HIGHLIGHTS OF HONG KONG’S PROGRESS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22513, 17 December 1947, Page 5

HIGHLIGHTS OF HONG KONG’S PROGRESS

ROCK TO COLONY

AIR TRANSPORT HUB

WILL IT STAY BRITISH? Sir Alexander Grantham, the new Governor of Hong Kong, has assumed office. Although Hong Kong under British administration, law, and order has set an example in rehabilitation to all the Far East, the new Governor will find plenty of problems awaiting him, writes Henry Longhurst in the Sunday Times. One is income tax. There has never been an income tax in Hong Kong—not because the Government would not welcome the money, but because no one has yet devised a means of inducing the Chinese to pay it. After four thousand years of unceasing battle with tax-gatherers, the Chinese are very formidable in this reWhen I was in the colony recently, a committee, including a bishop but not, strangely, an accountant, had recommended a 25 per cent income tax. They were not, however, able to reveal how to extract it from anyone except the British. Population is another problem. In 1937 it was about a million. After three years of China’s war with Japan it was 1,750,000. Rapid Population Increase Most people now put the population at about 2,000,000, and, with immigration from the mainland still unrestricted, it is rising by tens of thousands every month. The time must soon come when the island’s services can no longer stand this influx. Already the water is cut off every night. Efforts to repatriate Chinese to their homeland are complicated by the fact that so many take the proffered 37 dollars to see them to Canton, spend a fortnight with their friends, and then turn up again for more. “Thus,” as a man engaged on working this scheme puts it, “the supply of destitutes is inexhaustible.” The only apparent alternative would be to register the population of Hong Kong and Kowloon—a formidable task indeed with two million people who look very much alike and who object intensely, on principle, to being registered. Before the war Chinese party politics were barred in the British colony. Since the war the situation has become dangerously different, and one Of Sir Alexander's first tasks will be to consider the virulent anti-British influence of the dozen or more Kuomintang “news”papers which have been allowed to spring up. The activities of the branch offices of this party and their possible efforts to control the public educational system will also no doubt come under his review. “Collaborators’ Ordinance” Linked with this is the “Collaborators’ Ordinance,” by which Britain and China agreed to hold in custody citizens denounced by the other as collaborators, Hong Kong having under British administration become the safe deposit of the East (it is estimated that 85 per cent of the money there is Chinese), it would be enlightening to know the number of wealthy Chinese who have been invited to subscribe large sums to the Kuomintang and, on declining, have been denounced as collaborators and held (under the agreement) by the British in Stanley Gaol till they changed their minds.

There is still occasional talk of giving Hong Kong to the Chinese—“retrocession,” the official jargon has it. The new Governor will be pressed by the British interests who turned Hong Kong from a barren, pirate-infested rock to one of the greatest transhipment ports in the world to urge the home Government to state categorically . that Hong Kong is British and will remain so; that the leased territories on the mainland will be administered by Britain, under the terms of the lease, till 1997; and furthermore, that no suggestions will be entertained to the contrary. Such a declaration would receive overwhelming support, not only from the Chinese in Hong Kong, but also from the many influential Chinese on the mainland who have fortunes salted away in Hong Kong, safe frorn the financial chaos now prevailing in China. It would also enable a bolder policy of reconstruction to be undertaken in the colony. . „ , Airfield at Kaitak An example is the airfield at Kaitak. Finding one’s way on a cloudy day into the present horseshoe of hills, studded with the wreckage left from previous unsuccessful endeavours, is a frightening experience; , . With Hong Kong becoming the hub of the Far. East air transport, a new airfield must quickly be started. But its future ownership should be assured before British taxpayers are asked to foot a bill of three or four million pounds. The visitor, flying to Hong Kong in a few days where his forefathers took a rigorous 10 months or so, can look with pride upon the colony’s lead in Far East recovery and upon the compliment paid to British financial security by the Chinese who have lodged so much money As he looks down from the Peak to the busy harbour 2000 ft. below, he may be reminded of the words of Dr. Sun Yat Sen to the students of Hong Kong University years ago. After leaving the university himself, he said, he “saw the outside world and began to wonder how it was. that foreigners, that Englishmen, could do as much as they had done, for example, with the barren rock of Hong Kong in 70 or 80 years, while in 4000 years China had no place like Hong Kong. “My fellow-students,” he concluded, “we must learn by English examples. We must carry this English example of good government to every part of China.”