Governing Hong Kong: Administrative Officers from the Nineteenth Century to the Handover to China, 1862-1997

Chapter 7: LOCALIZATION

114 Chapter 7 LOCALIZATION __________________________ Although the Hong Kong government formally adopted a policy of localization in 1936 this was implemented only half-heartedly before the Second World War and it did not in any event apply to cadets.1 The first break with the long established tradition of recruiting only young men of pure European descent as cadets was made after the war when Governor Young appointed Paul Tsui as an administrative officer in 1946.2 While Young intended to offer Hong Kong a new deal, and Tsui’s appointment reflected this in part, it did not mark the beginning of a sustained new policy to recruit local talent to join the colonial government at the administrative officer level. Tsui was a special case. He had previously demonstrated his loyalty to the crown by service in the British Army Aid Group during the war and proved his suitability as an administrator in the British military administration. Compared with his immediate predecessor and successor, Governor Young was unusual in his views of Hong Kong’s future and politics.3 He believed that Hong Kong could not secure its future as a British territory without involving the local people in the management of their affairs as much as possible. But his impact was limited because he was in office for less than a year. Tsui’s appointment should therefore be seen as a landmark event, but it was not the real beginning of a policy to localize at the administrative officer level. Indeed, it was not until the early 1950s that the colonial government started to advertise vacancies in Hong Kong in addition to recruiting in the UK. The recruitment of local administrative officers had a slow start partly because the expansion of the administrative class had always been conducted at a deliberate pace, but also because it took time for Localization 115 suitable local candidates to see this as an attractive career opportunity. More important was the mindset of the government. For a long time there was an unspoken understanding that the bulk of administrative officers would continue to be recruited from the UK or from transfers from within the empire. It was only after the initial intake of local officers proved a success that an increasing percentage of them came to be recruited. Even then, in the 1970s, there was a feeling within the colonial administration that ‘a “balance” of local-expatriate recruitment to the police inspectorate and the Administrative class’ was needed ‘to show both Beijing and the local community that Britain remained committed to Hong Kong’.4 It was not until Hong Kong’s future was settled in the first half of the 1980s that the recruitment of expatriate officers was eventually stopped and differential fringe benefits as part of their overall remuneration package completely removed. ‘Decolonization’ elsewhere in the British Empire did not provide much impetus for Hong Kong to localize faster. Unlike most other colonies, there was no expectation in Hong Kong that it was moving towards independence and there was therefore no sense of urgency in the implementation of a policy of localization. Instead, ‘decolonization ’ elsewhere, particularly following British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ speech in South Africa in 1960, meant that experienced colonial administrative officers became readily available for Hong Kong to recruit. Their availability made a successful implementation of a localization policy less pressing. While such recruitment was seldom forced on Hong Kong it was encouraged by the British government in London because it had a moral if not actual responsibility to help colonial administrative officers find alternative employment upon the independence of a colony.5 Those administrative officers who had served elsewhere in the British Empire before their appointments to Hong Kong belonged, strictly speaking, to two categories. Some went to Hong Kong, often from British Malaya or Singapore, on transfer at a relatively early stage of their colonial administrative career, which meant they would keep their seniority gained elsewhere. Others left their colonies, often on independence, received a severance lump sum payment and were recruited by the Hong Kong government at the lowest administrative officer grade regardless of their previous seniority.6 They came to be Governing Hong Kong 116 known informally as colonial ‘retreads’. They were also distinct from the small but not insignificant number of individuals ‘who came out from the Home Civil Service, sometimes just for a tour or two, but some...