TNAG-0650-FCO40-798-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H.-A.-Tu-1977 — Page 130

VII.

Some Conclusions

49

65. We have then (in summary) a situation in which there are good

social, economic and labour market reasons why an effective labour

movement should have emerged; where there is no cultural or sociological

obstacle to its emergence--and where the legal obstacles are now (or will

be shortly) trivial; but where the dominant trade union organisation is

unwilling at present to take up that role, and the minority one (in the

private sector) politically and otherwise incapable of doing so.

i

And where, in the absence of such a

labour movement, official agencies have been more or less obliged, to supply

--of necessity very incompletely--its place.

74

One question in sequitur, and/ reasonably, might be: why do

anything at all-- beyond the presently-projected sequence of minor

improvements to the labour legislation, etc., which the administration

envisages? To this, there are several answers: for instance:

a) While the present membership of the F.T.U. is low, its

potential influence is enormous. If Peking decided the time had come to

take Hong Kong over formally (it already regards the territory as legally

part of China, I gather) nothing could stop it, any way. But that is

unlikely while the present situation conveys such considerable advantages

to Peking: we have, in fact, an implicit conspiracy between a communist and

is the modern world's a socialist government, to maintain what I nearest equivalent to the ideal

of nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalism, to the mutual advantage of

both. But a new ideological crisis in Peking--of the "cultural revolution"

order, say--might very well overflow into disturbances in Hong Kong which

would we equally embarrassing to both governments.

be