Livingstone's Hong Kong
Richard West Hong Kong The amazing Ken Livingstone, the leader of Greater London Council, recently praised Communist China, contrasting it with the 'rat race' of Hong Kong. Up to a Point one can see what Mr Livingstone was getting at. Hong Kong is certainly overcrowded — though largely because of the refugees from Red China. Much of the population is crammed into ugly high-rise flats — though, because of the shortage of space, it is the only possible style of building. The shops of Hong Kong include an inordinate number selling gold and jewellery rather than real consumer needs — but this is a feature of all Asian societies where the family is allowed to invest in its future. The Hong Kong people appear rather rude — but even Ken Livingstone's Communist China has recently launched a campaign to halt the decline in good manners. The people of Hong Kong bet inordinately on the horses, as do the British — but, unlike the British, the average Hong Kong worker has savings equal to two years salary.
A few hours spent watching Hong Kong TV (six channels, some starting as early as 7 a.m.) confirm that this is a harsh, free-forall city, without much concern for the kind of 'compassion' and 'caring' admired by Ken Livingstone. The commercials are interspersed with gruesome government warnings: children run down by trucks on the motorway; a family burned to death because their fire exit door was padlocked; thieves and muggers; raped girls seeking advice on 'family planning'; drought, flood and typhoon. One gets the impression of life as perilous and as cruel as the shark ridden South China Sea.
This is how it appears to Western eyes. Some of us are inclined to lament the lack of state or community help in the form. of dole money, social workers, sex education and marriage guidance; but these are modern English, rather than Chinese, concepts. The extended family has not yet given way to the 'nuclear family', and still Provides most of the things we think of as social services. Education of course is Public — and very much better in Hong Kong than it is in London.
But education is not the only public service that functions better in Hong Kong than London. Its transport system is quite exceptionally good. Like most cities now, Hong Kong is overburdened with motorcars, which pose a particular menace in so small a territory. Unlike most cities of such a size, Hong Kong has set out to offer a Cheap and efficient alternative to this private transport. The territory now has fleets of buses and, on Victoria Island, trams including the pleasant funicular to the Peak; a system of high-speed motorways including a tunnel between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island; the old Star Ferry plying the same route, for those like myself who enjoy the view and the first-class icecream served at the boarding gate; and, most recently, an underground railway that must be the cleanest, swiftest and most agreeable in the world.
All these services are extremely cheap. For instance the funicular tram which lifts one 2,000 feet to the Peak costs 20p. The same price takes one by underground halfway along Kowloon. The Star Ferry costs 6p for the crossing by first class, which offers a better view. All these public transport services pay for themselves. The buses and the ferry are run by private companies. The road tunnel was built by a private company. And the underground was built by a public corporation backed by private capital. Unlike Ken Livingstone's much vaunted fare reductions in London, the cost of cheap transport does not have to be borne by local taxpayers. Unlike such British schemes as the Channel Tunnel, the underground — if it loses money — will not have to be paid for by the public.
And because things like transport are self-financing, there is small need to finance government services out of tax, which, in a city state like Hong Kong, would mean the equivalent of the London rates. Low tax means that shops and businesses thrive, and provide employment even to most of the hundred of thousands of refugees who have come to the colony in the last ten years. Because of the profitability of manufacture and retail business, these have attracted in vestment and capital which, in England, would go into property speculation. When, a few years ago, Hong Kong Spinners closed one of their mills to use the land for speculative property, they were rebuked by a local newspaper: 'How can hair grow without skin? Industry is the skin, and real estate the hair'.
It used to be axiomatic in England that all Hong Kong products were made by 'sweated labour' — conjuring up a picture of stick-limbed, opium-crazed coolies, women and children at work in steamy, rat-infested cellars beside the port. This may once have been true. But now the textiles, electronic equipment and toys, to name three main products, are turned out in the newest kind of factories, since these alone are economic. Now that British industry, backed by the British trade unions, can no longer suppress competition, Hong Kong wages are high and increasing. When Ken Livingstone speaks of Hong Kong as a 'rat race', he really means that the Hong Kong Chinese work more than the English, and are getting paid for it.
An Englishman with the Hong Kong government told me he hated going home because of the politics. 'Here', he went on, 'we don't have politics'. This is both true and untrue. Hong Kong has no parliament, and its council is more an advisory than a government body. Power resides with the Governor, who is answerable to the Queen. But of course there are interests: the Chinese business community; the communist supporters of Peking; the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which is in effect the Treasury of the island; perhaps even such bodies as the Jockey Club. These are interests, vaguely resembling the factions of Whig and Tory, of Commerce and Agriculture, that ruled 18th-century England. . So in the politics of Hong Kong there are interests — called them 'parties' if you will — but what is lacking is ideological strife. And here again, one comes back to the difference to Ken Livingstone's London. Ideology is a fairly recent arrival even in national English politics. It arrived with all its 'isms' and 'ocracies' from France after the Revolution, and slowly grew up during the 19th century. By the mid-20th century, each of the main parties had its idea of how society should be changed to comply with ideology. But until quite recently, local government meant just that: drains, rubbish collection, public works, law and order, and some small say in education, housing and social services.
. In modern Britain and notably Ken Livingstone's London, local government is now an instrument to change society according to some ideology. Control of County Hall is used to put across theories of economic, sexual and racial equality; even foreign policy, with London recognising the IRA and making itself a nuclear-free zone. The invasion of ideology has been so gradual that we have failed to notice it. It is not till one goes to Hong Kong that one sees what has happened. Hong Kong does not care about ideology. Ergo, it is a rat-race.
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