1887-1903
HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL POSSESSIONS.
25
71. Though the absence of any Custom House and of any returns* of imports and exports precludes any certain estimate of the amount of trade, it may be gathered from the above remarks in connection with "Shipping" that the enormous commerce of the Colony is in a condition of healthy progress. We may have not yet felt the full effects of the restrictive measures against Chinese in the United States and Australia, and of the decline in the Chinese tea trade; but there is good reason to think, that any contraction from these causes is being rapidly compensated in other directions. But while commerce pure and simple is, and must be for a long time to come, the principal element of our prosperity, it is, I think, from manufacture that may be hoped the greatest progress of Hong Kong in the future. We can readily have abundant and cheap supplies of raw materials; and there is available, to a practically unlimited extent, the cheap labour of China; while we have also, what is absent there, the advantage of general confidence that enterprise will not be unnecessarily hampered and mulcted of its legitimate reward. Already we have seen established in the last few years sugar refineries which are doing an exceedingly large and apparently †prosperous business; we have, moreover, ship and boat building yards, rope works, ice works (now doing a large export trade), and some 30 minor industries enumerated in the Blue Book. But, considerable as is the aggregate of manufacture already, it is in all probability inappreciable by comparison with what it would shortly become if there were to be any important reduction of the price of coal, which, as being almost exclusively obtained from distant countries, is at present very costly ($8 to $16 per ton); and such a reduction may, I think, be regarded as only a question of time. Enormous and as yet completely undeveloped coal deposits are known to exist in China and other neighbouring countries, and there is abundant evidence that the progressive party among the Chinese are beginning to awaken to the advantage of utilising their mineral wealth. Indeed unless all of the various movements, there and elsewhere, for the production of coal in the neighbourhood should prove abortive, it may be expected that the only element needed for rapid progress in manufacturing enterprise will in no long time be supplied.
72. To render more complete the information derived from the above account of events and observations on statistics, and in order to enable a fuller appreciation of the condition and progress of the Colony, it may be well to give, however imperfectly, some idea of its outward appearance from a contrast of the present with the past.
* There are at present strong objections on the part both of Europeans and Chinese to any provision for such returns, partly because they would involve a certain restriction upon the complete freedom of trade, and partly on other grounds, arising from our vicinity to China.
† The shares of the China Sugar Company, which own one of these refineries not the largest, are now quoted in the market at 130 per cent. premium.
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