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total reliance on market forces, particularly evident in the field of monetary management and wages; and by low taxation policies which have encouraged entrepreneurial energy and preserved the Colony's attraction to investors, both Chinese and foreign. There is thus a good deal of influential resistance to proposals for accelerated social development and the amelioration of working conditions because it is feared that these may erode the industriousness of the population and perhaps also the virtues of thrift and family solidarity which are thought traditionally to have marked Chinese society.
3.
The past and present internal policies of the colonial Government must be viewed against this economic and sociological background and in the historical context of post-war Hong Kong. The administration reinstated after the Second World War faced a society in ruins. It has since had to grapple, in effect, with a permanent emergency situation (caused by vast and irregular flows of immigrants and a high birth rate) and has done so armed with governmental institutions inappropriate to an urban industrial environment of increasing sophistication. Doubtless the willingness of the population to endure what to Western eyes appear harsh conditions is a major contributory factor in Hong Kong's stability and growth: there has been little or no "reverse-immigration" back to China; virtually no popular move in the Colony for its re-incorporation in China; and very little industrial unrest. But the commitment of successive Governors to the well-being of the inhabitants and the efficiency and determination of Hong Kong officials is often overlooked by critics failing to appreciate the scale of the problems to be faced. Despite these, since 1954 the Government has housed 1.95 million of the population in subsidised public housing and introduced virtually free medical services, public assistance and universal primary education. Standards inevitably
fall below those of more settled and richer societies; and many problems remain. What follows is an attempt to isolate the more obvious of these in the fiscal, social and institutional
fields.
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