farmers who attempt to raise it in isolated valleys have produced hardly
enough for their own use. Practically all of it comes in by ships and
planes in the form of raw opium or morphine, which can be converted to
heroin within the colony. On ships, the drugs are hidden in the least
accessible parts of the vessel or concealed in cargo shipments; they
can also be dumped overside in a waterproof container with a float and
marker as the ship nears the harbor, to be picked up by small, fast boats
which land them in sparsely settled areas. Variations of the same methods
are used by incoming planes, with a prearranged airdrop sometimes being
employed.
With thousands of ships and planes arriving and departing every year,
the chances of stopping all narcotics smuggling are practically nil. A
complete search of every arrival would be physically impossible, and
even in cases where the police or the Preventive Service of the Commerce
and Industry Department have been tipped off to an incoming shipment,
it may take a full day to locate the hiding place. The drugs may be
packed inside a cable drum, buried in bales of waste, concealed in
double-bottomed baskets, cached inside the bodies of dolls or surrounded
by bundles of firewood; the hiding places are as inexhaustible as the
cleverness of the smugglers.
Where do the narcotics come from? Harry J. Anslinger, United States
Commissioner of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962, had been telling the world
for at least a decade that Red China was the chief source of supply.
Anslinger said the Chinese Communists were up to their necks in the
traffic because it brought them the foreign exchange they desperately
needed and simultaneously undermined the morale of the West by spreading
drug addiction among its people.
Not one official in the British crown colony accepted Mr. Anslinger’s
thesis for a minute. Hong Kong Police Commissioner Henry W. E. Heath,
the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, and the Preventive Service of the
Commerce and Industry Department unanimously declared that there was
absolutely no evidence that any large amount of the drugs smuggled into
the colony came from Red China. American customs officials in Hong Kong
were inclined to sustain the British view.
Anslinger had named Yunnan Province in southwestern China as the leading
opium-growing area. Colony officials will concede that some opium may be
grown in Yunnan, but they believe that a much greater share is cultivated
in northwest Laos, northern Thailand and the Shan States of eastern
Burma. These four areas are so close to one another that the difference
between the two hypotheses is more political than geographic.
Regardless of which field the poppy comes from, colony officials have
found that more than half the opium seized upon entering Hong Kong has
arrived on ships and planes that made their last previous stop at
Bangkok, Thailand. It is presumed that few drugs arrived bearing the name
and address of the manufacturer or the stamp giving the country of origin.
In 1960, the colony’s antinarcotics units set what they believe to be
a world record for drug seizures, grabbing 39 shipments that included
3,626 pounds of opium, 153 pounds of morphine, 337 pounds of morphine
hydrochloride, 5 pounds of heroin and 155 pounds of barbitone. On
November 30, 1960, the Preventive Service captured 1,078 pounds of raw
opium hidden in bundles of hollowed-out teakwood on a newly arrived ship.
Less than two weeks later they discovered another vessel trying the same
trick and made a haul of 769 pounds of raw opium, 16 pounds of prepared
opium, 45½ pounds of morphine and 293 pounds of morphine hydrochloride.
There were 50 seizures in 1961, putting a further serious crimp in the
smuggling racket.
Feeling persecuted and hurt, many smugglers shifted their base of
operations to Singapore. Even so, it was not an unqualified triumph for
Hong Kong’s antinarcotics force; by pinching off the drug supply they
forced its market price sky-high, and desperate addicts began stealing
and robbing to pay for their dope.
Halting the manufacture of heroin within the colony is as difficult as
catching dope smugglers. A heroin “factory” requires little space and
can be set up in some obscure corner of the New Territories or lodged in
an expensive top-floor apartment on Hong Kong Island; the profit margin
is so great that production costs are but a small obstacle. Enforcement
costs are almost as steep. In 1959, the Preventive Service trebled its
manpower. In February, 1961, maximum penalties for drug manufacturing
were raised from a fine of $8,750 and ten years in prison to a $17,500
fine and life imprisonment.
Almost two-thirds of all prisoners in Hong Kong jails are drug addicts,
but the jailing of addicts, however necessary to protect society, offers
no cure for addiction. The colony government has sought to meet this
phase of the problem by setting up a narcotics rehabilitation center at
Tai Lam Chung Prison and a voluntary treatment section in the government
hospital at Castle Peak.
Dr. Alberto M. Rodrigues, a colony-born physician of Portuguese ancestry
and an unofficial member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, became
chairman of a voluntary committee formed in 1959 to help drug addicts.
With government approval, his committee took over Shek Kwu Island near
Lantau in 1960 to establish a center where about 500 addicts could be
accommodated if they volunteered for treatment. The island was chosen
because it was isolated, and with proper security measures, could keep
the addict entirely away from drugs until medical and nursing care had
put him back on his feet. Gus Borgeest, the refugee rehabilitation
pioneer who established a welfare center on Sunshine Island, helped in
the early planning of Shek Kwu Chau, which began operations during 1962.
Sir Sik-nin Chau, who has served on both the Executive and Legislative
Councils, headed an antinarcotics publicity campaign which was solidly
backed by the British and Chinese newspapers. The Kaifong associations
joined in the drive with lectures and leaflet-distribution among the
Chinese community. The public was urged to report any information about
narcotics sales or divans, but the response was slow and timid; many
ordinary citizens were obviously afraid of beatings and reprisals by the
Triad gangs engaged in drug-peddling. Others hung back in obedience to a
deep-seated Chinese tradition of not sticking your neck out by reporting
on the other fellow’s dirty work. Some headway has been made against this
attitude, but the general feeling of the drive’s publicity people is that
their campaign must be sustained for years to overcome it.
Hong Kong’s drug problem is unlike that of New York City, where drug
addiction among teen-agers is cause for grave concern. Few Chinese
youngsters seem to be attracted to the habit. It is the middle-aged, the
unemployed, and most of all, the desperately poor who chase the dragon
for a brief sensation of well-being, ease and warmth that is succeeded
by a crushing letdown, physical collapse and eventual death. Abrupt
withdrawal of the drugs is like an earthquake from within, causing
cramps, vomiting, excruciating bodily pain and pathological restlessness.
Only a gradual withdrawal under close medical supervision will bring
about a cure, and even that carries no guarantee if the rehabilitated
addict is turned back to joblessness and squalor.
Much of the drug traffic into Hong Kong is not intended for local
consumption, but for reexport to America and Europe. The crossroads
position of Hong Kong on international air and shipping routes makes it
particularly advantageous to this trade, and internal enforcement is
insufficient to cope with it. To bolster their defenses against this
traffic, colony drug-suppression officials depend on close coordination
with police in Southeast Asia, with the World Health Organization
Committee on Drugs Liable to Produce Addiction, and the Commission
on Narcotic Drugs of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
The colony police force has opened its own sub-bureau of Interpol
(International Criminal Police Organization) to strengthen its offensive
against international drug peddlers.
One oddity of the colony’s widespread drug addiction is that it is
seldom apparent to the average visitor; he may spend weeks there without
seeing a single identifiable drug victim. Trained observers can often
spot an addict by his dazed expression or emaciated appearance, but
even in these cases they need further evidence to verify the appraisal.
Dragon-chasers don’t charge through the streets like rogue elephants—not
in the colony, at any rate—they stay hidden and comatose in their
squatter shacks or divans.
Police find the Triad gangs perennially active in the sale of narcotics,
just as they are in pimpery, extortion and shakedown rackets. Congested
areas such as Yau Ma Tei and Sham Shui Po have the highest crime rates
and the largest Triad membership. Only about five percent of the 500,000
Triad members are engaged in major crimes, yet the threat of vengeance
from this militant minority is generally sufficient to keep the other
members silent and submissive. The mere implication of Triad backing, in
a threatening letter sent to a rich Chinese, usually produces cash to pay
off the letter writer, although police have recently had more success in
persuading prospective victims of these menaces to contact them instead
of paying off. Kidnapings are rare, though at least one case made the
headlines in 1961.
The makeup of the police department closely reflects both the hierarchy
and the numerical grouping of the colony’s population. The line force
of uniformed men and detectives in all grades totaled 8,333 in 1961.
Nine-tenths were Chinese and less than 500 were British, with less than
200 Pakistanis and a handful of Portuguese. The top 50 administrative
posts were almost solidly British, however. The force also includes a
civilian staff of 1400.
For the purposes of the ordinary citizen, a colony cop is a Chinese cop,
for these are the only officers he sees regularly. Taken as a group,
they are an alert-looking, smartly uniformed body, predominantly young,
slim and athletic. Day or night, they appear to be very much on the job,
and the worldwide complaint that a cop is never there when you need him
seems peculiarly inapplicable to Hong Kong. The Chinese officer quite
obviously is proud of his job, but the swaggering bully-boy pose is alien
to his nature.
A few Chinese officers, like police in all other cities, go bad. When
they are drummed out of the force, it is generally for shaking down
a hawker or a merchant. More serious cases involve the protection of
gambling, prostitution, after-hour bars, or even collaboration with Triad
gangsters who split their protection money with the man on the beat.
Once in a great while a case like that of Assistant Superintendent John
Chao-ko Tsang crops up, with a high-ranking Chinese officer involved in
spying for a foreign government—Communist China, in this instance. But
such is the exception and does not change one lesson the British rulers
have learned in 120 years of hiring almost every kind of recruit from a
Scotsman to a Sikh; that of them all, the rank-and-file Chinese cop is
the finest the colony has ever had.
The command structure of the police department, which is highly
centralized under an all-British top administration, is reflected in
almost every branch of the colony government. There are approximately
15,000 natives of the British Isles in the colony, excluding members of
the armed forces and their families, and they occupy virtually all of the
top government posts.
A number of writers have expressed the view that Hong Kong is actually
controlled by about twenty persons, and while this could be criticized
as extreme—and certainly impossible to prove—it could just as well be
said that it is controlled by not more than ten persons: The governor;
the colonial secretary; the financial secretary; the director of Public
Works; the managing director of Jardine, Matheson & Co. (the most
powerful and longest-established business house); the general manager of
the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank (the leading financial institution); the
two most influential Chinese members of the Executive and Legislative
Councils; and the most prominent Portuguese and Indian member of the
Executive or Legislative Council. Perhaps the best way to test this
top-ten theory would be to try running something in opposition to these
ten, and no one has ventured that yet.
There is no important elective office in Hong Kong, no widely qualified
electorate and no open agitation for universal suffrage. Nor is there
any sign of a forcibly suppressed yearning for democratic rule on the
part of the general population. The Communists, of course, loudly profess
their love of elective government, but the British and a majority of the
Chinese construe this to mean the entering wedge for Red China to annex
the colony. This is an old-fashioned colonial autocracy, completely
dominated by a small minority at the top, but even without a vote it
appears to enjoy more confidence from its subjects than do the Reds on
the mainland of China.
The greatest strength of the colony government is that in spite of
its pin-point degree of representation, it can rule in an orderly and
efficient manner without the excesses of tyranny or dictatorship. For
ultimately, it is not the governing few but the law that rules in Hong
Kong.
The Hong Kong government is a subsidiary of the British Crown. It gets
its orders from the Colonial Office and they are carried out by the
governor and two advisory bodies, the Executive and Legislative Councils.
The governor is the head of both councils. Five persons have seats
in both councils by virtue of their office—the commander of British
forces in the colony, the colonial secretary, the attorney general,
the secretary for Chinese affairs, and the financial secretary. In
addition, one colony official is nominated to the Executive Council,
and four other government officials are nominated for the Legislative
Council. The governor goes outside the official family to nominate six
unofficial members of the Executive Council and eight unofficial members
of the Legislative Council. Altogether, there are 31 places in this
policy-making hierarchy. Since several of its members hold two jobs
in this selective directorate, there are at present a total of 23 men
participating in top-level government.
The governor must consult with the Executive Council on all important
matters, but he decides what must be done. If he takes action against
the express advice of his Executive Council, he owes a full explanation
for doing so to the Colonial Secretary. The governor makes the laws with
the advice and consent of the Legislative Council, and he must have its
approval for all public spending. British common law, adapted where
necessary to local conditions and Chinese customs, is the legal code of
Hong Kong.
Thus the colony presents a unique governmental phenomenon. Approximately
ten to twenty English-speaking men holding undisputed sway over 3,300,000
subjects, of whom not one in ten understands the language of his rulers
and hardly fifty percent can claim Hong Kong as their birthplace.
By all visible signs, the colony is one of the best-run governments in
the Far East. Its roads are paved and traffic moves in an orderly way
in spite of the highest vehicle concentration per mile of road anywhere
in the world. The same order prevails in the incessant shuttling of
harbor vessels. Public transportation is swift, frequent and generally
on schedule. Poverty and privation are everywhere, but starvation is
virtually non-existent. Business and trade thrive and unemployment is
low. Wages seem minuscule when compared with American standards, yet are
higher than in most of the countries of Asia. A majority of its people
are indifferent to the government, but they are not afraid of it. When
something has to be done, there are people at the top with the resolution
and the intelligence to do it without trampling human rights.
Is Hong Kong’s autocracy, therefore, a model for the world? On the
contrary, there is hardly another place where its practices would be
applicable. Hong Kong’s exasperating uniqueness has defied even the
efforts of the Colonial Office to make it conform to British government
practices.
With all its efficiency, however, Hong Kong has the weaknesses of its
governmental structure and its political environment. Because of its
extreme centralization, its almost ingrown character in relation to
its constituents, it is often out of touch with the people it governs.
Enormous barriers of language and culture block its view, and graft and
corruption threaten it from every angle. In Asia, graft is the deadliest
enemy of every form of government which pretends to deal justly with its
citizens, and Hong Kong is not invulnerable to its attack.
From the earliest days of the colony, the Chinese people who emigrated
there were fugitives from restraint and oppression. Many of them were
outright fugitives from justice. Whatever their virtues or vices, they
had found existence under the government of their homeland so intolerable
that they willingly submitted to the rule of an alien people they neither
trusted nor admired. From centuries of bitter experience in China, they
believed that no government was to be trusted. The secret of survival
was to avoid all open defiance of governments and to go on living within
the framework of one’s family and clan as though the government did
not exist. One did not cheat the other members of his clan, because
retribution could be swift and terrible. Relations with civil rulers were
not an ethical compact; they were a battle of wits, a stubborn struggle
for self-preservation in which the cunning of the individual was the only
weapon against the greed and power of the state.
How much more applicable these lessons were when those rulers were
foreign devils who did not speak one’s language! One did not rebel
against the headstrong foreigners and their military superiority; he
obeyed them in externals, so far as it was necessary to escape reprisals,
and went on quietly building his own internal mechanisms of graft like a
busy termite in an unsuspecting household. If the people of the household
mistook the termites for industrious but harmless little ants, it was all
the easier for him.
The metaphor need not be done to death, for it is no longer as apposite
as it once was. But there is no question that graft and corruption
continue to eat away at the structure of the colony government.
In a hundred casual conversations with a hundred different colony
residents—English, Chinese, American, Portuguese, governmental and
nongovernmental—the visitor will almost never hear that the ruling powers
have railroaded some poor devil off to jail without cause, swindled him
out of his property to benefit the state, or hounded the populace into
semistarvation with unbearable taxation. If these evils exist, they are
neither frequent enough nor sufficiently conspicuous to engage people’s
passions.
But on the subject of graft—the innumerable, small nicks taken from
merchants, builders, and the ordinary citizen seeking any type of
official favor or permit—the floodgates of complaint are wide open. Much
of this is generalized, unproved, even irresponsible, operating at about
the same intellectual level as a taxi-driver’s jeremiad. Nevertheless,
there is a core of solid complaint that cannot be ignored.
Within the colony government, there is a large segment that bridles
at the least intimation of official graft. The motto of this segment
is: Don’t rock the boat. We know we’re not perfect, they seem to be
saying, but don’t go around kicking over beehives, or the first thing
we know, the Colonial Office will be down on our heads with all kinds
of inquiries, full-dress investigations and a fearful flap. We’ll all
be sacked, sent home in disgrace, and it won’t change one thing for the
better. So let’s keep quiet, muddle along as best we can and try to
eliminate the grafters quietly, one at a time. We’re really not a bad lot
of chaps, you know.
Fortunately, some of the colony’s chief officers do not subscribe to the
theory that corruption can be defeated by a public pretense that it does
not exist.
Something like a civic shock-wave was recorded in Hong Kong on January
11, 1962, when Chief Justice Michael Hogan opened the Supreme Court
Assizes by coming to grips with the issue of corruption.
“No one would claim we are entirely immune from this evil,” Sir Michael
said. He noted that the heavy penalties prescribed for corruption
offenses must be enforced without recourse to “the surreptitious whisper
in the corridor; the accusation made behind his (the accused’s) back; or
the anonymous letter. If such methods should come to be accepted, then we
would have another evil just as bad, if not worse, than corruption.”
The Chief Justice proceeded to put his finger on one of the main
obstacles to the exposure of corruption:
“There is a reluctance to come forward and give information; to come, if
necessary, into court and face the possibility of a cross-examination,
attacking character, credit and the power of recollection—in fact a
reluctance to pay the price that the rule of law demands.”
He contrasted this attitude with the recent case of a Mr. Tong, who
captured and held on to a sneak-thief despite six stab wounds, and asked:
“Does this mean that physical courage is more plentiful than moral
courage in Hong Kong today?”
He reached the heart of the matter with the observation that a citizen
will be very slow to come forward with a complaint against an official if
he knows that perhaps tomorrow or the next day or the day after, he has
got to come and ask that official, or some colleague of that official, or
somebody apparently identified with him in interest, for a concession, or
a privilege, or some act of consideration.
It is only when men have clearly defined rights, he continued, that they
enjoy the security to challenge the abuse of power and the ability to
choke off corruption. If an official can grant or withhold permission
“without the necessity of giving public reasons for the decision,” the
Chief Justice declared, “you immediately create an opening for corruption
or the suspicion of it.”
The Chief Justice’s address, particularly in its allusion to
“closed-door” decisions and a lack of moral sense in the community,
produced headlines and editorials in the local press and acute twinges
of discomfort among those who either benefited by corruption or feared
any public admission that it existed. In itself, the address was
neither an exposé nor an indictment, but its delivery by the brilliant
and articulate Chief Justice in one of the most solemn ceremonies of
the governmental year rang a clear warning from the citadel: If the
corrupters were haled before the courts, they could expect no easy-going
tolerance for their misdeeds.
During the previous July, Governor Black had moved to correct one
weakness peculiar to Hong Kong. Because of the Chinese tradition that
personal contact with the government is to be avoided, many residents
were reluctant to approach an official for such routine information as
where to apply for an identity card or how to locate a lost pet. If they
plucked up the courage to ask a question, they assumed that some fee,
to be paid either above or below the table, would be exacted for any
answer given. The situation offered a happy hunting ground for grafters,
either those on the government payroll who dealt with the general public
or the self-appointed private “fixers” who directed the applicant to a
particular official for a small fee. Sometimes the fixer and the official
were in cahoots and sheared the lamb at both ends of his journey.