Politicians from Hong Kong

"I do not say what I do not mean. Neither can anyone force me to say what I don't wish to say."

"And 'speak truth unto power'? What does this mean? It means giving your best advice to superiors based on the best information available and objective analysis even when you know it may not be music to their ears."

"For the first ten years or so, you would always question whether the decisions were right or wrong, but you have to learn to put things behind you once a decision is made. You can't be wishy-washy about it."

"I am confident, however old-fashioned this may sound, that funds left in the hands of the public will come into the Exchequer with interest at the time in the future when we need them."

"The fact that previous generations have handed down to us a substantial public heritage by way of roads, port, etc. almost completely free of debt, seems to me to impose some limitation on the validity of the theory that by borrowing we should, or could, pass on the burden of development to the next generation."

"An infant industry, if coddled, tends to remain an infant industry and never grows up or expands."

"Official opposition to overall economic planning and planning controls has been characterized in a recent editorial as "Papa knows best". But it is precisely because Papa does not know best that I believe that Government should not presume to tell any businessman or industrialist what he should or should not do, far less what he may or not do; and no matter how it may be dressed up that is what planning is."

"Over a wide field of our economy it is still the better course to rely on the nineteenth century's "hidden hand" than to thrust clumsy bureaucratic fingers into its sensitive mechanism. In particular, we cannot afford to damage its mainspring, freedom of competitive enterprise."

"One trouble is that when Government gets into a business it tends to make it uneconomic for anyone else."

"I will not be proposing a course which has been under some public discussion recently — deficit financing. It is wholly inappropriate to our economic situation. In its least extreme form it is based on the theory that additional money generated by a Government deficit (and given currency, as necessary, by use of the printing press) will stimulate consumption and thereby production, in time to match the excess money with goods before real inflationary harm is done. Unfortunately we don't, and can't, produce more than a small fraction of what we consume, and increased consumption would merely mean increased imports without matching exports; and a severe balance of payment crisis, which would destroy Hong Kong's credit and confidence in the Hong Kong dollar; and which we could not cure without coming close to ruining ourselves. Keynes was not writing with our situation in mind. In this hard world we have to earn before we spend."

"I am also, I must confess, a little sceptical of the theory that we have a right, if we could, to pass on our capital burden to future generations. I remarked last year in this context that our predecessors had not passed any significant part of their burden on to us."

"We enjoy a considerable net inflow of capital and I am sure that a condition of its coming, and staying, is that it is free to flow out again. It is also important for Hong Kong's status as a financial centre that there should be a maximum freedom of capital movement both in and out."

"I should like to begin with a philosophical comment. I do not think that when one is speaking of hardships or benefits one can reasonably speak in terms of classes or social groups but only in terms of individuals."

"Economists of the modern school will no doubt protest that I have said nothing of the use of budget deficits or surpluses for the control of the economy in general. I doubt if such techniques would ever be appropriate in Hong Kong's exposed economic position; and I think they are certainly not appropriate at present, when in strict orthodoxy they would suggest the need to plan for a very substantial surplus "to take the heat out of the economy". Although we have in fact run substantial surpluses in recent years we have not done so with deflationary effect because we have not removed them from the economy but have left them inside the Colony's banking system to continue to work for the economy. $500 million or 55% of reserves are so held at present."

"Money cannot be converted into houses or trained teachers or hospitals at the touch of a magic wand. There are limitations to our physical and intellectual resources."

"A glimmer of light is better than no illumination at all."

"Revenue has increased in this way is in no small measure, I am convinced, due to our low tax policy which has helped to generate an economic expansion in the face of unfavourable circumstances"

"If one accepts that in general social services should be made available to all on the basis of ability to pay, one has the choice of two opposite principles of action, although they need not be mutually exclusive—either progressive taxation and free services or fees covering costs with remission for those who cannot afford them. The former method is appropriate, in my view, in rich developed countries where the principle of progressive taxation can be applied without unduly adverse economic or social results, and the wastes inherent in full and free services can be afforded. In less advanced or poorer countries, where neither economy nor society is geared to progressive taxation and waste cannot be tolerated, fees remittable in case of need seem to me clearly more appropriate."

"Many of our services cost more than do similar services in Europe, because, although we have a substantial quantitative deficiency of public services, the decision-takers and policy-makers, both inside and outside Government as I have said before today, being themselves from the better-off (to use a popular euphemism) sectors of our society, not only demand the highest standards of provision of public services to meet what they consider their own essential needs (for example, in public car parks); but also find it difficult to think of provision for the rest of the population in terms of standards relative to our real total resources."

"It seems to me that we have three choices; first, public services of high standard and cost but of limited scope, leaving unfilled a substantial part of the present gap, not necessarily benefiting those in real need and benefiting many who are not in need at all (this has been our historical approach); second, public services to meet the requirements of all, with the beneficiaries making a contribution by way of fee according to their means, and with adequate provision for complete remission in suitable cases; or third, universal public services provided for rich and poor alike on terms the poorest can afford; that is, the welfare state where all benefit and the whole cost is met by the taxpayer in general. I think it is well-known that I am an advocate of the second approach."

"I would suggest to my honourable Friend that the foreign investor is at least as discouraged by high national debt for that, as all example shows, is the surest precursor of high taxation."

"I largely agree with those that hold that Government should not in general interfere with the course of the economy merely on the strength of its own commercial judgment. If we cannot rely on the judgment of individual businessmen, taking their own risks, we have no future anyway."

"I still believe that, in the long run, the aggregate of the decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is likely to do less harm than the centralized decisions of a Government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster. As I said earlier in this debate, our economic medicine may be painful but it is fast and powerful because it can act freely."

"My own views on all matters of public revenue and public expenditure are conditioned by an acute appreciation of whose is the sacrifice that produces public revenue and to whom accrues the benefit of public spending."

"One of these is an increasing awareness of the benefits to our economy, particularly in terms of investment and enterprise, both local and from overseas, of not having the inquisitorial type of tax system inevitably associated with a full income tax. Another is that even I, who have always believed in the vigour of our economy under our present tax regime, have been surprised by the growth of revenue generated at our present tax rates."

"Deficit financing proper is rather the process whereby a Government spends more money that it withdraws from the economy by taxation, borrowing, running down reserves, etc.; thereby causing in most circumstances, and very acutely in ours, monetary inflation and severe pressure on the balance of payments."

"Simply put, money comes here and stays here because it can go if it wants to go. Try to hedge it around with prohibitions, and it would go and we could not stop it; and no more would come."

"I have three objections to my honourable Friend’s wider proposal that exchange control powers be used to require the fixing of exchange by merchants on entering into both export and import contracts. The first is that I think it excessively paternalistic to require a merchant to protect himself against a risk he is prepared to take. Secondly, I think it wrong to impose a condition which is likely to cause one group of merchants a loss, for the purpose of providing the other group with protection at no cost to them. Thirdly, I do not think it is in fact practicable to enforce such a system. I am sorry to be so negative, but I am sure that the solution to my honourable Friend’s problem should not depend on compulsion but on the provision of voluntary protection on insurance principles."

"I am afraid that I do not believe that any body of men can have enough knowledge of the past, the present and the future to establish “development priorities” — which presumably means procuring some developments as being good and prohibiting others as being bad."

"What mystifies me is how he or any one else can determine what is a desirable type of industry such as should qualify for special assistance of this kind. In my own simple way I should have thought that a desirable industry was, almost by definition, one which could establish itself and thrive without special assistance in ordinary market conditions. Anything else suggests a degree of omniscience which I, at least, am not prepared to credit even the most expert with. I trust the commercial judgment only of those who are themselves taking the risks."

"One of the things that most surprises me about my honourable Friend’s remarks is that he characterizes his proposal for state intervention in, and control of, industry as “innovation and a spirit of adventure” and condemns free private enterprise as “prosaic precedent”. This is a strange paradox. I would put it precisely the other way round. What he advocates is based on the “prosaic precedent” of many of our rivals who have to resort to wooing industry with artificial aids and have had remarkably little success at it. Recent events have shown that enterprising spirits still prefer our economic freedom to the restrictive swaddling clothes offered elsewhere. Possibly I am a romantic in this but I, for one, do not believe that our spirit of adventure is in need of artificial stimulation — nor do I believe that we can afford the wasteful application of our scarce resources which they would entail—we are neither desperate enough, nor rich enough, for such expedients to make economic sense. It is, of course, all the fashion today to cry in any commercial difficulty, “why doesn’t the Government do something about it”. But I would rather go back to the old days when even the most modest attempt by Government to intervene in commerce and industry was rudely rebuffed."

"But what I really believe is that both he and Mr Wong are innocently guilty of the twentieth century fallacy that technology can be applied to the conduct of human affairs. They cannot believe that anything can work efficiently unless it has been programmed by a computer and have lost faith in the forces of the market and the human actions and reactions that make it up. But no computer has yet been devised which will produce accurate results from a diet of opinion and emotion. We suffer a great deal today from the bogus certainties and precisions of the pseudo-sciences which include all the social sciences including economics. An article I recently read referred to the academic’s “infernal economic arithmetic which ignores human responses”. Technology is admirable on the factory floor but largely irrelevant to human affairs."

"If people want consultative government, the price is increased complexity and delay in arriving at decisions. If they want speed of government, then they must accept a greater degree of authoritarianism. I suspect that the real answer is that most people prefer the latter so long, that is, as government’s decisions conform with their own views."

"What gives me concern in so much of the comment is the implication that the people of Hong Kong have to be given a reward, like children, for being good last year, and bribed, like children, into being good next year. I myself repudiate this paternalistic, indeed colonialist, attitude as a gross insult to our people"

"I myself have no doubt in the past tended to appear to many to be more concerned with the creation of wealth than with its distribution. I must confess that there is a degree of truth in this, but to the extent that it is true, it has been because of my conviction that the rapid growth of the economy, and the pressure that comes with it on demand for labour, both produces a rapid and substantial redistribution of income directly of itself and also makes it possible to assist more generously those who are not, from misfortune temporary or permanent, sharing in the general advance. The history of our last fifteen years or so demonstrates this conclusively."

"There was a plea from honourable Members relating to the need for formal Gross National Product figures. Such figures are very inexact even in the most sophisticated countries I think they do not have a great deal of meaning, even as a basis of comparison between economies. That other countries make use of them is not, I think, necessarily a good reason to suppose that we need them. But, although I am not entirely clear what practical purpose they would serve in Hong Kong, I am sure they would be of interest. I suspect myself, however, that the need arises in other countries because high taxation and more or less detailed Government intervention in the economy have made it essential to be able to judge (or to hope to be able to judge) the effect of policies, and of changes in policies, on the economy. One of the honourable Members who spoke on this subject, said outright, as a confirmed planner, that he thought that they were desirable for the planning of our future economic policy. But we are in the happy position, happier at least for the Financial Secretary where the leverage exercised by Government on the economy is so small that it is not necessary, nor even of any particular value, to have these figures available for the formulation of policy. We might indeed be right to be apprehensive lest the availability of such figures might lead, by a reversal of cause and effect, to policies designed to have a direct effect on the economy. I would myself deplore this."

"I cannot myself believe that anyone in this Chamber, and very few in the community as a whole, would wish to reverse all our previous policies and choose stabilization rather than growth; and it would certainly go contrary to the other views expressed by honourable Members about the need to promote the further growth of trade and industry. Not only would we be fore-going the creation of additional wealth and what this can bring, and has brought, in social advance, but we would also, I believe, permanently damage that climate of economic activity which has taken us so far and so fast. This would be particularly unwise, I suggest, in the face of those relatively darker clouds referred to by Your Excellency."

"I was particularly struck in this context by my honourable Friend, Mr K. S. Lo's concern at the decline in the enamelware industry as an example of the effect of lost advantages, as if this decline were a loss rather than a gain to the community. It has declined, I believe, because we have learned to use our resources of enterprise, capital and labour in other more profitable directions. That is progress. We would be in a sorry way if enamelware was still our fourth biggest industry."

"I must confess my distaste for any proposal to use public funds for the support of selected, and thereby, privileged, industrialists, the more particularly if this is to be based on bureaucratic views of what is good and what is bad by way of industrial development, but I have been studying the report referred to with some interest."

"I find odd the view that a Government institution is better placed to evaluate "the technical and financial viability" of a project than a commercial bank. It may well be that our banks are deficient in the kind of expertize required for assessing projects but then what we should be doing is encouraging banks to acquire such expertize or to make use of outside, commercial, expertize. I do not believe in any case that a Government machine can provide a reliable judgement on such matters, an opinion the banking members of the committee appear to have shared, for they have prudently refused to commit themselves to accepting its advice. I myself tend to mistrust the judgement of anyone not involved in the actual process of risktaking."

"I hold that two principles are important; first that there should be a steady expansion of public services, not an irregular one related to revenue accruing in any particular year; the second that taxes should be constant over long periods (provided, that is, that they are neither burdensome nor inequitable)."

"I met Cowperthwaite in 1963 on my next visit to Hong Kong. I remember asking him about the paucity of statistics. He answered, "If I let them compute those statistics, they’ll want to use them for planning.""

"I have worked for many years with Sir John and I know only too well how wise he can be. I also know what a kind heart beats under his severe exterior―though he would never admit it. He has often, in my view, been unfairly criticized but, as Financial Secretary, he has done far more for Hong Kong than most people, and much more than most people realize."

"Cowperthwaite had a clear desk with no files; he had plenty of time to think. Few were his equals in either intellect or initiative. He invariably had his way with the departments."

"Cowperthwaite was brilliant, well-trained in economics, suffered no fools, and was highly principled. He wouldn't last five minutes in a similar post in Britain, since he was no predisposed to compromise any of his principles - only the constitutional structure of Hong Kong allowed him that power."

"You always had the feeling that Cowperthwaite was looking over your left shoulder. You knew that he would ask at least five questions about any proposal that was submitted."

"The dean, the vice chancellor illuminated, in those old days was elected by the faculty. So all you have to do is to be a nice guy to everyone. And I think Johannes Chan is a very nice guy. And at this point I like to declare my interest, because of one of the referees is my cousin (Andrew Li Kwok-nang). My cousin said he is a very, very nice guy... My main worry on the academic side is that he has no higher degree of PhD or MD or LLD. You may say in law it is not necessary. Well, if it is not necessary, why is there such a degree in the first place?"

"And if you look at other referee professors, they all have LLDs. Therefore, either he hasn’t tried or he is too busy or he doesn’t think it’s important. But if that’s the case, he will be devaluating [sic] … maybe of the lecturers or professors who have got PhDs who have gone through the rigors of academic pursuits. Now can you … can someone be in charge of the promotion of other persons who actually has not gone through same rigors as that other person and give an honest, independent, objective view?"

"in the mainland, a university has a party committee secretary (黨委書記). Do they want a party committee secretary at HKU? Is he a party committee secretary? They want to put him here as party committee secretary."

"July 15, 2019 (6 days before the Yuen Long attack): I am very confident to the ability of our people from Luk Heung, Yuen Long. The more they come, the more we can do. We just beat them up, completely defeat them, right?"

"The bigot by whom the temples were destroyed, is said to have erected mosques on the situations of the most remarkable temples; but the mosque at Ayodhya... is ascertained by an inscription on its walls... to have been built by Babur (...) The only thing except these two figures and the bricks, that could with probability be traced to the ancient city, are some pillars in the mosque built by Babur, These are of black stone, and of an order which I have seen nowhere else, and which will be understood from the accompanying drawing. That they have been taken from a Hindu building, is evident, from the traces of images being observable on some of their bases; although the images have been cut off to satisfy the conscience of the bigot."

"Unfortunately, if these temples ever existed, not the smallest trace of them remains to enable us to judge of the period when they were built; and the destruction is very generally attributed' by the Hindus to the furious zeal of Aurungzebe, to whom also is imputed the overthrow of the temples in Bena- res and Mathura. What may have been the case in the two latter, I shall not now take upon myself to say, but with respect to Ayodhya the tradition seems very ill founded. The bigot by whom the temples were destroyed, is said to have erected mosques on the situations of the most remarkable temples; but the mosque at Ayodhya, which is by far the most entire, and which has every appearance of being the most modern, is as- certained by an inscription on its walls (of which a copy is given) to have been built by Babur, five generations before Aurungzebe."

"This renders the whole story of Vikrama exceedingly doubtful, especially as what are said to be the ruins of his fort, do not in any essential degree differ from those said to have belonged to the ancient city, that is, consist en- tirely of irregular heaps of broken bricks, covered with soil, and remarkably productive of tobacco ; and, from its name, Ramgar, I am inclined to suppose that it was a part of the building actually erected by Rama."

"The only thing except these two figures and the bricks, that could with probability be traced to the ancient city, are some pillars in the mosque built by Babur, These are of black stone, and of an order which I have seen nowhere else, and which will be understood from the accompanying drawing. That they have been taken from a Hindu build- ing, is evident, from the traces of ima- ges being observable on some of their bases; although the images have been cut off to satisfy the conscience of the bigot. It is possible that these pillars have belonged to a temple built by Vikrama; but I think the existence of such temples doubtful ; and, if they did not exist, it is proba- ble that the pillars were taken from the ruins of the palace."

"In Hong Kong, market forces generally determine the rates of remuneration. While "equal pay for men and women for equal work" is now a generally accepted principle in the local community, the concept of "equal pay for work of equal value" is an entirely new one. To put this concept into operation, an employer must ensure that all workers are given equal remuneration not only for the same job, but also for jobs of a different nature yet having the same value. The determination of wage level shall be guided not only by the "invisible hand" of market forces but also the principle of equality and equity. This means that an employer has to objectively appraise different jobs and determine their relative values."

"As a free market, the remuneration for a job is determined by the supply and demand of a particular skill, hence reflecting the market value which is more objective than an employer's judgement of certain inherent values of different jobs. On the face of it, the implementation of the concept of equal pay for work of equal value seems to be fraught with difficulties and complexities."

"Meanwhile, Hong Kong puts a lot of emphasis on innovation technology. It ranks very high on our policy agenda. In the last 23 months, we've invested $100 billion into innovation technology. We are doing our very best to put Hong Kong on the IT map, and in fact, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area development will strengthen Hong Kong's IT development so that the Greater Bay Area will be Wall Street plus Silicon Valley in the future. This is also what Hong Kong's long-term future is all about. But after all, we rely much on Facebook in our daily life because you are such an important medium of communication, bridging the digital divide and also contributing to our society, assisting the underprivileged and strengthening people-to-people connection."

"The Hong Kong government has a constitutional duty to uphold national sovereignty and protect national security."

"Hong Kong has always remained committed to ensuring press freedom, which is part and parcel of the city’s reputation as a vibrant international media hub and global business and financial centre. More than 80 daily newspapers and over 500 periodicals, both local and international, are published in Hong Kong."

"We will remain a staunch defender of press freedom and a welcoming, hospitable and dynamic city for law-abiding people from around the world."

"Even dishwashing is a kind of work experience. Having a difficult work experience on your resume may impress employers, who may think you are self-motivated."