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Jake Van Der Kamp

'When critics suggested that he [Sir John Cowperthwaite] collect and publish more economic statistics to back up his initiatives, he reputedly said: 'Oh, we can't do that. If we did, people would only try to use those statistics and where would we be then'?'

SCMP version

'As for the paucity of economic statistics for the colony, Cowperthwaite explained that he resisted requests to provide any, lest they be used as ammunition by those who wanted more government intervention.'

Daily Telegraph version

I RECOGNISE THAT SCMP version in the obituary we published last week on the death of Sir John, Hong Kong's financial secretary in the 1960s.

It is my version. I could not find the exact quote when I wrote about it some time back and thus I approximated it. The Daily Telegraph's is better. Sorry.

But I now think Sir John had it wrong. Few people find economic statistics useful in making a case for government intervention unless, that is, they use them dishonestly. Interventionists prefer hot air to support their case. Facts tend to disprove it.

I never met Sir John. I arrived in Hong Kong after he left. I have encountered his legacy often enough, however. It remains with us today when civil servants talk about a small government facilitating the market's role. Few of them really mean it, of course, but Sir John branded Hong Kong so enduringly with his 'positive non-interventionism' that they cannot entirely subvert it.

He was a man of caustic wit. Told that even the directors of  Hongkong Bank did not understand the mechanism of the Hong Kong dollar's link to the pound sterling at the time, he retorted: 'Better they shouldn't. They would mess it up.'

How true. When Hong Kong abandoned that link after he left and the bank was then given a bigger say in monetary affairs, they did indeed mess it up, so badly, in fact, that the link had to be reforged to the US dollar in 1983 after a currency collapse.

Few of Sir John's successors as financial secretary understood it either. That is why the present link's principal architect, John Greenwood, must still return regularly to keep them on the straight and narrow.

Here is another example of Sir John's scorn for would-be wastrels of public money: 'My honourable friend Mr Watson has given us another brilliant exhibition of special, indeed specious, pleading on behalf of his favourite cause, the provision of subsidised car-parks at the expense of the whole community. He has once again made our hearts bleed for the wretched lot of the small indigent and oppressed minority, the car owner.'

I rather suspect that Mr Watson was not heard from again.

And when a study advocated big public expenditure on tourist projects: 'I may say that I have read the report's forecasts of the amount of additional national income and public revenue which these projects would generate with considerable surprise and complete scepticism.' If only we were as sceptical of the tourist lobby today. Instead, we waste billions on it with as little return as Sir John foresaw we would get.

On the original proposals for what is now Ocean Park: 'I think one fact already stands out clearly; the proposal stands or falls, not as a tourist attraction, but as an amenity for our own people.'

Do you hear that, Allan Zeman? Do it for us, not for them. The Disney Park's poor attendances now confirm it, but someone already knew this much earlier.

On proposals for government subsidy of 'desirable' industries: '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 the most expert with. I trust the commercial judgment only of those who are themselves taking the risks.'

Superb insight but, unfortunately, we have abandoned it and white elephants such as Cyberport, Science Park and the small and medium enterprise push are the result, all money down the drain. Sir John would have saved it for us.

And, finally, his most enduring comment: 'I did very little. All I did was to try to prevent some of the things that might undo it.'

Not quite true, Sir. You did a great deal more for us by doing little than was done by your successors who tried to do much. You lived to a well-merited ripe old age but we already missed you long before your years came to an end.



Sir John's legacy of positive non-interventionism  endures