CO129-514-3 Mui Tsai system- correspondence 27-8-1929 - 21-11-1929 — Page 3

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has never been recognised by the Law, and,

at any rate since 1923 this has been

perfectly clear. The only sense in which

the system has received recognition is that

domestic servants in respect of whom their

employers had made a money payment to some

third party, and who are defined as Mui Tsai,

are under the special protection of the Law,

but this does not involve the grant of any

rights over the persons of such domestic

servants to their employers. We cannot,

therefore, recognise the system in the same

ww way as the Debt-slave system I recognised

in Kedah.

Of the other features of the Kedah

Reforms the gradual disappearance of the

system has already been partly provided

for in Hong KƐng, since no more Mui Tsai would legally

can come into existence in the Colony

after 1923. Further, the registration

now to be enforced.

Lastly, the Kedah system of Reform

does not meet the real difficulty of Hong

Kong, which is how to deal with Mui Tsai

who have become such in China, and are

imported into Hong Kong. There was no

similar possibility of a perpetual recruitment

of the numbers of Debt-slaves in Kedah,

It would seem, therefore, that such

parts of the Kedah plan as are applicable

to Hong Kong have been or are about to be

applied.

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