THOSE who criticise the appointment of an expatriate, Don Watson, to run the Customs and Excise Department seem to have confused the Hongkong Government's localisation policy with a policy of ethnic cleansing. With the recent car smuggling scandals, the appointment of a policeman as Commissioner of Customs and Excise seems to be quite a sensible choice.
There has been a long and honourable connection between the Chinese Customs Service and foreigners. Sir Robert Hart, an Irishman, was the Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service for almost 50 years.
Like so much that happened in China during the last century, foreign involvement in Chinese Customs began as an accident of history when, in 1854, at the height of the Taiping Rebellion, a band of Triads, who were allied to the rebels, captured the walled city of Shanghai.
The Qing officials took refuge in the nearby Foreign Concessions which had been declared neutral. The rebels had captured the Customs House and for some time no duty had been collected on the goods traded in the Concessions; Shanghai became a smugglers' paradise.
In desperation, the Chinese Imperial Qing Government asked the consuls of Great Britain, France and the United States for help. In its first year the new foreign-run Imperial Maritime Customs at Shanghai collected over a million taels in revenue.
This was far more than had ever been collected under the old system, where corrupt Mandarins not only cheated their own government out of most of the takings, but squeezed the foreign merchants unmercifully as well.
After Shanghai had been recaptured by the Qing Imperialists, the temporary arrangement became permanent and Canton and other treaty ports soon followed the example. It was a very pragmatic arrangement: more revenue was collected, smuggling and squeeze were reduced, and the activities of unscrupulous foreign merchants were policed effectively.