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hardback HK$225
Hong Kong University Press
Paddyfield.com
More reviews by Michael Hsu
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Uneasy Partners: The Conflict between Public Interest and Private Profit in Hong Kong by Leo F. Goodstadt
LEO F. GOODSTADT, the former and only head of Hong Kong's Central Policy Unit during the colonial era, has written a remarkable and timely account on the governance of the territory, before and after 1997. UNEASY PARTNERS: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PUBLIC INTEREST AND PRIVATE PROFIT IN HONG KONG is both a history and paradigm of how to, and how not to, run a successful colony in terms of a business model, rather than governing a Chinese city through modern representative institutions, if it is at all feasible.
Against the archaic, yes Victorian, formula of a 19th century colony, British Hong Kong was able to grow rather well under two unifying principles, Goodstadt observes. "One was the rule of law." An independent judiciary with "the promise of even-handed justice for all, however imperfectly fulfilled, had an obvious appeal in a society where the courts seemed the only countervailing institution against the overwhelming power and privilege that race and wealth conferred on the ruling elite and its business allies." The force of law became critical in the final leg to preserve and protect Hong Kong's way of life as 1997 approached.
The other principle, however over worn, is Hong Kong's "laissez faire" system. The subtle guise of colonial governance under the doctrine of "positive non-interventionism," particularly involving business and property transactions, manages to "fix acceptable boundaries between public and private interests within a political system that was based on a partnership between colonialism and capitalism," Goodstadt writes. That this overwhelmingly free market ideology is embraced by economists like Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom is far from an ironic comment on the notion of freedom from neo-conservatives.
Socially and culturally, Goodstadt adds, the colonial administration similarly relies on a passive, self-imposed non-intervention to maintain its distance from the community and, only if necessary, through business elites as the preferred intermediary. Even in the final days of the colony, the "cricket v. mahjong" cultural divide is distinctive. As the first Chinese Chief Secretary in Chris Patten's government, Anson Chan suffers the indignity of a suggestion that her access to official documents should be limited on the grounds that she did not have a formal positive vetting clearance. "A directive had to be issued that Mrs. Chan should be treated no differently from her expatriate predecessors," Goodstadt explains.
In the short history of post-colonial Hong Kong, it seems that the promise of "no change" for 50 years succeeds only too well. Goodstadt rightly said that the Hong Kong's Basic Law actually "imposed legal obligations on the post-colonial administration to adhere to a stricter interpretation of non-interventionism, small government and low taxation, and other doctrines of laissez-faire that the British had espoused." Polling evidence fully underscored that the government is principally swayed by businessmen and "community regarded this group as opposed to political reforms and lacking in a sense of social responsibility."
In fact and perception, Hong Kong's medical services, education, housing and the care for elderly have retreated dramatically in less than eight years after the resumption of Chinese sovereignty of the territory. In the housing sector, for example, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Tung Chee Wah's efforts to rescue the private sector included a radical modification "from traditional pubic housing commitments, which added to dissatisfaction of ordinary families already suffering from record levels of employment, failing wages, and increasing hours of work."
But more remarkably, as shown in this superb study on the past and future Hong Kong, the rule of law took an extraordinary turn. On 1 July, 2003, over 500,000 people marched in protest against the adoption of a severe National Security Bill. Two weeks later, the bill's chief sponsor, the Secretary of Security Regina Ip, resigned and the bill was abruptly withdrawn.
On the same scale, this populist action is akin to having 21 million Americans gathered in Washington to protest an unpopular statute, say the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act. In the most basic standard of governance, it is likely that any government at that point has to yield to the rejection of the rule of law.
Michael Hsu
15/03/2005
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Michael Hsu is a senior editor of banking laws in America.
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