HONG
KONG
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1.
be
The colony of Hong Kong should now as a matter of considered policy, fitted to become the chief point through which Britain, and eventually Europe and America, contribute to the economic, political and cultural development of China. Geographically and traditionally, the colony is ideally placed for the job; and with the abolition of extrality, it is literally the only remaining city in China's sphere where the baser elements of Chinese life may not dictate the terms and conditions upon which they will meet and work with the West. The opportunity is unrivalled and the familiar metaphor that Hong Kong is Britain's shop-window in the Far East was never more apposite than now.
2. Hong Kong has been better than its critics have allowed. Unlike Shanghai, which size and geography put somewhat beyond the reach of human incompetence, the development of Hong Kong has had to be contrived and guided. There was nothing inevitable about it and, under mismanagement, it could have failed at almost any time in its history. The fact is, however, that certain British virtues (notably the traditional talent for achieving law and order) have maintained the colony for more than a century as one of the world's great ports. The whole world has benefitted from this and not least the Chinese.
3. Hong Kong is, however, capable of still better things. There is a sense of opportunity in the air and every political and economic circumstance in the Far East at the present time favours the use of energy and imagination in bringing the colony to the full realisation of its exciting possibilities.
40 These are in brief to make Hong Kong, the urban exemplar of the China area; to re-establish the University as a vigorous centre of international culture, maintaining the traditional independence of European scholarship; and to consolidate the colony in the role for which nature has designed it the shop-, window of the West wherein the East may peer to the mutual advantage of all concerned. The goods displayed will be cultural, administrative, economic and political.
5. It is remarkable how many of the things China most needs to-day Britain is best qualified to give. Integrity in public life, free speech, the irrelevance of the politics of University teachers, the civic administration of cities like Glasgow, Liverpool or London, the traditions which must inform the operation of powerful banks, insurance houses and shipping, and the subordination of everything to the law: Britain is the high home of these arts and Hong Kong can and must reflect all of them with vigour and imagination. They are in the end more important to China than American dollars or Russian politics.
6. The Administration of Hong Kong is alive to its opportunity and its task. The creation of an elected Municipal Council is already in hand; the people of Hong Kong will increasingly manage their own affairs. A committee has already placed proposals before Mr. Creech Jones to revitalise the University. The pace of replacing British by Chinese personnel in more and more responsible jobs has increased. The Governor is engaged upon special measures to stamp out corruption in the public service and re-establish the integrity which the Japanese occupation to greatly impaired. A stroke of the pen has cancelled archaic and discriminatory restrictions upon the freedom of Chinese to reside where they will in Hong Kong. The powerful and usurious guilds which under the guise of middlemen have hung for centuries round the necks of local fishermen and farmers have been brushed aside by another stroke of the pen, and Government has moved into both fishing and vegetable marketing on a large scale to established co-operatives. British officials are encouraged to mix with and entertain as many Chinese officials (especially from Canton) as they can lay their hands on: insularity and exclusiveness are not welcome. And so on through a long list.
7.
The brunt of re-establishing a new colony will inevitably fall upon the administration on the spot backed from London. Hong Kong was ruined by the Japanese both morally and physically and it is against that background of catastrophe that the effort to re-create a shining city has to be made. This fact, and the fact that Hong Kong is now the most important opening through which the rest of the world can reach and influence China, places the colony
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