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HONG KONG'S COLONIAL LEGACY: A Hong Kong Chinese's View of the British Heritage. By Chi Kuen Lau. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1997. xvi, 200 pp. US$16.00, paper ISBN 962-201-793-2.
THE END OF BRITISH RULE and sovereignty retrocession in China in mid1997 necessitate an appraisal of Hong Kong's colonial legacy. A recent example is the volume by C. K. Lau, an editor of the local English daily, South China Morning Post. Not an academic research work of detailed scholarly analysis, Lau's book offers a broad overview of selected aspects of Hong Kong under British rule from a local Chinese perspective. He delineates the growth and transformation of the colony as shaped by British institutions, policies, practices and values during the past 156 years.
As reflected in the chapter titles of the book, Lau focuses on the following areas: executive-led government, laissez-faire and miminal welfare, the politics of business and the fall of the Taipans, the language malaise, common law in a Chinese setting, and a strictly controlled "free press." While not too uncritical of the British colonial establishment's not so honourable...