Recent History Revisited: Analysis and Hindsight ;

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

Multicultural Canada; University of Toronto Libraries

http://www.archive.org/details/recenthistoryrevOOdavi

Recent History Revisited:
Analysis and Hindsight

David Akers-Jones

The Criticism which is most often raised about the failings of
the Colonial Administration - the British administration - is the
failure to introduce what is generally called "democracy" earlier.

I found when I had already suggested the title for this talk
"Recent History Revisited: Analysis and Hindsight", that I had to go
back to the beginning of Hong Kong's colonial history to trace the
evolution of what I would prefer to call the introduction of
representation government.

Havering and wavering continued about admitting
representatives of the public into the government of Hong Kong until
the final years of British rule. It was only then that we had an elected
Legislature with no appointed members, but even this, because of
disagreement with China over its composition, finished its term of
office in 1997 to await fresh elections after the return of sovereignty.
Why did it take so long? Were the British to blame?

"One Country Two Systems", "Hong Kong People Ruling
Hong Kong" - these phrases have been repeated time and time again
in the past fifteen years until they have almost lost their meaning.

The first, "one country two systems", describes a situation
which has been current since the founding of the Colony by the
British in 1841. The way Hong Kong was administered and its
political, social and economic systems developed were vastly
different from that of the rest of China. There were always two
systems. On the other hand, Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong
was an objective returned to time and time again over a lengthy
period. It was not, as commonly thought, first raised by Sir Mark

46 David Akers-Jones

Young,* the Governor who in the immediate postwar period,
proposed the formation of a largely elected Municipal Council. The
inclusion of representatives of the public in the government was a
subject much rehearsed, with different emphases at different times,
almost from the very beginning of the settlement in 1841. It was not
something which was just overlooked or not proceeded with in a
deliberate attempt to hang on to the reins of power. Always there was
a rationale for what was done, although perhaps not always
acceptable to all shades of opinion.

Gladstone, in March 1848, summed up the objectives of Great
Britain in its occupation of Hong Kong, and his words resonate,
albeit subconsciously, until the year of the final transfer of
sovereignty in 1997. "That [the occupation of Hong Kong] was
decided," he said, "on solely and exclusively with a view of
Commercial interests, and for the benefit of those engaged in the
Trade with China. As a Naval and Military station, except for the
security of Commerce, Hong Kong is unnecessary." 1 These words set
the tone.

We read of Governor Bonham** in 1849 recommending the
appointment of representatives of commercial interests to the
Executive and Legislative Councils so as to "afford opportunities at
all times of enabling the public generally to make their wishes and
desires known to the local Government." 2 In 1856 Governor
Bowring*** writes, "My principal object is to introduce the popular
element into its government, and to make that element subservient to
its prosperity, as I have reason to believe its introduction would be
acceptable to public opinion." 3 Bowring went further to propose
representation of the foreign and Chinese community. It was the
middle of the nineteenth century, officials and politicians in Great
Britain were totally ignorant of what circumstances were like in
Hong Kong. Both these recommendations were rejected because it
was thought in Whitehall that they were premature.

Sir Mark Aitchison Young, Governor, 1941-1947.
Sir Samuel George Bonham, Governor, 1848-1854.
Sir John Bowring, Governor, 1854-1859.

Recent History Revisited 47

Nevertheless, the Governors kept on trying and in 1880, in
response to a recommendation from the young and impulsive
Governor, Pope Hennessy,* the first Chinese voice was heard in the
Legislative Council when Mr. Ng Choy was appointed. But his
appointment ran contrary to the opinions of the merchants, lawyers
and professionals of the expatriate community, who in 1892 made
representations to the House of Commons over the head of the
Governor and the Secretary of State that they, and only they, should
elect members to the Legislative Council, and that the franchise
should not extend to the Chinese because their sympathies, their
family interests and traditions, lay with the neighbouring Empire -
meaning, of course, China. This proposal by the expatriates would
have meant, in Governor Robinson's words "a small alien minority
should rule the indigenous majority". The mercantile community,
Robinson said, "do not settle here, and their only concern in the place
is to make a competency in it as quickly as possible and then to leave
it." 4 Their proposals, to his way of thinking and that of the Secretary
of State, were outrageous and had to be rejected outright. Hong Kong
should remain a Crown Colony in the firm control of its Officials!

In 1884 a second Chinese Member was appointed to the
Legislative Council but in the years that followed similar arguments
were deployed by the expatriate community, but always the demands
of this minority to form an oligarchy were rejected. On the other
hand, neither did the Colonial power believe it was necessary to take
any measures to hand over power to the indigenous community,
because there was no demand or agitation from it to participate in
government. Chinese merchants and their families and workers, no
doubt, wished only to get on with their business interests and
employment and regarded themselves still living in a part of China
and their allegiance was to China.

These opinions have to be viewed in their historical context
against the 19 th century background of British Imperial interests, of
notions of national superiority reinforced by strongly held religious

Sir John Pope Hennessy, Governor, 1837-1883.

48 David A kers- Jones

belief. They have to be seen against the unfolding drama of the
Western Powers' encroachments and cultural invasion of China and
their determination to win the trade war and to open up China to
Western commerce. (A drama whose last act is now being played out
today with China's application to join the World Trade Organisation
and the repeated calls for China to open up its markets!) Neither can
what was thought best for Hong Kong be considered in isolation
from the decline and fall of the Qing dynasty, the horrifying and
drawn out terror of the Taiping rebellion and the rise of nationalism.

Governor Stubbs* in 1920 gave his view of the situation.
Talking of the Legislative Council he said, "The case of the Colony
differs from those of such places as Malta and Ceylon in that there is
no permanent population except to some extent the Chinese, of
whom the vast majority have never taken the slightest interest in the
administration of the Government. The Europeans are a migratory
body... the result of establishing an unofficial majority [i.e. in the
Legislative Council] would be to substitute Government by a body of
amateurs whose interests are necessarily those of the moment rather
than the future, for Government by trained professionals," 5 that is, the
civil service.

It was not until two world wars had taken place and the middle
of the twentieth century that serious attention was once again given
to the issue of local representation. The end of the Second World
War marked the crossing of a watershed leading to determination on
the part of the newly elected Labour Government in Britain to bring
down the curtain on the Britain Empire. The granting of self-
government leading to the independence of former colonies became
the stated objective of the British Government. Hong Kong was not
left out. Sir Mark Young, the Governor who returned to Hong Kong
after the war, put forward his proposals for giving the people of Hong
Kong a greater say in their affairs based upon the creation of a
Municipal Council. The idea was not new but when previously put
forward it was alleged, with some justification, that a Municipal

Sir Reginald Edward Stubbs, Governor, 1919-1925.

Recent History Revisited 49

Council whose boundaries were co-extensive with the boundaries of
the Colony would threaten the very existence and power of the
Legislative Council. (Did we not see a replay of this argument in the
legislation to abolish the Municipal Councils in recent times?) Sir
Mark pressed on, despite misgivings secretly expressed to the
Colonial Office as to the popular enthusiasm for these reforms, and
announced his proposal to create an elected Municipal Council.

Refugees from the mainland flooded in to escape the closing
stages of the civil war in China. Arguments against the Municipal
Council proposal were raised by the unofficial members of Executive
and Legislative Councils while other voices were raised in their
support by many Chinese organizations. Sir Mark Young who seems
already to have had "1997" at the back of his mind, reported to
London that his proposals were greeted with considerable apathy by
the Chinese community which he ascribed to the fear that the Council
would become a battleground for political forces, KMT and
Communist, and that in any case, many Chinese foresaw the return of
Hong Kong to China and did not wish to involve themselves in
something which could be judged to be unpatriotic.

It was time for Sir Mark Young to go and for the arrival of Sir
Alexander Grantham. The volume of refugees from disturbed
conditions in China grew at an alarming rate. A small number of
officials were coping with an almost insurmountable problem. The
Legislative Council was strengthened by the appointment of a few
more members and the proposal to create an elected Municipal
Council with powers which would have threatened its existence, was
dropped. Looking at those events today, it is difficult to understand
why Sir Mark Young chose to ignore the threat to Legislative
Council inherent in his proposals and why he did not propose at least
some reform of the Legislature.

From then on, for almost a period of twenty years, Hong Kong
was preoccupied with ever-present problems. The start of a never-
ending housing programme was made when it was realised that the
refugees were here to stay; the repercussions of the Korean War and
the chilling atmosphere of the Cold War, which seemed to hold the

50 David A kers- Jones

whole world in suspense, spilled over into Hong Kong; the lingering
political antagonisms following the defeat of the Kuomintang army
erupted into mob violence in 1956; there was tension across the
Taiwan Straits and the shelling of Quemoy. These were just some of
the things which formed the background to our thoughts. In the
sixties there was a sudden influx of over a hundred thousand illegal
immigrants who poured over the border against the big wide screen
of the mountains north of the border. There was drought and long
queues at standpipes. The worst typhoon in living memory swept
across Hong Kong leaving a trail of death and destruction. In 1966
and 1967, there were more riots. It is an understatement to say that
Hong Kong had more than enough to do. The situation was unstable,
the community restless, living from hand to mouth in appalling
conditions and not having put down its roots. It was an atmosphere
not conducive to elevated thoughts about democracy and political
reform. As the well-known and astringent commentator Dick Wilson
said, "It would have been like trying to organise elections on a
railway station."

In the sixties, before the riots broke out, the idea had been
raised to introduce District Officers into the urban area to provide a
channel of communication and better to coordinate the work of
government departments. The idea was squashed by conservatives in
the Administration who saw no need for another layer of
administration.

The Governor, David Crosbie Trench, persisted, and while
Hong Kong was boiling up for the Star Ferry riots, a Principal
Assistant Colonial Secretary, W. V. Dickinson, was appointed to lead
a Working Party on Local Administration. This innocuous and
cautious title elsewhere would have been called locai government.
The recommendations of the report 7 were for far-reaching reform: the
establishment of Regional Councils, which apart from powers
normally associated with local government, would have had
executive power in the fields of education, health and welfare. But
there were four members of the Working Party who had reservations
about the advisability, for various reasons, of dividing up Hong Kong
in this way. They suggested a more gradual approach involving

Recent History Revisited 51

generalist local District Officers being appointed, with a view
eventually to the appointment of advisory Regional Councils. The
wheel has now turned full circle. Our Regional Councils are about to
be abolished and District Boards are to be elevated to the role of
District Councils.

In 1967 the Cultural Revolution spread to Hong Kong with
widespread disturbances. China was in turmoil, Hong Kong was
reeling, confidence was at a low ebb. It is not surprising that in the
anxious years that followed, the Report of the Working Party on
Local Administration was quietly forgotten.

The scene shifted to China with ping-pong diplomacy, the visits
of Nixon and Kissinger, the Shanghai communique and the
admission of China into the United Nations. Shortly thereafter the
Chinese Ambassador to the U.N. declared that the question of Hong
Kong was not a matter for the United Nations Committee on
Decolonisation but was a matter for China to decide when the time
was ripe. China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution and it is
absurd to think that in those anxious years that Hong Kong could
have either begun a sensible dialogue with China on political
development or taken a risk and gone it alone. China's words in the
United Nations were a sufficient warning as to the way to approach
this question of the future.

Following the quiet putting to rest of the Dickinson Report, the
influence of the district style of administration in the New Territories
spread to urban Hong Kong and Kowloon. District Officers were
appointed and District Offices were opened with a window opening
onto city streets. In the New Territories new towns were becoming
larger with the only form of representation a Rural Committee
elected by a small minority of indigenous inhabitants. Beginning in
1978 Advisory Committees based on each New Territories district,
were appointed and then extended to Hong Kong and Kowloon. In
1981, greatly to everyone's surprise, elections took place on a one-
person one-vote basis for one third of the members of the Boards and
they were given carte blanche powers to raise, debate and advise on
any matters affecting the well being of people living in their district.

52 David A kers- Jones

For once the Government plans had run ahead of people's
expectations. Together with this revolutionary step, and in a more
general way, the system of Advisory Boards and Committees was
strengthened to cover every aspect of government policy and activity.
These several hundred committees involving the recruitment of
several thousand members of the public, survive to this day. A
process that has been called by Professor Ambrose King of the
Chinese University, the "administrative absorption of politics."

The rest is history. Green Paper was followed by White Paper.
For the Legislative Council, functional constituencies and electoral
colleges were established. A cautious road map was published setting
out the way ahead and the reasons for it. There were no strong
reactions from China except for the authorities there to point out that
China had not been consulted. China was clearly watching in what
direction the Colonial Government was moving.

1978 was the year of economic reform in China. In the spring
of 1979 Sir Murray MacLehose visited Beijing, the first visit by a
governor since that of Sir Alexander Grantham in the 1950s. By the
end of the seventies, while land across the border in Shenzhen could
already be held by people living in Hong Kong for a period of 25
years, concern was already being expressed in Hong Kong about
leases of land in the New Territories which would expire in 1997.
Deng Xiaoping refused to be drawn on the question of the lease and
Sir Murray returned from Beijing with the famous phrase that our
businessmen were told to stop worrying, to put their hearts at ease.
The reaction to this placatory phrase was lukewarm; it lacked detail
but actually it meant precisely what it said - "Get on with your
business and stop worrying." From then on, so many things which
were said for Hong Kong's benefit for those that had ears to hear
were not listened to, or given the attention which they deserved.

In 1981 China published her nine point proposals for Taiwan
and broad hints were given that they could apply equally to Hong
Kong. A Junior Minister in the Foreign Office was told this in the
spring of 1982, and Sir Edward Heath was told the same thing more
substantially two months later. Here were the bones of the formula of

Recent History Revisited 53

"one country two systems" and "Hong Kong people ruling Hong
Kong". But nobody listened. It was not until 1984 that agreement
was reached with China which, at long last, contained the important
phrase that Hong Kong could have a "legislature constituted by
elections" - Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong.

It took five years to turn the agreement with China into the
Basic Law and despite well supported views to the contrary,
decisions were taken in Hong Kong and London in 1988 to ensure
that when direct elections were introduced they conformed and
converged with the Basic Law and did not run the risk of being
overturned at the return of sovereignty, and that the political
development, so painfully reached, would be dismantled. Agreement
was reached after hard negotiation, that the Legislative Council to be
elected in 1995 would remain in office until this year, 1999 - "the
through train." Five of the thirteen years had already passed and
precious time was again to pass while the electoral system outlined in
the Basic Law was turned into Hong Kong legislation.

Six months before the final signature was put on the Basic Law
there was serious disorder and turmoil in Beijing and in other cities
in China. This had a profound effect on people in Hong Kong and
around the world. The events of June 1989 polarised opinion in Hong
Kong. They were seen as an aberration, a deviation from the steady
progress of reforms which had been taking place since the
assumption of power by Deng Xiaoping, and which had led to the
growing confidence of Hong Kong's citizens. It was seen as a return
to darker days.

Sir David Wilson, who had been Governor for five years during
this period, was peremptorily recalled at the end of 1991 and given a
seat in the House of Lords. The last Governor, a politician, arrived in
1992 and remained until the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

The Last Governor by Jonathan Dimbleby 6 deals at some length
with the question of the famous letters which the Foreign Ministers
of Great Britain and China had exchanged before the draft of the
Basic Law was finalized and Christopher Patten's own book, East

54 David Akers-J ones

and West, 1 also reveals the background to these events. It is quite
clear from their explanations that Mr. Patten only saw the letters on
the eve of his departure for Beijing. This extraordinary omission on
the part of all the officials, from the Foreign Secretary downwards,
who knew about them, beggars belief. But with hindsight there is no
doubt in my mind that had Mr. Patten known about them, the course
of events would have been entirely different.

Director Lu Ping of the Hong Kong and Macao Office had
invited Mr. Patten to visit Beijing before his arrival, but the invitation
still stood during the summer of 1992. This invitation was refused by
Patten who wanted to carry no baggage with him when he arrived in
Hong Kong, even to the extent of leaving off his plumed hat. The
obvious follow-up to the letters, if Mr. Patten had read them, was
either to visit Beijing to open discussion on them or for the Foreign
Secretary to follow up with more letters of explanation as to how
they were to be interpreted by the British side, and a dialogue would
have started.

We all know that the Drafting Committee of the Basic Law was
kept hanging about Guangzhou until the last letter had been delivered
to the Chinese Foreign Minister and then, only then, was the draft of
the Basic Law passed for approval by the National People's Congress.
In other words the letters provided an important input into the Basic
Law.

Ignorant of the letters, the Governor proceeded to draft his
proposals with officials in Hong Kong who had also not seen the
letters - Mike Hanson, Leo Goodstadt and Michael Sze. The
proposals were shown to the Chinese side shortly before they were
due to be delivered in the Legislative Council. Director Lu Ping
warned the Governor not to go ahead with them, while Mr. Patten,
still not knowing about the letters, went ahead determinedly. The
Chinese side reacted predictably. The agreements in the letters had
been totally ignored by the British side. Letters between Foreign
Ministers, next to letters between Prime Ministers, are the last link in
the chain and have to mean what they say - "agreement" means
"agreement". When Mr. Patten arrived in Beijing his reception and

Recent History Revisited 55

his reaction when he was confronted by the letters were entirely to be
expected.

Subsequently to set aside the letters as not being legally binding
was equally extraordinary. Thereafter there were fruitless and bitter
exchanges, long attempts at negotiation to try to find a way out. Both
sides stuck to their positions and the results are well known.

Predictably, the passage of the Legislation and the election of
the Legislative Council led inevitably to the dismissal of the Council
in 1997 and the appointment of a Provisional Council. Things might
have been quite different if only those letters had come to the surface
earlier, or if Governor Wilson had continued in office. But hindsight
is an easy art to practice.

Those last five years with agreement on the elections in place,
and the "through train" approved by both sides was an opportunity
for Hong Kong to work more closely with the Mainland authorities
and to get to know China. I had envisaged the Governor and his
principal officials travelling frequently to China establishing the
framework and channels for future co-operation. Regrettably, this did
not happen. The determination of the Governor, with the support of
the British government, to exploit areas in the Basic Law, which
were not spelt out in detail, to change understood and established
systems from what was intended by them, and to set aside a serious
exchange of letters between the two Foreign Ministers as not being
legally binding, resulted in the first and last visit of Mr. Patten, as
Governor, to Beijing taking place in 1992. From then on the level of
serious exchange between Hong Kong senior officials and their
counterparts in China, was less than there had been in the ten years
immediately after the Cultural Revolution.

I have tried, at some length, to provide an apologia, a defence,
for the failure of the Hong Kong Government with the support of the
British Government, not to introduce democracy, an elected
Government, earlier than was done. Perhaps there were occasional
windows of opportunity when a jump start might have been possible,
but even this has to be viewed against well-researched and

56 David Akers- J ones

documented apathy and indifference in the community for political
development and I believe, considering the severe handling by the
Central Peoples' Government of the reforms introduced by the last
Governor, Christopher Patten, it can be said with some certainty that
any changes introduced before the Basic law was in place and
without China's blessing, would have had no chance of survival.

After the successful achievement in 1984 of an agreement about
our future which left thirteen years to prepare for the change of
sovereignty, the estrangement of the two governments and the
fruitless discussions which took place during the last five years of
colonial Hong Kong, were particularly disappointing, and
preoccupation with political development beginning as long ago as
1980 caused the government to fail to stand back and examine the
wider picture.

From the earliest beginning of the Colony, the role of the
Government, while not defined, was to provide administration, a
public service and public security for those who came here to trade
and to settle. Unlike other colonies with a settled indigenous
population, from the point of view of the early European settlers,
there were two communities, the small Chinese settlement in the west
of Hong Kong island and themselves. The two communities lived
apart.

Hong Kong grew in population and prospered, but this ethos
remained and when such things as electricity, tramways, gas, ferries,
telephones, bus companies, were required, it was left to the private
sector to provide them. Hong Kong discovered privatisation before
the word was found lurking in the lexicon. This hands-off approach
persisted in other areas - education, medicine and welfare services -
particularly in provision for the growing Chinese population and led
to the creation of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, and later to the
building of mission schools and many welfare facilities by charitable
organisations. Remember that it was only in 1971 that primary
education became compulsory and a few years of secondary
education some years later.

Recent History Revisited 57

Government administration was small and has been, and is
today, much praised for its efficiency and the excellence if its civil
service. The economy grew, and because it grew there was no need
to depart from a low level of taxation and increasing revenue from an
expanding economy. A wide range of fees and charges and revenue
from the sale of land, allowed the Government, and I generalise,
largely to operate its medical, educational and social services,
through subventions to non-government agencies.

There was not the driving motive of looming independence, as
in other colonies, to uproot a system which was working well and to
prepare it for a different future. The future, it was rightly said, was
not going to be different. The system would go on as before and there
would be a smooth transition. And so there was. Everyone has said
so. But that driving motive of independence in other colonies led
inevitably to rather more introspection and innovation in their
governments than perhaps was evinced or thought necessary in Hong
Kong. We thought intensely and brought about improvements to the
"one system" but not about "one country" and the significance of the
revolution, and I use the word deliberately, which was evolving in
China, following the reforms of 1978.

It is said that a Chinese member of the Joint Liaison Group
asked why the large map of Hong Kong on the wall of the Joint
Liaison Office showed a blank yellowing space to the north of
Shenzhen River where there was already a population of a few
million people living, a stone's throw from Hong Kong. There was
no indication that we were part of China. China was like the terra
incognita shown on early maps of the world.

The much used phrase of positive non-intervention, which was
used to describe the Government's attitude to industry and commerce,
provided it operated within the framework of the law, was applied in
respect to other aspects of our society. How else can it be argued,
when a few years before the return of sovereignty, when we were
trumpeting Hong Kong's character as an international city, only to
discover that the knowledge of English in the population generally,
of the international language of international commerce, and

58 David A kers- Jones

communication between nations, after one hundred and fifty years of
colonisation, was extremely poor? How else to explain the present
lack of scientists, when they are so desperately needed, to launch us
into the world of information technology and the present rather
desperate attempts being made to catch up? How else to explain
that there was really no serious attempt to introduce Putonghua into
our school curriculum?

The building of the new towns and development of support
infrastructure was one of the great achievements of the seventies and
early eighties, and we continued with this work but we now found
that infrastructure development has lagged behind the demands of a
population, whose expansion has been known for a long time. Were
we slow, too, not to realise the need to stop pouring untreated sewage
into the harbour?

Lord MacLehose, Governor from 1971 to 1982, shook the
Administration - and I was part of it - out of a complacency into
which it had fallen. Reform of the civil service took place. He told
Hong Kong to clean up its act, to clean Hong Kong and fight crime
and corruption. But in the later years of his governorship
MacLehose's preoccupation was with the large political question
hanging over our future. There were changes to the Administration
but they were by way of amendment, alteration, expansion and
improvement on existing systems rather than the more fundamental
question of how well we were prepared for the post-colonial era and
for the challenges of a rapidly changing world.

With the benefit of hindsight I would venture to say that some
of today's difficulties could have been avoided if we had not been
too mesmerised by our success and prosperity, if we had looked at
our vulnerability, sought out our weak spots and shortcomings and
had a little more foresight. The great benefit bestowed by hindsight is
to learn from your mistakes.

Recent History Revisited 59

To end, it is appropriate to quote from these comforting Taoist
lines of T. S. Eliot:

In order to arrive at what you are not

You must go through the way in which you are not,

And what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not.

(From the Four Quartets)

NOTES

1. Great Britain. Colonial Office. Original Correspondence: Hong Kong 1841-1951, Series
129 (C0129)/13. "Secretary W. E. Gladstone to Governor Davis dispatch of 7 March 1848".
See Steve Tsang ed., A Documentary History of Hong Kong: Government and Politics (Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1995) p.l 19.

2. CO 129/28. "Governor Bonham to Secretary Lord Grey, dispatch 22, 26 February 1948".
See ibid., p. 59.

3. C0129/55. "Governor Bowring to Secretary H. Labouchere, dispatch 49, 26 March
1856". See ibid, p 61

4. C0129/256. "Governor Robinson to Secretary Lord Ripon, confidential dispatch of 6
December 1892". See ibid., pp.72-3.

5. C0129/462. "Governor Stubbs to Secretary Viscount Milner, confidential dispatch of
29 July 1920". See ibid., p.80.

6. Jonathan Dimbleby, The Last Governor: Christ Pattern and the Handover of Hong
Kong (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1997).

7. Christ Patten, East and West: the Last Governor of Hong Kong on Power, Freedom and
the Future (London: MacMillan, 1998).

8. For a full account of this Report, see A. Trevor Clark, "The Dickinson Report: An
Account of the Background to. and Preparation of, the 1966 Report of the Working Party on
Local Administration", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 37,
(1998) pp. 1-17.