TNAG-0201-FCO40-237-Local-government-reforms-1969 — Page 4

Original ct: HKK 22/1 (ANDCT)

This Copy for:

Inferm on saly/Action on

Para(s)

26

Note No. 5

معا

bu 6.4.

بیما

ANG

63.70

6.

то

Notea

т

6/3

VISIT OF DEPUTY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE

(SIR LESLIE MONSON)

TO HONG KONG, OCTOBER, 1969

REORGANISATION OF LOCAL ADMINISTRATION

A study of local government reorganisation was launched by the present Governor in 1966. A Background Note covering the existing local government system and the various proposals for reorganisation is attached.

2. Initially there was a tendency for improvements in the

machinery of local government (or local administration as

Hong Kong prefer to call it, with one eye on China's susceptibilities) to be seen as:-

(a) a means of associating people more closely with the

conduct of public affairs in a Colony where progress

towards representative and responsible central

institutions of government cannot be achieved;

(b) a safety valve for political aspirations that might

develop in a community increasingly thrown in on itself in the twenty years since the communists came to power in China, and containing a fast growing proportion of people educated on Western lines.

Ntes

6/1.70.

by L

28.11.69.

плет

6.2.20.

be/6.2.10.

的

6/1/20

Certainly Ministers have tended to see the present exercise

in this way in the past and have presented it accordingly in

Parliament.

3.

It is doubtful whether the Governor has ever strongly

believed that the development of local administration could

relieve any pressures that may build up within the Colony for representative and responsible government; it is thought that the presentational advantages of an improved and extended system are probably foremost in his mind. Problems of electoral apathy and the characteristic Chinese disposition to avoid involvement with authority tend to stand in the way of the development of sound and effective local authorities (as also

/ could ...

LAST PAPER

CONFIDENTIAL