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香港總督府
CONFIDENTIAL
HKC040/4
RECE
leu
scarce.
HKL to
12 FEB 1991
drako,
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG
►
27 December 1990
copy to Krapy in
X
Ае
эра
123
Ik Future
general.
M. Melahen M. Paul: (Mi)
1. Walker: 12M)
M. James FED
bachlömepl. it?
Analytical literature on the political scene is
What there is, in the ephemeral form of newspaper or journal articles, is usually superficial and often suffers from the preconceived ideas of the authors.
You might therefore be interested to see the attached paper on "The Problem of 'Ungovernability' in the Twilight of Colonial Rule", which has just been sent to me by Professor Lau Siu-kai of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Obviously I would not agree with everything he says. Far from it. But the paper is a reasonably balanced assessment of some of the problems facing the Government of Hong Kong and the inevitable erosion of authority created by the shadow effect of 1997.
Some of the content is too pessimistic. The surprising thing is that, faced with all the very real problems described in the paper, government is still carried out pretty effectively and with a remarkably high degree of public support or, at least, tolerance. Opinion poll figures of approval for the Government may well be on a declining curve; but they would still compare very favourably with those in most politically active countries in the world.
By contrast, Lau's concluding section and his concept of an "allied authority", is simplistic and over-optimistic. It fails to take account of the dilemma which emerges from the paper itself that government authority is weakened in the eyes of the population when it is seen as being incapable of resisting pressures from China. The reality is that
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