CO129-510-11 Salary of post of secretary for Chinese affairs- request for increase 6-3-1928 - 26-4-1928 — Page 13

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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