four main companies in the colony, are British (Jardine Hatheson, **Wheelock Marden, Swire Group),
dutchison,
Its main
These companies are very wealthy and it is useful to look at the scope of
In 1973 at the height of the perations of one of these, Jardine Matheson. Stock Exchange boom the Jardine group had a market value of £5,000m. subsidiary, Hong-Kong Land was then in terms of market capitalisation temporarily the largest property company in the world and had a higher market value (but not
In 1971 the real assets) than all, major U.K. property companies put together. head of Jardines held 87 directorships, including one on the aforementioned llong- Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. 15 companies in Hong Kong have to have Jardine officials as chairmen or effective heads regardless of Jardine's actual holdings in the firm, e.g. Lombard Insurance Co. has articles which state that Jardines control the company as long as it has 10 of the 490,924 shares; this ruling can only be abolished by a vote representing 75% of the total shares. Jardines is also a member of the cartel which fixes the colony's insurance rates, Jardines is involved an activity which is not subject to government regulation. with major public utilities and many of the contracts in this area oro distributed without open bidding or public hearings.
:
Jardine's operations are not limited to Hong-Kong, and Jardine together with other companies use Hong-Kong as a base to operate in S.E.Asia and beyond, e.g. by the 1970's Hong-Kong was the fourth largest investor in Indonesia.
By Jardines has close links with the Hong-Kong based World Wide Shipping Ltd. 1973 the latter firm had in service or on order more merchant shipping than sail- ing under the US flag and had ambitions to become the world's largest shipowner in the following years.
**
Part of "World-Wide's' success came from the "special conditions" of Hong- Kong regarding taxation, disclosure of assets, and the fact that seamen are un-
Another protected by many international shipping regulations (see Table 1). reason for this firm's success was that it was 40% owned by the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank, which is an important bank in the Middle East, and where World- Wide charters many tankers; Jardine Matheson's main UK-based subsidiary is A World-Wide ran into trouble in 1974 tanker chartering and leasing company.
because of problems in the chartering of tankers.
Big business manipulates
Hong-Kong operates like an off-shore island of the U.K, where taxation is less than half the UK's rate, tax evasion is fairly common, wages are very low and growth has been more than double the UK's rate. the money supply, the Stock Exchange and the economy of Hong-Kong; its. also highly
It was well summed up by an article in the influential upon the Government itself. the 'Times Business News' of 8th March, 1974; the article was entitled 'where a quick profit is a way of life'.
"The business population concentrates entirely on the sole aim of making money fast. The local legislation greatly encourages this, especially through
One cannot help be struck by the extremely low income and corporation taxes.
immense zeal of the business people to make more and more money andmake it extremely quickly. No wonder that corruption is widespread... People take a highly sceptical view of investment projects in Hong-Kong itself if they cannot get their money back in full, plus a good profit, within a maximum six years and they strive to get their full return within 4 years.
#1
(c) Government Intervention: Less than one-third of I.L.0. Conventions ratified by Britain are in force in Hong-Kong, 1.e. 20 out of 67 ratified in UK, Fifty years ago Japan offered to ratify all ILO Conventions if Hong-Kong did the
Today Japan has ratified same; this was refused by the then British Government, 31 of the 67 Britain has ratified.. Government officials often point out the low number ratified elsewhere in Asia, but for reasons previously stated the Hong-Kong economy is different from these countries.
The refusal of successive British governments to enforce the other 45 ...Conventions can only be interpreted as active government intervention on behalf of big business in the colony (Convention Nos. 80 and 116 are Final Articles Revision and therefore inapplicable),
/Table I....
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