The ship carpenters of Hong Kong are far above average ability, so much so that the Chinese Communists have attempted, without notable success, to induce them to build junks in China. Demand for their skills has, however, raised their wages about one-third in the last two years. The fishermen have had their rigid conservatism shattered by the changes around them. In spite of their usual illiteracy, they have learned the rules of navigation at fisheries department schools. More advanced classes have qualified for licenses as engineers, pilots, navigators and boat-builders. For the first time they have lodged their families on shore, with the wives becoming used to housekeeping and the children attending schools. Many Westerners, seeing this upheaval in the fine, free life of the fisherman, deplore the passing of the old ways. The fishermen, always quicker at grabbing for prosperity than in clinging to romantic illusions, are moving forward at top speed without a thought to their suddenly disappearing past. CHAPTER SEVEN Crime, Power and Corruption “We have absolutely no doubt from the evidence and statistics we have studied that corruption exists on a scale which justifies the strongest counter-measures.”—HONG KONG ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON CORRUPTION, January, 1962 The British crown colony of Hong Kong came into existence under circumstances bearing less resemblance to the majesty of British law and order than they did to a territorial dispute between the Capone and O’Banion mobs during the Chicago of the 1920s. Its founding fathers were dope peddlers whose ability to bribe Chinese customs officials made the traders rich and goaded the Chinese Emperor into a war that cost him the loss of a worthless island called Hong Kong. The Rev. George Smith, an English missionary who visited the colony during its first five years, approached the place with the exalted conviction that his country had “been honoured by God as the chosen instrument for diffusing the pure light of Protestant Christianity throughout the world.” He went ashore to discover a polyglot Gehenna with no market for the Word. “The lowest dregs of native society flock to the British settlement in the hope of gain or plunder,” he wrote. “There are but faint prospects at present of any other than either a migratory or a predatory race being attracted to Hong Kong, who, when their hopes of gain or pilfering vanish, without hesitation or difficulty remove elsewhere.”