CO129-626-3 Labour Department- report to Labour Commissioner 1-3-1951 - 30-6-1952 — Page 118

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APPENDIX I.

Extract from the report of H. R. Butters Esquire dealing with the history of the trade union movement in China up to 1939.

The full report entitled "Labour and Labour Conditions in Hong Kong" was issued as Sessional Paper No.3 of 1939).

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China has an estimated population of 450,000,000 and is the largest reservoir of labour in the world. For centries it enjoyed the benefits of a stable civilization without hereditary aristocracy of casts, where the scholars became the rulers as the result of a competitive examination, as administrative officers were once chosen for the Eastern Colonies, and the subordinate classes were the farmers, artisans, and merchants, in that order. Laissex-faire was exalted to the principle that the government governs best that governs least, and Confucius inculcated that social order depends on every man knowing his place and acting accordingly.

It is estimated that at least three quarters of this pupulation live a hand to mouth existence and the average individual wealth is about one five hundredth that of a citizen of the United States of America. The population is mainly agricultural, but flood, famine, and war have driven increasing numbers into the industrial labour market. Ancestor worship, the maintenance of the male line and the belief that of all unfilial things the greatest is to have no posterity, led to over-population which made Dr. Sun Yat Sen exlaim "At present Chi

na is suffering from over-population which will being impending danger in its wake. How are we to appease the hunger of swarming millions ?" families are large and the standard of living low. Uncurbed procreation with the inability at times. to support the offspring has led occasionally to infanticide in the case of female infants and more frequently to their sale rs "mui-tsai". This problem will be referred to later in

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China has been described as not state but a society, and the Chinese and the Chinese e familial and not a political animal "Society being merely the family writ large. The family as the basis of society has not been inappropriately referred to as a communis- tic unit with "Do what you can and take what you will" as its guide. This accounts for the ability of the individual both in China and Hong Kong to survive periods of distress in the absence of poor relief, unemployment benefit or old age pension. Devotion to the family at the secrifice of truth, justice, and loyalty to the state bred the vices of nepotism and corruption. China had many moral philosophers but no metaphysicians.