The Mui Tsai Report The report of the commission appointed
by the Secretary for the Colonies a year ago to investigate the institution known as Mui Tsai, involving the adoption of girl children—usually in effect by sale and purchase—as servants or slaves, in Hong Kong and Malaya, has produced a valuable survey of the existing situation in a majority report by Sir Wilfrid Woods and Mr. C. A. Willis, and one important recommendation embodied in the minority report by Miss Picton-Turbervill. The ultimate author of the recommendation is Sir George Maxwell, the British member of the League of Nations Committee on Slavery and Forced Labour, who from his administrative experience in Malaya has peculiar knowledge of the working of the Mm Tsai system. His proposal briefly is that in future all girls who left their parents' custody before they were 12 and are still under 18 must be registered, and all future changes of guardianship duly notified, except in cases where genuine adoption as daughters can be established. Such genuine cases are numerous and need not be interfered with, but abuses of the adoption system are many and flagrant, and a system of registration and inspection commends itself as a practical reform.
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