TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 84

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the textile and garment industries which have historically formed the

initial base of industrial development in many now-advanced economies,

though newer industries such as plastics, chemicals, and electronics are

expanding. Moreover, the pace of development and growth in Hong Kong

from an initially primitive base has been such that one finds,

exemplified in its economy, systems of employment and manufacture which cover virtually every stage in the history of an industrial evolution

which in other countries has extended over a century or more from the

most modern and highly-automated factories to the primitive workshop and

the "domestic" (or "putting-out") system. At the last count, for instance, nearly 60% of the 22,000 registered manufacturing establish-

ments in Hong Kong employed less than 10 workers each, and there were

only some 40 plants with more than 1000 employees.

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6. This economic complexity is compounded by ethnic diversity, both in

ownership and employment. Many of the larger firms are, of course,

foreign-owned: by British, Japanese and American interests particularly (with an apparently growing participation of Peking-owned enterprises).

But while the great mass of the working population is Chinese, they still

include a proportion of first-generation refugees from mainland China (15% of our pilot sample of factory workers, for instance, despite the

low average age of the group under 30 years). Among older people, who

of course include many employers, regional connections with particular

parts of China are still strong. In spinning, most of the firms are of

Shanghai origin, and we encountered one where the supervisors spoke

Mandarin while their workers spoke Cantonese technical instructions

being given largely in English. We had ourselves to find Mandarin, as opposed to Cantonese, interpreters or interviewers to communicate with

workers in some cases. Particularly, again, the ethnic diversity of

ownerships means that employment practices which are specific to

individual firms and trades have been imported, divergently, on a

substantial scale.

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7. Perhaps the more distinctive peculiarity of Hong Kong, however,

considering it as an industrial rather than an "underdeveloped"

society is that the social-political development which has generally

accompanied industrialisation in non-Communist societies is much less

advanced. Superficially, at any rate, extremes of wealth and poverty

seem more evident than is normal in an industrial economy, and the

proportion of public expenditure in relation to its "national product"

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