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13
of the Hong Kong Civil Service List for 1927.
(f) There are a number of other Committees of importance,
though less influential than those which I have enumerated
above, all centering in the Secretariat for Chinese
Affairs and pivoted on the Secretary for Chinese Affairs
for administration; for example, the Brewin Fund
Committee, which deals with something in the nature of old age pensions to about 100 pauper residents of the
Colony; the Chinese Permanent Cemetery Committee, which
controls the cemetery in which Hong Kong Chinese may be
buried without liability to exhumation; the Chinese
Recreation Ground Committee and others. All these
institutions are financed entirely without Government
assistance.
4.
Most of these activities of the Secretariat
for Chinese Affairs are little known to the European public
of the Colony, but it can safely be said that much of the peace of mind of the Europeans here depends upon them. The Hong Kong Chinese consider the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs to belong to them in a very special sense. Everybody is free to appeal to it on any account he pleases and the staff of four cadet officers with translators, clerks and shroffs, is kept
has continuously busy. There is no kind of work that is not to be handled, from important affairs of wide political concern and such delicate matters as newspaper censorship down to petty detail such as the proper site for a hawker's stall. Moreover, through every week of every year runs the duty of dealing with and, if possible, settling labour troubles. "Seamens' Strike" is fortunately rare, but the Chinese Secretariat is never free from work which may be less spectacular, but is no less difficult or important. It is no
A
exaggeration