[ { "id": 204996, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "95\n\nGOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE IN HONG KONG 1841-1962: A CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY\n\nA Review Article by COLINA LUPTON\n\nThe subtitle of this book begs the question. Has Hong Kong really had a constitutional history? And if not, why the book? Mr. Endacott puts this query on the second page of the preface, and his answer is an interesting one. Given the fact that Hong Kong received a Crown Colony form of constitution in 1843 and still retains it in 1965, there must be something which explains its tranquillity in the midst of a continent of upheaval. The stability here contrasts forcibly with the emergent nationalisms which surround the Colony, in Indonesia, Indochina, Malaysia and certainly not least in China itself. Government here must be broadly in sympathy with the desires of the people, or it would not be supported. Even if this is partly due to local realization that the important decisions about the Colony's future are taken in London, Peking and elsewhere, the fact is that the Government provides enough of what the people want for its authority not to be called in question.\n\nIt is certainly true that as the Colony has grown and developed, the Government has done so too. But it might perhaps have been a fairer statement to call this not a constitutional history but an administrative one, for in all justice it is largely in the administration that the changes have been made, and quite a substantial portion of the book does actually deal with these changes. It is sad evidence of the apathy which Mr. Endacott so frequently remarks on as evinced in Hong Kong public life that the publishers have limited the printing of this book to a mere 2,000. In a territory of nearly four million, where at least fifty thousand or so must have a good reading knowledge of English, it seems that such a book on government is not expected to provoke much informed interest.\n\nAnyone who attempts to narrate the whole history of Hong Kong in one volume is confronted by a problem. This is the fact that the Colony's history falls very decisively into two\n\nBy G. B. Endacott, Hong Kong University Press, 1964,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209290, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "BRO TSUNG LAI SHUN IN MASSACHUSETTS\n\nIn Gratton and Ivy's History of Freemasonry in Shanghai and Northern China is an account of the formation of Union Lodge No 1951 EC of Tientsin. The first two paragraphs read:\n\nFreemasonry in Tientsin commenced its official life with the formation of this Lodge, and until the year 1902, it was the only Lodge working under the English Constitution. It is therefore the senior Lodge in Tientsin and its members have always taken a prominent and active part in the work of the Craft. In the early days it was no uncommon thing for the members residing in Taku, and Tongku to saddle their ponies and ride to Tientsin especially to attend the Lodge Meetings. In those days railways and Banks in this area were non-established, and the firm of Messrs. G. W. Collins and Co., were for years the Lodge bankers.\n\nThe first meeting of the Lodge was held on the 7th January 1881, in the hall of the English Methodist Mission in Taku Road. Bro. A. B. Menzies, P.M. Doric Lodge, No. 1433, E.C. being in the Chair, Bro. J. Innocent, Newall Lodge, No. 1434, E.C. Acting Senior Warden, Bro. J.M. Moore, Doric Lodge, No. 1433, E.C. Acting Junior Warden, Bro. C.A. Schultz, Tuscan Lodge, No. 1027, E.C. Acting Senior Deacon, Bro. James Stewart, Tuscan Lodge, No. 1027, E.C. Acting Junior Deacon, Bro. T.G. Downey, St. John's Lodge, No. 34, U.S.A. [probably of Baltimore, Maryland] Acting Inner Guard, and Bros. G. Von Mollendorff, Germania Lodge, G.C. G.W. Collins, St. John's Lodge, No. 175, S.C. J.J. Hatch, Ionic Lodge, No. 1781, E.C., J.D. Addicks Ancient Landmark, Mass. Const., W. Swain, Ancient Landmark, and Tsung Lai Shun of Hampden Lodge, Massachusetts Constitution,\n\nThis is the only reference in the book to Bro Tsung, and additional information has been sought. Bro Tsung is the first master mason of Chinese race known to have lived in China.\n\nReprinted with permission from Chater-Cosmo Transactions (1980 vol. 2). See also Carl Smith, \"Chan Lai-sun and his family: a 19th century China coast family\", JHKBRAS 14 (1974). - Hon. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209398, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "33\n\nThis contrasts with the situation in Hong Kong, for instance, where Chinese were tried by colonial judges principally according to English law, and also with Singapore where a similar situation obtained.\n\nLand Regulations: the Constitution of the International Settlement\n\nEarlier I have made mention of the Land Regulations without clearly explaining what these were. As these Land Regulations formed the Constitution of the Settlement on which nearly the entire structure of government was built it seems proper to give some more details about them,\n\nIn the course of the Settlement's history (1845-1943) three sets of Land Regulations were issued: in 1845, 1854 and 1869. They all dealt in various degrees with the delimitation of the settlement's boundaries, the mode of renting land, the way in which foreign land-renters or ratepayers could elect a Municipal Council, the organisation of the Municipal Council and other administrative details. The way in which these sets of Land Regulations originated differed from each other.\n\nThe 1845 Land Regulations\n\nThe first set was issued by the taotai Kung Mu-chiu, on November 29, 1845. According to the preface these had been drafted by the Chinese and British authorities, meaning Kung and consul Balfour, \"in communication together\". This first Constitution had a distinctly Chinese flavour, as was to be expected. The basic principles of Chinese rulers were: first, paternalism, which held that a great number of detailed rules had to be laid down in writing and that one of the main tasks of administrators was to prevent the cropping up of unrest among the population, second, the so-called Ai-min principle (literally \"love the people\") which said that the feelings of the people should be respected, and third, the principle of mutual responsibility through the pao-chia system. In one form or another all these foundations of the Chinese state were represented in the 23 articles of the Land Regulations (the number of articles alone already indicates the Chinese obsession with detailed rules): e.g. paternalistic attitudes were to be found in articles IV, VI, IX, X, XI and others; the Ai-min rule in articles II, V, VII and IX; and the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209481, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "116\n\nW. ALLYN RICKETT\n\n' Mao Zedong, “Hunan nongmin yundong kaocha baokao,” Mao Zedong xuanji (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1964), 16.\n\n* See Patricia Griffin, The Chinese Communist Treatment of Counter-Revolutionaries: 1924-1949. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.\n\nIt is interesting that in many cases involving homicide resulting from marriage or family problems, the accused was formally sentenced in accordance with the Marriage Law of June 1950, which in itself simply stated that persons guilty of such an offense would bear criminal responsibility before the law.\n\n\"The right of defense was provided for in Art. 12 of the \"Provisional Regulations of the Shanghai People's Court Governing the Disposal of Civil and Criminal Cases\" (Aug. 11, 1949) and in Art. 6 of the \"Organic Regulations of the People's Tribunals\" (July 20, 1950), but was left out of the \"Provisional Organic Regulations of the People's Courts\" (Sept. 3, 1950). I know of no case where defense was actually permitted during the pre-Constitution period. Even appeal was very rare. The first public notice of the use of lawyers that I know of involved thirteen American nationals charged with espionage who were tried and then released in November 1954 by a military tribunal.\n\n冉\n\n* According to an editorial in the Guangming Ribao (Jan. 27, 1957), by 1957 there were some 670 legal advisory offices with 2,100 professional lawyers scattered throughout the country. Fees were paid by clients to the legal advisory office according to their ability to pay. Lawyers were paid salaries by the advisory office. As a defense counsel, people's lawyers were not considered an agent of the accused. They constituted an independent party at the trial and were not bound by the will of the defendant. Their duty was to help clarify the facts and present whatever extenuating circumstances might assist the judges in rendering a fair sentence.\n\n* Codification had been called for as far back as the Yenan Period and in 1948 it was discussed by the Central Committee of the CCP. This led to the formation of a Law Codification Committee in 1950. However, nothing seems to have been done until after the passage of the Constitution. Finally in Nov. 1956 it was announced that a draft criminal code consisting of some 261 articles had been completed by the Law Section of the Standing Committee of the NPC and had been turned over to the Standing Committee's Bills Committee for discussion and amendments.\n\n* Renmin Ribao, Dec. 12, 1957 and Zhenfa yanjiu, 1958, No. 1, 18-23. * Zhengfa yanjiu, 1958, No. 1, 10-17.\n\n10 For an excellent survey of developments during the period 1978-80, see Shao-chuan Leng, \"Criminal Justice in Post-Mao China: Some Preliminary Observations,\" China Quarterly, 87 (Sept. 1981), 440-469.\n\n\"For an English translation of all seven laws, see Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: PRC, 27 and 30 July 1979. The Criminal Code and Criminal Code of Procedure have also been translated by Jerome Cohen, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 73,1 (Spring 1982), 135-203, and by Chin Kim, The American Series of Foreign Penal Codes, No. 25 (Littleton, Colorado: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1982).\n\n12 Article 43 of the Criminal Code limits the use of the death penalty to only \"the most heinous offenses\" (homicide, rape, arson, robbery, dike-breaching, planting explosives, embezzling public property, and counter-revolutionary crimes). It also stipulates that unless immediate execution is mandatory, a two-year reprieve may be granted. If the offender shows evidence of repentance, the death penalty may be converted to a life or term sentence.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213335, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "139\n\nJournal, this set out the basis on which the Hong Kong Branch of the Society had operated during its 30 years' existence. It explained our independent status and self-financing within an approved constitution; how we operated with complete freedom of action, without our activities being controlled, directed or restricted by the present government in any way; and mentioned the willingness of our guest speakers, and the cooperation of all the persons and institutions visited during our local tours. I emphasized that these were all vital elements in the Society's successful operation, and that they rested on the personal freedoms enjoyed in contemporary Hong Kong, stating in conclusion, that I hoped they would continue after 1997 and enable our Society to continue with its role as a cultural interpreter of Hong Kong and China to (in the main but not exclusively) the territory's expatriate population,\n\n20\n\nChinese Membership of the Hong Kong Branch\n\nOne of the interesting features of any voluntary society is undoubtedly its membership. A glance through the RAS membership lists for the 1960s, supplemented by my recollections of those years, indicates that the membership was widely distributed among the non-Chinese population, and that quite a number of them had been resident in pre-war China and Shanghai, the headquarters of the former North China Branch of the Society. There was a sizable Chinese component too, again largely with a Shanghai connection. The standard of English among members of that group and their knowledge and appreciation of Western culture, had struck me as being very high, perhaps even generally superior to the level among our Hong Kong Chinese members today. Educators in Hong Kong have agreed for years that, whilst the quantity of English-speakers in the population has increased, quality has not kept pace. However, such comparisons are facile, and not really helpful. It has to be remembered that English-speaking Chinese of the time were generally older and had belonged to another era and a very different world. Those able to acquire Western languages and culture in those now far-off days often came from families that were comfortably off, or even wealthy, well able to provide their offspring with an overseas education, or at schools and universities in the International Settlement at Shanghai, the main Treaty Ports, or in Hong Kong.\n\nThe percentage of Chinese members in the Hong Kong Branch has never been high, amounting to not more than 15% to 20% and sometimes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215245, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "The Society is now more than forty years old. Over that period, we have made small operating surpluses in most years. As a result, we now have a substantial balance of Accumulated Funds. This balance stands at present at well over $600,000. Council has come to the conclusion that a cash balance of this size is an embarrassment to a Society like ours. After considerable debate in Council, it was felt that a Fund should be set up from which the Society could make grants to assist research into the study of Hong Kong. It was felt by Council that grants towards the costs of production of monographs or collections of essays on Hong Kong would be useful to the academic community in Hong Kong generally, or else to assist translation of important works from English, including collections of articles from the Journal, into Chinese, or vice versa, or perhaps from Japanese into Chinese or English, or in some other way to assist the field of Hong Kong studies.\n\nCouncil decided that it could allow about half the accumulated balance to be put into the Fund, that is, about $300,000, while still leaving enough of a cash balance to meet all anticipatable demands on it for the Society's needs. Council has also agreed that this capital sum should not be spent, but only the income from the interest on it. Council also came to the conclusion that a grant, to be worthwhile, would normally require to be in the region of $20,000. In other words, the sum the Council felt it could put into the new Fund would allow for only one grant a year, or perhaps two in a good year. This is less than Council would wish. Council therefore felt that it would be desirable to encourage donations into the Fund, hopefully to allow the Fund to reach up to a million dollars, which might allow as many as four or five grants a year to be made.\n\nTo do all this, it was necessary to amend the Constitution to allow the disbursement of grants in this way, and this was achieved in the context of the amendments to the Constitution agreed at the last AGM and the EGM later in the year. It was also necessary, in order to put the Fund into a legal position which might encourage large commercial companies to donate to it, to make the Society a Registered Charitable Institution, and this, too, was achieved during the year.\n\nCouncil is still considering the details of the new Fund and has set up a Working Party to make detailed recommendations. In due course, members will be informed of the details, once they have been agreed.\n\nxix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]