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investment coming in about half has been from the U.S.; 20-25% from Japan and about 20% from Britain, with most of the rest originating from Overseas Chinese oncerns. Two industrial sectors which have attracted much capital have been
ctronics and petroleum. In 1972 the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong stated that U.S.-owned firms and firms operating under joint venture with U.S. partners accounted for 70% of all electronics companies. Most of these operate as sub-con- tractors doing assembly work for the U.S. parent firm, mainly in military-related areas. By Hong Kong standards, many of these are large plants, and they are parti- cularly lucrative for the metropolitan owner, since the wage differential in this sector between the U.S. and Hong Kong is maximal: in the U.S.A. electronics wor- kers are relatively well paid, whereas in Hong Kong they are the lowest paid indus- trial workers of all, earning less than workers in any comparable sector, and with no chance of increasing earnings much since owners pay only a flat daily rate.
Hong Kong's manufacturing expansion was built almost entirely on light industry: textiles, clothing, plastics, toys, etc. All these industries used cheap labour to process imported raw materials. But in the wake of the energy crisis the Colony, which has had very high inflation, has been forced to rethink its industrial policy. Within the last year or so it would appear that the Government has decided to abandon its 25-year old policy of sticking to export-oriented light industry, and permit new heavy industries to be set up in the Colony. One of the chief obstac- les to new industrial development was, until winter 1973-74, the very high price of land - approximately 20 times that of prime industrial land in the U.S. At the end of 1973 the Government sold a plot of land on Tsing Yi Island by private treaty at an undisclosed price to Dow Chemical Pacific Ltd. for the con- struction of the Colony's first plastics manufacturing plant. The plant will produce polystyrene, a key material in Hong Kong's second largest manufacturing industry, plastics. The Government has also altered its policy on oil. During the 1973-74 winter oil crisis China helped out the Colony by increasing kerosene and diesel oil supplies. Now China is to be allowed to build a large oil storage complex, also on Tsing Yi Island. The Government is further planning to permit at least one oil refinery: a Shell proposal for a US$250m refinery to produce 200,000 barrels a day, put forward in 1972, was first stalled by environmental protests; at the beginning of 1973 in the wake of the energy scare, a Japanese group led to Toa Oil Co., in association with Hong Kong's No. 1 textile manufacturer, Textile Alliance, put forward a proposal for a US$780m refinery and petrochemical complex.50 As well as providing the Colony with its own supply of refined petroleum products, this would also make the textile and plastics industries less dependent on supplies from Japan.
Clearly, the colonial régime, in spite of its frequent verbal obeisances towards the ideology of laissez faire is in fact intervening energetically to alter the material base of the Colony's existence. Earlier signs of this came in the Govern- ment's decisions to go ahead with a series of large public works projects. In the wake of the 1966-67 riots which, inter alia, had shown up the difficulties of moving police and troops across the harbour between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, the Government decided to build a cross-channel tunnel. Subsequently it was decided to embark on a series of desalination plants (which are quite unneces-
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