[
    {
        "id": 209690,
        "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": 347,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n325\n\nare many other, smaller countries where no newspaper industry has developed.\n\nProfessor Lent is concerned with press freedom. He deplores its disappearance in countries ruled by totalitarian regimes. He deplores the repressive situation in Singapore, where the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act enables the government to put its own nominees in control of newspapers. Even the more liberal press atmosphere of Hong Kong comes in for some criticism. Journalists are tempted to take bribes because of their often miserably low salaries, he says, and these bad practices remain outside the reach of the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) because they are condoned by the journalists' employers. Lent also complains that there are many doors of government closed to Hong Kong journalists.\n\nSome of the book gives a somewhat out-of-date impression. It is a recent publication but much of the material was gathered years ago and in some cases there has obviously been difficulty in revising it. This detracts from the value of the survey where it deals with countries like Vietnam.\n\nIt could also be objected that the viewpoint of the editor and contributors is too western-oriented when dealing with the press in developing areas. Freedom of the Press is a hall-mark of civilised modern communities, but it can survive only in a country which is highly literate and politically awake; it has no hope in more primitive places or in countries where the government fears criticism. To expect a free press in such areas may be unrealistic. There is a considerable difference, too, between Asia and the West in attitudes towards the profession of journalism. In the West the image of the journalist as news-gatherer, critic and reformer inspires considerable numbers of young men and women to enter the profession. Its human opportunities and fascinations more than compensate for the relatively mediocre financial rewards. This is far less the case in the Far East where in many countries journalism has little appeal for the educated. Inevitably this affects the value and effectiveness of newspapers.\n\nHowever the fact that the Asian press is surveyed here from a western viewpoint in no way detracts from the impressive",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214855,
        "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-1999",
        "page_number": 270,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "238 \n\nToday, globalisation is going full steam ahead. Who could have forecast in the 1960s, that most of the little compradors' shops on street corners, with their delicious kum wah hams hanging from ceilings, would be nudged out by mighty supermarkets?\n\nWho could have guessed that, with globalisation of palate, McDonald's would become 'haute cuisine' for young Chinese many of who are now overweight?\n\nOf course things were cheaper then and, at my Chinese wedding banquet on the Queen's Birthday in 1960, at the old Sun Ya restaurant on Nathan Road, the cost was an exorbitant HK$130 for each circular table of 12 guests. We tipped $10 a table. That was the going rate. On the afternoon of our wedding day my wife and I were invited to the garden party on the lawn at Government House. In those days people were proud to receive an invitation from His Excellency just as, more recently if they care to admit it, they are proud to receive an invite to the reception on China's National Day.\n\nBut wages for old one hundred names (the man in the street) were low and there was little in the way of social amenities. My Chinese amah was paid $160 a month with half a day off a week. She was lucky. Many received far less and no time off unless they specially requested it. People did not complain. They knew things were much worse in China where famine raged after the failure of the 'Great Leap Forward.' Hong Kong citizens queued up at the post office, in the early 1960s, to send food parcels to relatives on the Mainland. Later Hong Kong changed and, after the 'Star Ferry Riots' of 1966 and the protracted riots of 1967 (an overspill of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution), Hong Kong became richer and conditions for the man on a tram began to improve.\n\nCorruption was rampant in those early years before the setting up of the ICAC, although, in my over 26 years of government service working in education, I personally was never once solicited. It was more common in departments such as the Police, Public Works and New Territories Administration. The receiving of presents, however, had to be watched. After the riots, a watershed in many ways, Hong Kong became richer with, more recently, a higher GDP than that of Britain. A large Chinese middle-class formed.\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215166,
        "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-2000",
        "page_number": 262,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong\n\nwhen the new Technical Institute was opened. Although we had wire netting screens to protect the Technical College windows in the 1950s, demolition teams still managed to break a few panes of our glass after they had beaten gongs as warnings and blasted away at 12 noon every weekday.\n\nIt was great getting back to my old stamping ground at MHTI, in 1970. I have always considered the four years I spent setting up and serving as Principal of the Morrison Hill Institute as one of the most satisfying periods of my career. I had splendid staff. Nevertheless, equipment was far more basic then than that used today. TIs were a new venture for Hong Kong. For us, it seemed, at times, almost a spiritual search for the mountain top.\n\nBut moving on. In the latter part of the 1960s, it had become obvious that one technical institute was not going to be sufficient to serve Hong Kong's industry which, before China started opening up in December 1978, was largely fairly basic manufacturing. As a result, the Technical Institute Committee, of the Industrial Training Advisory Committee (ITAC) (on which I sat), endorsed our proposals that five TIs were required with a further three coming on stream later, making a total of eight.\n\nAlthough many were dissatisfied with the pace of development, with Kwun Tong and Kwai Chung Institutes as proposed by the Education Department only coming into being in 1975, the Government Public Works Department wanted to delay the completion of the new buildings. The then new Governor, the late Sir Murray MacLehose, held a meeting in Government House in early 1972. He soon let it be known ‘..... there would be two more technical institutes by 1975'.\n\nAnd there were. Lord MacLehose, as he later became, was a man of action.\n\nCarrying on from there, the Haking Wong and the Lee Wai Lee Institutes came on stream in 1977 and 1979 respectively, although the latter was not entirely completed until 1980. Extensions were made to these institutes at later",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216108,
        "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-2002",
        "page_number": 407,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "341\n\ncommunity at all levels. It was not just the big guys.\n\nThe late Sir Murray (later Lord) MacLehose, Governor from 1971 to 1982, soon appreciated the problem, Hong Kong has him to thank for setting up the Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), in 1974. It was a bold step but it has been effective.\n\nFor me personally, during my career with Government, I was never directly affected by corruption in any shape or form. Nevertheless, one needs to ask when does tipping and present-giving stop and when does corruption begin?\n\nPersonalities\n\nPeople and personalities have played important parts in Hong Kong's history. Sir John Cowperthwaite, Financial Secretary (FS) from 1961 to 1971, although very successful, worked more on an ad hoc basis than his successors. He saw limited need to collect statistics which would (he believed) encourage government to draw up economic plans and interfere in the private sector and the free movement of market forces. He believed government should not ‘get involved.'\n\nYet, in spite of the post of FS being stressful, many of them were a long-lived breed. Some who served Hong Kong either before or just after World War Two carried on drawing their pensions into their nineties. A great deal of credit must go to our past Financial Secretaries for helping to lay foundations for the Hong Kong we know today.\n\nConclusions\n\nCertainly the 1950s and the '60s were eventful decades and, during the latter part of the 1960s and '70s especially, Hong Kong made strides in leaving its colonial past behind. It took on a new mantle. Many things surreptitiously changed.\n\nEntire skylines altered dramatically every decade or so. In the 1960s, Tsing Yi Island was being considered for the site for a nudist colony. Now it is heavily built upon. From 1857 until 1975 we had a cricket pitch in the centre of town. Gracious, old, colonial style buildings were torn down, We needed those to depend upon for the reassurances",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]