VISIT TO HONG KONG, 17 23 APRIL 1978
Introduction
1. I spent six days in Hong Kong, and during that time had formal and informal discussions with a large number of people of many different kinds. I tried to look at as many different aspects of the Hong Kong economy as possible, and with one or two exceptions was not able to investigate specific issues in much depth. Accordingly, I formed a series of general impressions rather than firm convictions on particular points, and it is these general impression's that I have tried to convey in this note.
2.
There is one overwhelming impression I formed which it may be worth describing here. It is of the sheer uniqueness of Hong Kon, This is partly a consequence of the political context within which it operates of the 1997 question and of the fact (to paraphrase a point made to me by more than one well-placed British observer) that Hong Kong is not a British colony at all, but a Chinese colony with,
But it is also a for the time being, an efficient British tenant. reflection of the nature of the Hong Kong economy. This is quite different, not only from the British economy, but also from the economies of the various developing countries which I have advised or reported on. I was struck again and again by the resemblance between Hong Kong and the kind of economy postulated by classical economics and described and prescribed for in the work of the great 19th century economists. It is an economy in which labour and capital are highly mobile; in which both prices and wages are flexible downwards; which there is a large element of entrepreneurship en self-reliance; in which shifts in the pattern of demand are rapidly adapted to by market forces; and in which it is widely accepted that the rôle of Government is to provide the conuitions within which these market
It is of forces can operate rather than to interfere or regulate. course possible to exaggerate the smoothness with which these processes
operate,...*
to their 1.
in
possible to overlook the extent to mich these processes themselves
/need
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