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Review Article
June 1977
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#THE W milley 18
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COLONIAL RULE IN HONG KONGI veter
DENNIS DUNCANSON
040/548/1
The Chinese - a Study of a Hong Kong Community. By Cornelius Osgood. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona, 1975 (3 vols.). Pp. 1264. Preface. Appendix. Hus. Index. $45.00.
The Government and Politics of Hong Kong. By N. J. Miners. Oxford University Press (East Asian Social Science Monographs), Hong Kong 1975; New York, Melbourne, London, 1976. Pp. xiv --288. Appendices, Bibliog. Index. £8.50 (£5.95 paperback).
Chinese Labour under British Rule. By Joe England and John Rear. Oxford University Press (East Asian Social Science Monographs) Hong Kong, 1975, New York. Melbourne, London, 1976. Pp. xvi --368. Appendices. Index. £10-00 (£7.50 paperback).
THOUGH Social research into Hong Kong's problems does go on, published books about the Colony are few; three works simultaneously (five volumes altogether) are a rare windfall. The OUP's newsletter launching its two of them plunges straight into a longstanding controversy by attributing this rarity to Hong Kong's status as “an inconvenient remnant of Empire" and its "reputation as a corrupt and exploitative 'sweatshop colony'"- an opinion OUP evidently shares, since it goes on: "But behind the scenes, the Labour movement in this country is now pressing the British Govern. ment to institute badly-needed economic and social reforms in Hong Kong. The T.U.C. is at present discussing the Colony's labour and sociai conditions with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; while similar but separate discussions are taking place between the F.C.O. and the inter- national Committee of the Labour Party. In addition, a strong campaign is currently being waged by both manufacturers and trade unions in the U.K. to ban imports from low-wage countries such as Hong Kong." The real reason for lack of academic interest can hardly be that, of course: if badly run, Hong Kong would attract press attention and academic study. More probably it is that Hong Kong does not fit "conveniently" the theoretical categories social science prescribes for itself - as does the doctrinaire UN Trusteeship Council - so that contemporary scholars tend to be shy of it; to cite one example, colony though Hong Kong is, its lack of parliamentary democracy is not connected, as it is elsewhere, with technological backwardness. On the contrary, the "subject race" in Hong Kong tends to do the highly skilled work (surgeons, industrial engincers, etc.), the "master race" the less specialized work in commerce and public administration. Dr Miners calls attention deliberately to the lack of technical specialization among European civil servants, posted at frequent intervals from one department to another: indeed, the memoirs of one of them, Austin Coates, the magistrate-who-never-opened-a-lawbook, has demonstrated (Myself a Mandarin, 1968) the merits of government-by- generalists evoking incidentally the same atmosphere as the memoirs of
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