TNAG-1840-FCO40-2615-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 24

Hong Kong becoming an independent state: different considerations have applied. Indeed, when relatively modest proposals for

constitutional reform were made by the then Governor in the period

following the Second World War, they met with virtually no public

support in Hong Kong. The territory was preoccupied with absorbing

and accommodating very large numbers of migrants, mainly from China,

and with adjusting economically to the loss of its entrepot trade

with China as a result of the Korean war.

As a measure of the size

of the problem, Hong Kong's population rose sharply from about

600,000 in August 1945 to an estimated 1.8 million by the end of

1947, and to some 2.2 million by the middle of 1950.

29. The priority for a large proportion of this transient and

highly mobile population was that Hong Kong should be an environment

in which they could settle and make a prosperous living, rather than

the development of representative government. It was not until the

mid 1960s that consideration of constitutional changes resumed, but

again external events intervened: the Cultural Revolution in China and the consequential disturbances in Hong Kong threatened the very existence of the territory. A further consideration, to which many

people in the community attached particular weight, was the fear that the introduction of party politics on western lines would serve

to polarise the community and to reproduce in Hong Kong the

rivalries that continued to exist between the Chinese Communists and

Nationalists. Such rivalries could have had a seriously

destabilising effect on the territory. Local attitudes were no doubt also influenced by the feeling that China would be opposed to the introduction of an elected system; and by the desire not to upset the delicate balance which permitted Hong Kong to continue to

exist as an enclave on the coast of China.

30.

For all these reasons, there were considerable reservations within the community as a whole about the idea of election-based representative government. Instead the Hong Kong Government sought consensus through an extensive network of consultation boards and committees (now over 400), which enable members of the public to give their advice on all areas of government activity.

This system

served Hong Kong very well for many years. But as the population became increasingly settled and sophisticated, care was taken to