REFERENCES
- Interestin this insider-angle article will not come from my (short) academic credentials,but my (unusually facilitating) background: a doctorate in the history ofBritish colonial administrative culture; nearly 20 years as a Hong Kong AOmy present post teaching Asian Politics at Exeter University, and the opportunityof annual public administration consultancies at the City University of HongKong during one of which I researched this article
- Tape331. The Last Governor video-archive in the W. Mong Collection, Universityof Hong Kong LibraryDimbleby, Jonathan, published by Little, Brown & Co.London, July 1997. Although I cite Hanson as Aunt Sally here, there was nocolleague with whom I stood more shoulder-to-shoulder on the making of stands.As a secondee from the UK civil service, he was a temporary AO himself. Mycontributions to Dimbleby (all at the last minute excluded from the excerptsbroadcast on the BBC in July 1997) were only a bit less pessimistic and moreaccurate than Hanson's—or than all those commentators who seemto so easily forget their previous prognostications
- Responsewas unexpectedly good, given the closed and confidential nature of the AOcadre. The only gap was at the very top level at and above Policy Secretary(somewhere between a Minister and a Permanent Secretary), perhaps worriedabout their replies being used as the official views of the government: themost senior remaining expatriate, kept just below this level, had the courtesyto write back along these lines specifically excusing himself from replyingsubstantively; all the locals promoted above his level who were sampled, includingFinancial Secretary Donald Tsang, and Secretary for the Civil Service W. K.Lam, whose answer as manager of the civil service would have been particularlyinteresting, were truly silent. From the Deputy Secretary and Principal AssistantSecretary levels, however, (similar to the UK's Deputy Secretaries andAssistant Secretaries, but with more pro-active, political jobs, and takinghome about twice as much pay) there was an over 50% substantive response.All respondents were promised anonymity. There was no official objection tothe survey, neither did it have any stamp of official approval, nor can anyco-ordinated line be discerned from the replies
- TheSecretary for the Civil Service, Martin Rowlands, rejected in 1984 my proposalfor more publicity on the role of AOs-a typical, understandable reaction inan age hostile to colonialism, but no help to understanding it
- Scott , I. and Burns , J. P. , eds. 1984 . “ The Hong Kong Civil Service ” . In Personnel Policies and Practices Hong Kong : OxfordUniversity Press . see
- 1988 . The Hong Kong Civil Service and ItsFuture Hong Kong : OxfordUniversity Press .
- Scott , I. 1989 . Political Changeand The Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong HongKong : Oxford University Press . But even these thoroughattempts are limited by being an outside view of a system whose insiders havebeen deliberately unforthcoming about the real power structure
- My earlier, narrower article The Practice of Human Resources Managementin the Hong Kong Government . Illustrations From an AdministrativeOfficer's Career. Public Administration and Policy 1997, 6 (2) is more reliable inthis sense—though it naturally suffers the opposite, credibility problemof all insiders' work
- Onenon-government respondent noticed weaksp irits among the Policy Secretarieswho slipped into appeasing gestures in the first weeks such as wearing Chinalapel badges suddenly on TV, but the majority held firm
- Examplesin 1997–98 cited most were: administratively, the “red tide”and “Avian flu” crises; the opening of the new airport; the exemptionof the New China News Agency Hong Kong Branch from Hong Kong laws; politically,the refusal to prosecute the senior and now pro-China media figure Sally Au,the handling of the threatening criticism of the government radio station,for being insufficiently pro-government, by a senior China figure; and, moregenerally but perhaps most unfairly in retrospect, the inability to deal effectivelywith the economic crisis. Weakened PR handling may have worsened other aspects:I found experts more critical of almost all aspects of the Administration'sperformance whereas personally I was still struck by the success in maintainingthe system. Dr. Anthony Cheung of the City University of Hong Kong summarisedthe commentators' consensus as “The myth of excellence in the civilservice has been severely dented.” And Dr. Michael DeGolyer's essential Hong Kong Transition Project surveys of public opinionhave confirmed one area where there was no posthandover improvement in publicworry levels was government efficiency
- The internal administration conflict caused by the Leungcase has been largely ignored in the public hubbub, as it has in the Clinton/Lewinskyscandal with which it has many parallels (even if the original sin of Clintonseems as much smaller as his administration is bigger). The Leung case wasa classic tragedy of a culturally closed government making things much worsefor itself, with an open media, in an otherwise-supportive legislature, witha public that had slowly learnt to trust it
- Mok , K. H. and Lau , M. K.W. 1998 . For an analysis of the fairly small policy shifts by way ofcomparing Tung;s first annual address with Patten's last . Building Hong Kong for a New Era , 17 ( 1 ) see New Directions for Social Development after 1997? Public Administrationand Policy Such external studies are bound, however, to underestimate thestructural continuity factor in the Hong Kong system represented especiallyby the silent AO role in the long-drawn-out policy creation process. A morereliable snippet is the admission by Cooper, T., Deputy Secretary of the Environment,on Riding the Tiger, (UK Channel 4, August24, 1998), that the Tung government and legislature have been less interestedin environmental matters, another area where Patten seemed to fulfil the Fabianvariant of the democratic paradox—giving the public what they want beforethey know they want it
- Thefailure to train expatriate AOs to an operating level in Cantonese seemeda strange failure against previous British colonial excellence in this respect.It might be plausibly put down to FCO departmentalist resentment, or cautionagainst creating an even “more difficult” local government against“necessary” metropolitan realpolitikon the future of the territory;or to local policy-makers who did not want, or see the need for expatriatecolleagues having the same bilingualism as they automatically had. Whateverthe reason, the generation due to go through the transition was given on averageless than half the language training given to recruits for the FCO itself-eventhough the latter were recruited to spend only a third of their time in thecountry concerned, and not to actuallyworkwith or for its local people
- Thischange may be especially marked because of one East/West cultural differenceI observed: British AOs generally had to “have their say,” evenwhen they had little to contribute to action, whereas Chinese AOs tended tostickto what they had been told to say rather than riskbeing out of line
- SriLanka, 40 years ago another jewel of an administration, started going backwardsinto civil war precisely when it started to push its small national language.Singapore is the opposite example and its success not unrelated: its 21stCentury lead on Hong Kong may well depend on whether Hong Kong goes down thisroad
- Expatriaterespondents may have distorted this result, as they traditionally tended tobe more frank. Cooper, T., for example, in a post-handover episode of thedocumentary Riding the Tiger, half-humorouslylet slip how little workhis office now had: “Yes, it is like a graveyardhere now.” (UK Channel 4, August 24, 1998)
- Threeyears' experience in Finance Branch (Treasury) taught me to take witha pinch of sea-salt eternal protestations of overwork/ understaffing—theage-old budget game in any public sector organisation. The inability of thecivil service-led system to be tough against civil service expansion and creepwas already one of the few tendencies to weakness of Hong Kong public administrationfrom the mid-1980s, probably worsened bothby Public Sector Reform and by democratisation. See my An Excellent Balance:Hong Kong as a Model for Privatisation. In Proceedingsof International Conference. Quest for Excellence: Public Administrationin the 1990s, City University of Hong Kong, February 1994. To balance expatriatemarginalization/ free-riding, we need to remember locals have also benefitedfrom more rapid promotion with half the senior expatriates leaving; top expatriates'promotion has also slowed, causing resentments for people like Cooper, watching“other colleagues' careers go of like rocket ships.” Seenote 13
- Thisshift would also match one of the few concrete cultural characteristics whichdifferentiated expatriate/local AOs on postings within the key branches ofgovernment: local AOs when polled on preferred job-areas, went for money-relatedareas such as Economic Services or Trade & Industry, less, despite itsprestige, Finance Branch, involving conflicts with colleagues, less compatiblewith steady promotion through “gwaan hai” (relationships)
- AnsonChan's first keynote message to all staff after one year of the new sovereigntywas “It is very important for the civil service as a whole to be seento be united” When asked “What are the areas where, in your view,the civil service has performed remarkably well since the Handover and whatare the areas that you thinkthey could have done better?” only the “remarkablygood” get mentioned! Civil Service Newsletter,July 1998
- Woodru , P. 1963 . The Men WhoRuled India London : JonathanCape: . The AOs' recruitment advertisement looked specifically for ambitionand they have long been regarded as the apogee of the job market: while inBritain the colonial service lost recognition in society, in Hong Kong societyAOs remained the “heavenborn” caste, like the equally elite andbiracial Indian Civil Service who ruled India in the last two decades of theBritish Raj
- Potter , D. 1986 . India PoliticalAdministrators 1919–1983 Oxford : Clarendon Press .
- Respondentscited Taiwan and Tibet as taboo subjects now. (The Chinese Vice-Premier QianQichen famously thought self-government for parts of Britain was not discussablein Britain, but in fact there was no such banned British subject in BritishHong Kong, let alone in Britain.)
- Aconstitutionally-interesting personal instance was helping persuade Pattenthat it was right for him to take a stand for more British passports thanthe British Cabinet he had sat in had givenHong Kong. See all media after BBC's Any Questions,live in Hong Kong, September 22, 1995. Interestingly, I found it was oftenthe British AOs, not locals, who tookmost advantage of the British colonialtradition of standing up for colonial interests against the metropolis
- WhenI conveyed this result in a conference margin to Sir Robin McLaren (with SirPercy Cradock, the leading British diplomat on Hong Kong for the last decadeand a half of British rule) he replied that AOs did not understand!
- Asimilarly concrete tribute to the Chinese Foreign Ministry behaviour afterthe handover was played up by a Xinhua news release in March 1998 when theexpatriate Director of Civil Aviation was quoted as saying the one thing thatwas different after the handover was Hong Kong representatives' treatmentby their sovereign at international conferences: “Under the Britishdelegation, I sat right at the backof the hall; and under the Chinese delegation,I sit right in the front of the hall…we are given more latitude underChina than [when] we worked under the British” Siegel, D. Director ofCivil Aviation Xinhua News Agency, March 21, 1998. (But part of the differencehere may be explicable by Hong Kong's technological position-ahead ofChina behind the UK)
- AOsdid not find Patten quite as pro-Hong Kong, anti-FCO as his image. Often,surrounded by personal rather than AO advisers, he took a blindly Britishapproach. An example of the cultural political dilemma, not between colonialconservatism and local liberalism but between Western progressiveness andChinese Confucian (and Christian) conservatism, was the 1993–94 caseof the caning in Singapore of a half-Hong Kong convicted vandal, Michael Foy.The British in Government House were all for joining a US-led crusading intervention,and using the Hong Kong Government to protest. I pointed out Hong Kong peoplewere mostly in favour of the punishment,both in principle and in the circumstances
- Patten , C. September1998 . East and West London : Macmillan . One of the points of difference between the culture of British diplomatsand AOs is that the diplomats, versed in Mandarin and the classical and communistculture of Beijing, and with only Beijing as a recognised posting for theirfuture career, are “temperamentally” unlikely to offend China.After all, China traditionally takes very personal offence, and still personallypressurises by a mixture of threats and enticements “calibrated withbrutal directness,” with a disturbing degree of success with top businessmenand top politicians (as Patten has now attested), accepting apologies forChinese government behaviour which are “the stock-in-trade of governmentsand the foreign-policy Establishment too…” The “Sino-Britishversion,” especially emphasising the “two ancient civilisations”line, is not to be disturbed by the “vulgar…noise from Hong Kong…justa pimple on China's backside, as one retired British ambassador famouslyput it,” ignoring both its status as a world financial centre vitalto China's own development and its regional role as a beacon of British-origingood governance/human rights
- SinceSir John Pope Hennessy, Governor 1877–82, who was an Irish Liberal whomGladstone appointed (also when he lost his Commons seat) to a colonial governorship;he appointed the first Chinese Legislative Council member but fell out withmost of the expatriate establishment; see Bresnihan, J. The Governorship ofJohn Pope Hennessy, 1877–82: Reform and Foreign Policy (unpublisheddissertation). University of Hong Kong, 1994, for the most sympatheticview. To confirm there were no other such splits, see Welsh. F. A History of Hong Kong; HarperCollins: London, 1993.For insider versions of the Patten-AO split, see the video-archive interviewswith Hanson, myself, and (for an anti-Patten position) ex-AO Acting GovernorSir David Akers-Jones. Dimbleby, Tape 331, The LastGovernor video-archive in the W. Mong Collection, University ofHong Kong Library. Briefer bookversion: Dimbleby, Jonathan, The Last Governor.published by Little, Brown & Co. London, July 1997
- SeeDimbleby, Jonathan, The Last Governor. published by Little, Brown & Co.London, July 1997; 236, and the interviews in the videoarchive, on the indirectsuccess of these actions by the Chinese government [not“the Chinese,” an insidious Foreign Office elision which Dimbleby,like far too many other western journalists, borrows passimdespite it giving the most inaccurate and unfair impression that the Chinesepeople, even those in Hong Kong, are responsible for a government which noneof them have elected]: I found they turned many AOs against Patten: he was,via Chinese intransigence, “causingtoo many problems for them in their daily lives”
- Thehalf that left did so for a variety of personal reasons, including timidityand prejudice; but post-Tienanmen liberal principles were not absent. Manylost out considerably: contrary to assumptions of an overgenerous hand-out only for those leaving, to encourage stability expatriatescould stay in their US$150–250,000 p.a. jobs andget more than US$200,000 “compensation” from Her Majesty for “loss”of her protection. In simple terms, we were being enticed to stay and workinthe world's most rewarding administration for the world's largestremaining tyranny, albeit at one remove
- Theinsiders' explanations of post-1997 “success” can be usefullycompared with liberal politicians' explanations, Lawyers' LegislativeCouncillor Margaret Ng's view is that there is a rose-tinted “misunderstanding”about why things have gone better after the handover than people expected,The fears of China's interference were not misplaced. If China had interfered—andit is possible that without Chris Patten putting Hong Kong so much in centrestage, and without the nervousness caused by the Asian financial crisis, itwould have–there would have been disaster as predicted. Things havegone better because China has been firmly persuaded to be hands-off
- Peter , Lai . 1998 . retiring early as Secretary for Security in July 1998, the mainsingle internal civil service event of note in the period covered by thisresearch . South China Morning Post , July30
- Idiscovered this in doctoral research on racial attitudes in the Indian CivilService one could not judge a majority attitude by those at the top; far fromit, there was often likely to be a sharp generational change brewing below
- Reporteddifferences seemed too marginal to name names here
- 1992 . Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalismin Comparative Analysis Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . The results of thisresearch should further the attention focussed on the importance of institutionalpolitical culture, as begun in Steinmo, Sven, Thelen, Kathleen, and Longstreth,Frank
- Ifthis were not so, the historically good reasons for pessimism about Hong Kongwould be almost overwhelming The count of how few ex-British colonies havedone well since self-government is not something that the FCO is going tomake much of if it wants to maintain any sort of good relations with successorgovernments who make up almost a quarter of the UN. The degree of failureis not therefore widely appreciated. Failures in the basics of good governance—honesty,probity, security, etc.–are not easily measurable, by outsiders especially,and political-correctness limits dissemination of harder economic statisticssuch as India's high economic position in 1947, on some counts in thetop ten manufacturing economies—will Hong Kong's position in thetop ten trading economies be likewise forgotten in 50 years? The highest justificationfor public administration work like that in this academic volume, comparingtwo good administrations as scientifically as possible, must be to limit boththe politicallyinspired distortions of the past and present, and the consequentignorance, dangerous for the future, of what has constituted objectively bestpublic administration practice. Arguably and disturbingly, public administrationstandards have internationally in aggregate deteriorated in the last half-century.Humanity cannot afford not to consider deeply why and how. It must be particularlyworrying for a journal such as this that so few are even aware of a worldplight that is at least as serious as the well-known environmental one. Goodgovernance encompasses all