ENG-1993 — Page 30

A RARE ALCHEMY

Austin Coates, Myself a Mandarin, describing days, not so long ago, when a young district officer in the New Territories would have much in common with his counterpart in colonial Africa, who dispensed justice from tent flaps and parleyed with tribal chiefs.

The subsequent influx of refugees, the sheer numbers of people settling in and around the central harbour and by now, also in the latter-day metropolises spreading in the New Territories demanded a fresh approach. It was clear that the traditional role of the district officer, with its emphasis on intimate human contact, would be impossible to sustain. Yet the bridge he provided between government and community was so valuable that he could not be allowed to disappear. So he was transplanted into the urban environment, given a larger and considerably more populated ‘parish', and provided with an office where his parishioners were free to drop by at any time, to seek assistance or discuss their grievances.

The new system worked, thanks in part to the newly developed mutual aid committees and the traditional kaifong associations, through which contact was maintained with all levels of society, but even more to the dedication and resourcefulness of the young administrative officers recruited to its ranks, many of whom now occupy very senior posts in the higher echelons of government.

Their task was infinitely more complex than that of their pastoral predecessors. The districts they served were no longer remote agrarian backwaters but densely populated, increasingly sophisticated communities swelling the ranks of Hong Kong's rapidly expanding middle class. Old style paternalistic administration would be out of place in this new age of awakening expectations.

Accessibility was once again the key to satisfying these expectations. Which meant communication not only at the grassroots level between citizens and civil servants, but between the different kinds of civil servant now emerging to cater to the altered priorities. Hotlines were established between the district officers and the new professionals cropping up in the pages of the government telephone directory the civil engineers, the architects, the housing managers, the road builders and the whiz kids trained overseas in whole new fields of urban planning and administration. The objective of this network was to make the government more responsive and responsible to a people no longer content to ignore the existence of a remote administration so long as it didn't interfere with their freedom to make a living.

זי

Accessibility also called for a rapid response in the full public arena of broadcast radio and television, where public servants were expected to give instant answers to sometimes very complex questions. Some fared better than others, but at least the overall impression was of a government prepared to be called to account for its actions, to explain its policies and to answer its critics.

If at times this engendered an appearance of Hong Kong as one huge debating forum, with people picking up the phone on an impulse to talk on air to the population at large, on any subject under the sun, so much the better. There is no sense of community stronger than that which exists at the village level, and if the spirit of the village debating hall can be transposed into the metropolitan dimension, the fabric of society holds stronger, endures longer and resists the terrible deprecations that have occurred in other cities around the world that have lost their commonalty, their central identity, their shared experience.

Hong Kong has been extremely fortunate to remain one huge, closely integrated, immensely powerful village, a village where things get done in the good old, tried and

13

Page 30Page 31