TNAG-0747-FCO40-951-Visits-of-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-officials-to-Hong-Kong-1978 — Page 56

QUINE IDENT LAL

15. In general, I would expect that expenditure on health and

education should rise quite significantly as a proportion of the GDP, and that this is one notable purpose for which higher taxes will be

needed.

Statistics

16. Because of the lack of Government intervention in the past,

there has not been any systematic collection of the kind of statistics which have for many years been routine in other countries. Thus there are a lot of gaps, including some very important ones in the field of invisible and capital flows. Nevertheless much is now being done to repair these gaps; though I suspect that more needs to be done if desirable future changes, such as taxation reforms of the kind mentioned earlier, are not to be ham-strung by a lack of necessary

information.

Contacts with The Universities And Polytechnic

17.

There are some contacts: for example there has been some Government-initiated research on such questions as how people like the new housing estates - resulting in this particular case in new designs for the latest estates. Nevertheless my impression is that there is a good deal less academic involvement in the process of governing Hong Kong than is desirable, despite some academic member- ship of advisory councils. This is one facet of the wider problem of associating the community with the non-elected Government. There seems some lack of responsiveness in the local community to Government efforts to involve it in carrying public responsibility, but perhaps the problem has not been approached.in the right way.

There appears to be a younger generation which is keen to take on more political responsibility, and it needs to be given every encouragement.

Lines of Future Development

18. The way in which Hong Kong can and should develop will be

increasingly affected by the view taken about the 1997 question. is not yet having much effect, though as indicated earlier it is already constraining the context of discussion of some key issues,

/such

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