Then & now: busy bodies
Think tanks - in various guises - have long operated in Hong Kong, with varying levels of efficacy, writes Jason Wordie
As what passes for serious debate on who can (or cannot) stand for selection – sorry, election – to be Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2017 gets bogged down in petty, intransigent detail, “think tanks” are regaining prominence, and more are being created.
With apologies to Oscar Wilde’s delicious fox-hunting observations, Hong Kong’s public life now displays the unedifying scramble of the ineffectual in full pursuit of the unelectable.
Consultative bodies – precursors of today’s think tanks – have a long local history; from the 19th century onwards, these semiformal groupings enabled successive administrations to gauge public opinion and, astonishingly, respond creatively now and again.
Hong Kong’s earliest think tanks were temple management groups – the Man Mo Temple Committee, composed of prominent business figures, had evolved into an important power centre by the late 1850s. Over time, it became the still-important Tung Wah Hospital Committee. Other consultative bodies, such as the Po Leung Kuk, developed along similar lines.
Ultimately though, key Hong Kong decisions were made elsewhere, often for reasons of broader political expedience, and history’s evidence for this remains overwhelming. When a localised issue – capital punishment in the 1960s, for example, or mui tsai (female slaves) in the 20s – attracted enough negative public opinion in Britain, final decisions either overrode the best interests of the people of Hong Kong at that time or openly superseded their wishes.
As a society with limited (and for most of its history, non-existent) electoral franchise, having some level of public consensus for official policy is important.
