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Steve Yui-sang Tsang, Democracy Shelved, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Though about the 1945-1952 period, Democracy Shelved is important and timely because its publication coincides with another period in which plans for democracy in Hong Kong have been shelved.
Steve Yui-sang Tsang, a Research Associate at Wolfson-St. Antony's Chinese Studies Centre and Rhodes House Library, Oxford, has written a blow-by-blow account of the abortive attempt to introduce major constitutional reforms in Hong Kong in the immediate post-war period, when decolonisation was in the air.
The book is important for the light it sheds on an important historical period but, even more so, for its illumination of the reasons behind events transpiring today.
On one level, it is the role of personalities. Sir Mark Young retired before he could see his reforms, dubbed the Young Plan, implemented. Similarly, Sir Edward Youde died before his proposal "to develop progressively a system of government the authority for which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong, which is able to represent authoritatively the views of the people of Hong Kong, and which is more directly accountable to the people of Hong Kong," could take shape.
But Steve Tsang shows that Young was no wild-eyed radical. His reforms were moderate. And he was enough of a realist to know the importance of China's views on the colony. That is why he recommended the appointment of a Political Adviser to the Hong Kong governor who would be a specialist on Chinese affairs.
Steve Tsang concludes by raising the question whether failure to implement the Young Plan represents a lost chance. His answers it in the affirmative, concluding: “On balance, it would appear that the Young Plan could have worked successfully during the period under study."
The reader is free to draw his own conclusions as to what the ramifications would be for today's Hong Kong as it wrestles with the need for political reforms on the eve of its return to Chinese sovereignty.
FRANK CHING