[
    {
        "id": 212420,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 362,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "339\n\nAs Spence and other students of history are well aware, circumstances in later years forced the Empress Dowager to implement even more radical reform measures than the ones her nephew the Emperor tried to put in place. But those came too late to save the dynasty.\n\nFRANK CHING\n\nWong Siu-Lun, Emigrant Entrepreneurs Shanghai Industrialists in Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988. xii+244pp. Bibliography. Index\n\nThe role of the Shanghai industrialists in the post-War development of Hong Kong is a tale often told. A comprehensive, authoritative and readable book on this subject would be a welcome addition to those interested in modern Hong Kong history. Unfortunately, Professor Wong's book does not justify such a welcome.\n\nThis book is the result of research performed by the author over a period of ten years. His objective is to provide a detailed account of (the Shanghainese group's) industrial accomplishments to fill a gap in our knowledge about the process of industrialization in Hong Kong, which he hoped would 'help to answer two theoretical questions. First, why do people with common regional origins often congregate in particular economic spheres? Second, what are the distinctive features of Chinese industrial entrepreneurship?' His research was based on his B.Litt. thesis at Oxford, conducted in 1975, and was supplemented by interviews conducted after his return to Hong Kong. However, it was not until 1985 that he was able to undertake a thorough revision, resulting in the publication of this manuscript.\n\nAs a sociological study, this book was probably destined not to appeal to a businessman such as me. In any case, I found this book to be extremely dry, one of the dangers of releasing to the general public work originally done for an academic audience. There were and are a number of colourful characters among the Shanghai textile industrialists, but little of this is reflected in this book; there is no sauce to go with the meat. Names of individuals are sometimes disguised and textile mills are numbered; suitable perhaps for an academic thesis, but not for a more general audience.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212673,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 227,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "208\n\nthe photographs on the period between 1956 and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (Rihoud was again there in 1964 and 1965, and also Rene Rurri) may serve as an example that will encourage purchasing, or at any rate borrowing, this fine book. Of and about these in the context of their time, Professor Spence has commented as follows (pp. 12-13):\n\nThis was truly a time in which revolutionary changes were being attempted by China's leaders, and with the Communist party already close to twenty million people in numbers one would expect dramatic evidence of the new society, or at least of its emerging foundations.\n\nBut as we scan the photographs, we realize how hard such evidence is to capture. Without deep and intimate knowledge of the past realities, how can we truly gauge the depth, the nature or the meaning of the attempted change from the visual record? What we do get here, and often brilliantly or poignantly, is the sense of a country and a people with very little to rely on, where everything is scarce so everything is valued.\n\nThe word poverty seems the wrong one, in the context, for to China's leaders and surely to many of the people themselves after what they had gone through it was survival that was the first priority. Yet the paradox here was that the Great Leap Forward brought not survival but death to millions.\n\nAt other levels, the images speak to us of ordinary things, of children and their games, of the quiet affections of age, of eating as shared relaxation. They speak also, insistently, of organization, of people in lines, of people listed, people marched to orders, people drilled. This the state was proud of, this the state allowed to be filmed, along with the work, the heavy manual work, whether of intellectuals or peasants, backing endlessly at the heavy soil of China with mattocks and hoes, hauling barrows and sacks, pitting muscle against the land. So have farmers the world over laboured, but here the Chinese seem assembled in larger numbers than ever before, and their labour is in a context that is politically orchestrated.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    }
]