May 4, 1961
as
exchange rate and the increase in utility service rates "absolutely necessary" economic reforms to lay a foundation for development, even though they involve painful readjust- ments. The U.S. is supporting the reform measures, or rather had been strongly recommending them. It has provided for an additional aid of US$35 million to help cushion the shock of the adjustments. Of this sum, $20 million was given Korca following the adoption of the 1300 to 1 exchange rate, and the remaining $15 million following
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the increase of power rates and on the eve of the anniversary of the Revolution.
The country's major current effort to bolster the economy is the National Construction Service Programme. Costing some hwan 40,000 million (US$30 million), the public works programme was started early in March. Government officials say that impact of the programme will be felt by May or June, and that it will give a new vigour to the economy.
Outsiders often wonder what is the long-term future of the British Colony of Hongkong and what importance to attach to the occasional reports
of demands for reform. Today Mr. Ruscoe summarises recent political
developments and tries to interpret them.
A Conspiracy of Silence
By Nigel Ruscoe
"HONG
ONGKONG IS not a democracy. It is a benevolent autocracy .. but it works, and the people are happy. Several hundred thousand Chinese have voted with their feet by leaving their own country to come to Hongkong because they like the Hongkong way of life and . . . the Hongkong way of government. Hongkong has no future as an independent state or a self-governing dominion, because when it ceases to be a British colony it will simply be absorbed into the neighbouring province of Kwangtung
•
""
This was Sir Alexander Grantham's analysis of Hongkong's political dilemma shortly after his retirement from the Governorship of the Colony. In the same speech in London, in November of 1958, he described the advantages to the Peking Government of Hongkong remaining as its "only peephole" on the West (and vice versa). There was no local demand for self-government, the ex-Governor said, and if there were an elected legislature "the politics of China would be played therein
Sir Robert Black, Sir Alexander's successor, supported this view: there was, he told Singapore pressmen in January, 1959, "no strong call for a change in
status
"
And a visiting group of UK. parliamentarians said in Hongkong towards the end of 1958 that the Colony already had a satisfactory form of parliament which would in time develop and grow according to its own traditions. "I do not believe it is wise, desirable, or even desired by the inhabitants of Hongkong," declared their leader, Mr. R. H. Turton M.P. at a November 13 press conference, "that you should have the exact replica of the British system of democratic parliamentary government in Hongkong”.
Reaction to these statements of Hongkong's constitutional position varied. Mr. Ma Man-fai, the bearded, ebullient chain cigar-smoking chairman of the Hongkong UN Association and a consistent advocate of self-government, unsuccessfully challenged Sir Alexander to a public debate. Judge Lee Sing-ng told a UNA meeting that for the ex-Governor to brag of the Chinese in Hongkong liking the government was an "insult to our intelligence". But the South China Morning Post, the voice of the Establishment, commented on December D. 1958, that while "a small handful of political dilettantes are interested in the game of politics and in electoral rights
the great majority of people are much too busy with other things
The Far Eastern Economic Review committed a delightful typographical error in referring darkly to “dividend loyalties" on the part of the reformers (March 19, 1959). The middle path was taken by Mr. Hilton Cheong-leen, the youthful businessman active in the Civic Association: "I am very sure," he wrote to the Morning Post on January 16, 1959, “I am reflecting public opinion in saying that we want Hongkong to remain British. But that does not mean to say that I am not in favour of gradual constitutional changes, providing they strengthen local stability and security.
on
This was the setting for the renewed debate constitutional reform that has aroused such interest during the past two years. Perhaps one should briefly set out the constitutional position as it now stands. Hongkong is ruled by the Governor, with the assistance of an Executive Council (with five official and seven nominated members) and a Legislative Council (nine officials and eight nominated unofficials): there is no provision for election to either body. There was much reluctance on the part of the unofficials in the post-1949 era to register public opposition to the Government. As a result their speeches used to be "taken indulgently but not very seriously", as the Morning Post put it on March 23, 1960: today, by contrast, they were "growing in seriousness and influence" (and the newspaper added, mysteriously that Hongkong "will not only shape its own pattern but in time will staff its own Government").
Mr. J. D. Clague, an unofficial, declared in the March, 1960, budget debate in the Legislative Council that "more than once during my service on this Council I have felt that had the 'unofficials' been more vocal, the Colony might have done better in certain transactions which have taken place". The Hongkong Tiger Standard urged more specialisation among speakers on the budget debates and this was done with a vengeance by the unofficials in the recent 1961 session: no one in the Government can now feel complacent on this score, with quite fiercely argued criticism of many aspects of Government policy from the unofficial seats.
There is one body that is partly elected: the Urban Council, which was reconstituted in 1952 and now has 6