14 work- ing legally and very probably several thousand working illegally.
The Government assists this kind of exploitation not simply by its active inac- tion in the wide fields of social welfare and education, but also by providing minimal staff for checking abuses, and by going conspicuously easy on offenders. In 1968-69 the Conciliation Section of the Labour Department had nine officers to handle about 3,500 disputes where employees claimed that employers owed them money. 57 (The number of cases dealt with, and the number of unreported com- plaints are both unknown.) Given the reluctance of the vast majority of poor workers to go to court, plus the prevalence of piece-work and payment by the day, it is easy to see what a strong position employers are in.
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In November 1972 a Hong Kong weekly published a letter from a former worker in the Kin Yip Plastic and Metal Factory in Kuntong. When this worker had fallen ill he was twice refused permission by the factory to
take time off. Although having informed the factory of his illness, the management asked him to pay them compensation for being off work. When he returned to the factory to try to settle the matter after his illness, the management told him: "Even if you were sick, you should be sick in the factory; even if you were to die, you should die in the factory." When the worker turned to the (Government) Labour Department for assistance they told him that though both sides had made mistakes, it was he who should pay the factory compensation for missing work without giving one month's notice.
Penalties for employers breaking the laws which do exist are meagre. In an article in the Colony's leading daily, the South China Morning Post of 7 November 1969, labour inspectors are reported expressing disappointment that courts had in some cases been fining employers of child labour as little as HK$5 per child (about £0.40). 59 The average fine per case in 1969/70 (i.e., not taking into account the number of children found working in each case), was about HK$180 (£13.50). The maximum possible fine for employing children in industry is HK$5,000 (£385.00).
The benefits to business have been rapid and sizeable. Over the years 1960-67, for which a detailed study 60 has been carried out, the key factors evolved as follows: over this period 5,630 new firms were recorded by the Labour Department, equal to the number of registered firms existing up to 1960. Without any capital deepening, manufacturing output grew by 275% and labour productivity by 207%; over the same 7-year period the manufacturing wage index grew by only 71.5% and
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