ENG-1971 — Page 28

REVIEW

7

the Resettlement Department have had some successful operations in particular areas, and several previously chaotic hawker con- centrations have been brought up from time to time to a reasonable standard of order and cleanliness. But these have been limited

successes.

Not all the manifestations of change, then, can be regarded as 'progress'. They may appear to be the inescapable growing pains suffered by an overcrowded community that is moving, too rapidly for comfort, away from the established, narrow conventions of the older generation, and towards a freer and more cosmopolitan way of life, perhaps too firmly based in the oversimplified ethos of press and screen as edited for instant and unthinking consumption. 'Permissiveness' of itself may be too easy a target in other countries, where the dangers may come less from what is done than from ignorance of its meaning for others and its consequences for one's own mind and body. But except for a minority in the twilight-world between western teenagers and eastern purveyors of entertainment, 'permissiveness' in general is not yet a real problem in Hong Kong. On the other hand, the increase in robberies, accompanied often by_violence and committed by healthy and money-earning young against other young or the timid, has given the public at large the greatest cause for concern. This is not a trend confined to Hong Kong alone, but is one that concerns virtually every country. Never- theless the Government, the police and the courts are alerted to the dangers.

Students have staged their first tentative 'demos' and, in common with other communities, Hong Kong has its hippies, largely rather self-conscious about it, and its young people who have the time spare to help other people in their complaints to authority. They may at times be affected by hubris and give encouragement to violent protest, but often they are sincere. It is gratifying, if the word does not smack too much of patronage, to note signs of a wider sense of involvement in the community among so many young men and women who are poles apart from the juvenile criminals. This en- couraging trend has, not surprisingly, been paralleled by an increas- ing interest in-and criticism of the machinery of government. The younger generation, as in all urbanised society, has moved away from the traditional view that life is centred on the family, still more the clan, and that 'government' is a remote and impersonal entity whose ways are inherently incomprehensible. Many of them have come to realise that despite family ties elsewhere, Hong Kong is