6
REVIEW
a demand for more complex and sophisticated forms of treatment requiring more highly- qualified and specialised physicians and surgeons and better-equipped hospitals and clinics. There were just over four beds for every 1,000 people.
Narcotic drugs were still a major problem with well over 100,000 believed to be dependent. As for the welfare services, the Hong Kong attitude was slowly changing. The old emergency dry rations system, which was a feature of the late 1940s and early 1950s, was giving way to one which aimed to help the most needy to get back on to their feet, and listed priorities for those most needing help. These were: families and children; economic hardship cases; the physically and mentally disabled; and increasingly specialised attention for deprived children, with the accent on youth clubs, holiday camps and recreation centres. The public assistance programme was still based on dry rations and even then was sternly means-tested. However, cash substitution was at that time beginning to replace rations, but only at the rate of $30 to $70 a month. A scheme to help 15,000 people was launched at an estimated cost of $20 million. Such was the rudimentary welfare state.
This brief statistical framework is presented to help assess both progress made in the 25 post-war years and to enable us to comprehend the advances in the next decade period of rapidly changing fortunes and, at its end, massive increases in population.
Shares Tumble
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The boom of the early 1970s collapsed almost as dramatically as the frenzied explosion of the stock market in March, 1973. This was a brief era of madness that neither the government nor the people will soon forget. The meteoric rise of the index to 1,774 points, doubling itself in less than three months, is attributed by many to the gambling proclivities of a population largely ignorant of the function of a stock exchange. Certainly many fortunes were made. Just as certainly many were lost. And while many big companies and knowing individuals creamed large profits from this speculative aberration, the small investor was to learn a painful lesson that would last for many years. The roaring bull market came to a shuddering halt, and the bears took over with relish – the market plunging to a low the next year of 150 points. It was an era of much more than bruised pride and burnt fingers. Many, including some who had lost everything in the Sino-Japanese war, made it up again in the post-war years, lost it all again in the Chinese civil war, made it up again in 25 years of prosperity in Hong Kong, lost it all in 1973. And the share market was to remain in the doldrums for five long years.
It was not only massive disillusionment with shares that triggered the downturn. In late 1972 the Government of China made known its intention to charge international prices for a range of goods. Moreover, the quadrupling of oil prices by the OPEC countries which sent the international economy reeling a year later, was to add bitter rice to broken rice bowls, and the ensuing recession bit heavily into a population already savaged by lost savings and seemingly worthless investments. In desperation, many sold out and the Cassandras who had moved away in the troubles of 1967 became the Jeremiahs of a new era of doom and despondency for Hong Kong.
But the people who stayed were neither strangers to misfortune nor hostages to fate. Certainly the times were hard and the fall in industrial production and trade in 1975, coupled with the sharp rise in unemployment and the even more prevalent underemploy- ment, saw Hong Kong's fortunes slump. Many others had to forego salary increases or take cuts that year, though in retrospect they count themselves lucky that they held their jobs. Real wages between March, 1973, and March, 1975, are estimated to have fallen more than 18 per cent.