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320 in all, composed mainly of unpaid private citizens, knowledgeable and experienced in their subject. These bodies may be organised on a functional, a regional or an ad hoc basis. They exercise not just a significant but often a crucial influence in the formulation of policy, and act too as an important weathervane of its likely acceptability. The members inject their practical experience and expertise into areas where civil servants may sometimes possess only a theoretical knowledge. So, allying the practical to the theoretical, a pragmatic Hong Kong solution to most problems is achieved.
Of the boards and committees, some are concerned with particular industries or trades, such as the Textiles Advisory Board which sat in session in Brussels for a fortnight in 1982 advising whilst the Government negotiated with the EEC; others deal with subjects of concern to the public or sections of it, such as transport, banking, law reform, social welfare, housing, tertiary education and most other topics under the sun; yet others are regional: for instance local committees taking an active part advising how to 'Fight Crime' or 'Clean Hong Kong' in their own area. The Heung Yee Kuk, the long-established elected body representative of villagers in the New Territories, speaks with a particularly influential voice for the indigenous inhabitants of those areas.
In 1982 there was a significant extension of the consultative process with the addition of elected members to the District Boards, so that the knowledge of the inhabitants about their locality, its problems and needs, could be tapped, and their advice made available to the public servants from Housing, Transport, the Police and Urban Services who form the local District Management Committees. In 1983, the Urban Council, that body which like Topsy has grown and grown from its first genesis in 1887 as the Sanitary Board until today its functions range from liquor licensing and control of hawkers to the provision of recreational facilities and entertainment in the parks and concert halls of Hong Kong, is to have its 15 elected members each also representing a constituency.
So, at every level and in every area, the people put forward the advice which guides and forms policy, until in ExCo and LegCo the final decisions are taken which shape the society in which all live.
The Hub of the Wheel of State
This article is a view and an explanation, as one man sees it, of what Hong Kong has become today, and what has allowed it to flourish and grow. One sees in action and interaction the Constitution, the Laws, the Rule of Law, the whole elaborate network of consultation, each part dependent upon the others: remove just one of them and the inter-linked machine might well break down. Together they comprise a formula which has worked well in practice, and is the bedrock on which the increasing prosperity of the people has been built. But this short explanation necessarily falls short of being the full story of Hong Kong's evolution. That is a strange story. Caught between two worlds, East and West, taking some would say the best from each, a society with many of the trappings of a State has emerged. To an outsider, Hong Kong will probably always be hard to comprehend, for he can know little of its past, and the influences which have shaped its growth. He expects to find a hybrid, the differing strains of whose lineage can be isolated and identified. But not so, for a historian observing Hong Kong and its institutions today, would be likely to see not a hybrid but the sole species of a unique genus.
In default therefore of the perfect analysis, we should perhaps accept an image from nature. What was once 'that barren island' in the terms of Hong Kong's most famous cliché has raised a flourishing society. The prosperity of that society, of the polyglot city called Hong Kong, depends ultimately on confidence and confidence is a very fragile
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URBAN COUNCIL LIBRARIES Reference Library City Hall
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