Extract from the Far Eastern
Economic Review dated December 29th.
HONG KONG'S PROSPERITY.
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The holiday season has visibly brought home to the residents and the foreigners and travellers staying here for a time the high degree of prosperity which this Colony enjoys. The average person's standard of living here is by far the highest in the Far East; in a small place like Hongkong where some 1 million people live and work the earning per capita is considerably in excess of the ones reported from other relatively prosperous parts of the Far East, such as Singapore, Manila and Bangkok. In Hongkong's population, which is by far leading the rest of the peoples in the Far East as regards relative earning and spending, there are included also over 200,000 farmers and fishermen (mainly in the New Territories).
I.
In this connection, one cannot but express amazement at the fact that when the introduction of income tax on a very moderate scale was proposed early in 1947 so many business men here objected and commiserated with each other when direct taxation was eventually imposed. Such conduct is apt to compromise. free enterprise in the eyes of the common people.
The construction of new villas, bungalows, apartment houses, theatres, restaurants, amusement places, the road clogging numbers of private and public motor cars, the abundance of taxi cabs, the ever increasing number of stores and shops - all testify to the boom which the people here enjoy. Large crowds are usually besieging stores, cinemas, cafes and restaurants; the shop windows vie with each other in the display of luxury goods and jewellery, and all retail merchants declare that the ir holiday business this year has beon by far the best as far as they can remember. Well dressed and well-fed people are in evidence everywhere; this goes just as well for the labouring classes as for the traditionally well-to-do merchants. The big purchasing power of the local people, reinforced by wealthy Shanghai refugees and a large number of travellers and transients from every corner of the globe, has impressed even the usually stolid shopkeepers. The holiday buying rush here had to be witnessed in order to believe the wealth of the community.
Food is displayed to the surfeit; whole streets and lanes are red with oranges, green with apples, while the markets and native food shops are bulging with meat, poultry, fish and vegetables. Everywhere one sees new shop facades, neon lights, redecorations, new furniture and merchandise stocked high up to the ceiling. Prices have come down and often are considerably below the official limit, thus proving the abundance of supply and the superfluity of controlled retail prices (with few exceptions). Nowhere in the Far East, emphasise much travelled friends of ours, can one see so many welldressed Chinese, and the number of corpulent people in Hong Kong is extraordinary. No doubt, the relatively high income of evon the working class people together with the moderate cost of food account for the appearance of health which is evident all over the Colony.
Tailors and shoemakers also reported unusually large business with many of them being unable to cope even with
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