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We know they cannot get their money invested at a reasonable rate of interest. Why? Because business is bad and money is not needed to develop it. It may be argued by those who have recently come to the Colony and who have seen the large subscriptions given by the Chinese community for charitable purposes that the Colony was in a prosperous condition, but wish to assure the Council that this is It is a trait of the Chinese not the case. character to be charitable when they are not too well off.
HONGKONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL HON. DR. HO KAI-Sir, although this banks. will be the sixth or seventh time I have had the honour in this Council to discuss the military contribution, still, I think a few words are due from me as being the senior unofficial member of this Council in support of the arguments which have been put so eloquently forward by our junior unofficial member and also by my hon. friend who seconded the resolution." I had almost said that I was tired of discussions on this sub. ject, but yet at the same time I don't see how we can avoid bringing it forward periodically so long as the military con- tribution is calculated and raised on an unfair basis. My hon. friend opposite in seconding the resolution has given an in- stance of the unfairness of the calculation, and I wish to emphasise the opinion that to have to pay twenty per cent, of our gross When revenue in that way is most unfair. we have to raise any extra taxes to meet some contingency, some necessary expendi- ture, we have at once to pay 20 per cent.parison with taxes levied in other places, or As long with the amount which the people at Home to the military contribution.
They are much more charitable in times of depression than in times of prosperity. They realise that it is much more meritorious to give at a time when they are not prosperous. I think that the argoment of my unofficial colleague on my right is a fair one, and I think we are all agreed that this question of the military contribution should be put on a proper basis, on the basis of the ability of the inhabitants to pay and not hy com
as this unfair method of calculating the pay towards the defence of the Empire. contribution obtains there must be periodical! The figures given are most striking. They protest and discussion in this Council, and are new to me, but I think they are very I hope that the Imperial Authorities, who suggestive. We all hope that they will be your Excellency informed us at the last sent to the Secretary of State, and that he ineeting had the subject under consideration, will see his way to rearrange a basis of assessment which shall be satisfactory to all but had not come to a decision, will at once
(Applause.) direct their attention and energy to the for years to coine, natter with a view to arriving at a fairer way of reckoning the contributions from At the same Hongkong and other colonies. time. Sir, the question is not one of real difficulty. On one hand I think we all agree that we must as a British Colony, as a loval Colony, eontribute a just share to wards the military expenditure of the Empire, and on the other hand it has been said by no less an authority than Mr. Joseph Chamberlain that this iuilitary con- tribution should be calculated in a fair and
just way, and the only fair and just basis on which it can be calculated is the ability of the inhabitants at any particular time to Now pay that amount of contribution. during the last few years it is well known that trade in this Colony and in the two neighbouring colonies has been depressed both among Europeans and Chinese, and up to the present day, so far as the natives are concerned, it has not recovered from such depression. We know this by the large amount of money lying idle in the
His EXCELLENCY -- Gentlemen, the hon. member on my right who moved this resolution has done so with a throughness and intrepidity which is characteristic of him. I know he has spent very long hours in working out in detail the figures at which he has arrived, for he has done me the honour of consulting me, and I havo suggested some aspects of the question to him. I think that the community is under a debt of gratitude to him for the amount of private time he has given to the examina- tion of this public subject. (Applause.) Before I proceed to criticise his arguments I would like to express my obligations to him for his courtesy in informing me gen- erally of the line he intended to take in the
debate to-day. That has enabled me to 1 venture also to offer to him our con- come to this Council not wholly unprepared. gratulations on his excellent inaiden speech in this Council.
Gentlemen, I had only myself been a few
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weeks in this Colony before I embarked on the same field of investigation in connection with this subject of military contribution, andI venture to think that even the professional student of economics and sta- tistics, however difficult he might think that it would be to form any approximation of the incidence of taxation on the indivi- dual and on the various classes of any one community, would give it up as a hopeless task to contrast the incidence of taxation in & community such as in the United King dom with the incidence of taxation in a community in the Far East such as this. The first question to which the hon. mem- ber sets himself to reply is whether we are more lightly or more heavily taxed than the people in England. Now, the first difficulty that suggests itself to me in that problem is: What is the unit ? It appears to me that to divide the gross income of a com- munity by the population as given by the census cannot possibly produce any useful result. The census includes women and children, who are not separately taxed if they form part of the household, and yet, on the other hand, we must remember that they do pay indirect taxes on sugar, tea and other articles both of food and luxuzer The general unit, I think, in calculations of this sort is the household or the family.
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comparison to the total population, A large proportion of them, I believe, own real property in China, and many have invest- ments in the banks here or elsewhere. They are also largely a migratory popula tiou.
Apart from all this, the fundamental proposition remains that severity or other wise of the incidence of taxation depends upon the ability to pay No-one, I think, will deny that a Chinese coolie with a family in this Colony would find himself in fairly comfortable circumstances on RAL income of say, $15 per mensem, or £16 sterling a year. That is to say, he could supply the necessaries of life and have a not inconsiderable margin to devote to eu. joyment or to the purchase of what are to him luxuries. And yet it may be that a British labourer of the corresponding class with a family might find it an exceedingly difficult thing to make both ends meet on an income of ten times that amount. The ability to pay, therefore, depends on the cost of living and on the social demands of the environment in which each individual lives. I therefore maintain, as I said before, that to divide the gross revenue, whether due to taxation of the community or not, by the gross population produces no results which can be usefully employed for such a purpose as we have in view.
Then, again, we must remember that the gross revenue of the United Kingdom which was assumed by ay hon. friend to The hon. member by his process of cal- be the result of taxation is not by any means culation arrived at a quotient of £6 17s, as solely produced by taxation. If I remem- being the incidence of taxation in the ber rightly something like 1 millions of United Kingdom as against £1 9s. in that revenue accrues from an investment in Hongkong. But surely, gentlemen, it is Suez Canal shares. You have also invest also vital to the argument to estimate the wents on the other side of the account, incidence on each class of the community such as the Uganda Railway, which was separately? It must be shown upon which built out of the consolidated fund and cost class the taxation falls most heavily in rela- upwards of five millions sterling, and has so tion to the ability to pay. It is absolutely far not been directly remunerative. All these necessary to know in some rough way what questions must be taken into consideration, are the numbers of the wealthy among the and I will not pursue the subject further, population upon whom the bulk of the for it leads into a maze of difficulties. But taxation falls. Again, both the British even if we could get figures showing ap- and the Chinese here have sources of proximately the incidence of taxation in any income outside the four corners of the one State or community in Europe, I ask | Colony. They have also heavy expenses to you how is it possible to contrast them bear outside the Colony as most members with similar pures for a community of this Council can testify. The monied so entirely dissimilar as this Colony? Here about 94 per cent of the population con- sists of Chinese. They have an abnormally small number of households or families in
classes in the United Kingdom own an iai- mense amount of property in the world at large outside the United Kingdom from China to Peru. The amount of such invest-
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