1 this very peculiar place
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Little is heard of Hong Kong in Britain. It is one of those remnants of Empire, as are Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, about which no news is good news. On the rare occasions it makes the headlines it is usually because of its reputation as a "sweatshop." "Slaves Empire-made was a typical headline in the Daily Mirror in 1970. More recently, through the crimi- nal trials of leading police officers, the British public has been given a glimpse of another aspect of life in the Colony, the corruption which pervades many branches of the Colony's public service.
But when all the allegations about child labour, police corruption, low wages and long working hours, and the "dumping" of textiles have been made, and the feel- ings of righteous indignation have been aired, and the label "corrupt, colonial sweatshop been firmly tied on once again, what then? The Colony slips quietly out of the headlines, the British Government maintains a discreet silence, and the British people and Parliament, on whom the ultimate responsibility rests, re- main indifferent to the fate of over four million people in the most important re- maining British Crown Colony.
Why does this happen? Of course, Hong Kong is a long way away-eight thousand miles. And that title of British Crown Colony does summon up slightly comic visions of a white-plumed governor placidly ruling among the palm trees. A vision rather hard to take seriously in the mid 1970s. But Hong Kong is neither placid nor comic. Partly situated on the territory of the world's most populous communist power, it is small and over- crowded, it is highly industrialised, and its economic creed is unrestrained capi- talism. Three quarters of the population, some three million people, live in ap- proximately 13 square miles of built up land at a density ten times that of New York in 1960. It has the highest rate of narcotic addiction in the world with over 100,000 addicts in a population of four million. This is equivalent to one in every ten male employees being an addict (there are relatively few female addicts). At least 70,000 are reckoned to be heroin addicts. The suicide rate in 1974 was
amongst the highest in the world. Prosti- tution and gambling are rife and highly organised by professional gangsters. Crimes against the person rose by 285 per cent between 1969 and 1974.
Hong Kong is in its own right a major international economy. As a highly indus- trialised "city state "with 43 per cent of the occupied population engaged in manufacturing, its Gross National Pro- duct per capita is second in Asia only to Japan; and higher than those of Greece, Spain, Portugal or Yugoslavia. By the late 1960s the total value of Hong Kong's manufacturing exports far exceeded those from any other developing country in the world. Indeed it exceeded the whole of Latin America put together. It is also a major centre in South East Asia for banking, insurance, shipping and distribu- tion. In short, it is one of the world's top twenty trading "nations" where vast per- sonal fortunes have been made in the past twenty years. And here, obviously, is one reason for the business-as-usual ap- proach to criticism of the Colony's affairs. The politically powerful commercial elite likes things the way they are.
But there are high political stakes too. Hong Kong is the subject of a delicate and tacit understanding between the Chinese and British Governments. Osten- sibly left wing ministers soon learn to utter the bland syrup of Foreign Office statements when questioned about Hong Kong. The fact is, as we shall see, the present arrangement has been to the mutual advantage of both the British and Chinese Governments. Today, the ad- vantage if anything lies more with the Chinese. But neither China nor Britain. are looking for an end to the present arrangement. As Alec Douglas-Home said at a press conference in Peking on 2 November 1972, when asked about the status of Hong Kong: "I think we were both satisfied with the situation." Thus, very powerful forces indeed are wedded to the status quo-the commercial and industrial elite of Hong Kong, the British and Hong Kong Governments, and the Chinese Government in Peking. What about the people of Hong Kong, 98 per cent of whom are Chinese? There