Contrived Laissez-Faireism

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. British Colonialism and the ‘Contrived Laissez-faireism’ in Hong Kong

   Fujio Mizuoka

   Abstract

   The dawn of Hong Kong history came with the British merchants selling opium to China in exchange for silver. Faced with fierce opposition from Lin Zexu to halt the drain of the species, the British government decided to intervene in order to protect the merchants’ free trade. One of the most prominent opium traders was William Jardine from Scotland. Upon victory in the Opium War, Hong Kong was formally ceded to Britain, which declared it a British colony in 1843 under the Treaty of Nanjing.

3. Chapter 2. Subsumption of Hong Kong Space into the British Colonial Apparatus

   Fujio Mizuoka

   Abstract

   Once upon a time, aboard flights landing in the former Hong Kong International Airport (Kai Tak), passengers were frightened to see the densely packed cityscape of Kowloon Peninsula just a few hundred metres below them. Now that Hong Kong International Airport has moved to Chek Lap Kok, they feel deceived by the comfortably expanding grassy hills of Lantau Island, with hardly a house upon it, except for only a small patch of new development at the bottom of the hill. Indeed, the apparently ‘overpopulated’ Hong Kong is still endowed with much empty space. In 1996, a year before the British were to leave Hong Kong, only 175 km² out of 1095 km², or 16.0% of the colony’s land, was classified as ‘developed land’, which was either in active urban use for putting up commercial buildings, residential housing, industrial or government buildings, roads or rail rights-of-way, or was left vacant awaiting development. Adding agricultural fields, fish-breeding ponds, live-stock farms and reservoirs and the area of land actively used for economic purposes merely made up 290 km² or 26.5% of the total area of Hong Kong as of 1996.

4. Chapter 3. ‘Illegal’ Immigration from Mainland China and Regulation of the Local Labour Market

   Fujio Mizuoka

   Abstract

   In the neoclassical theoretical framework, labour is one of the economic factors supposed to have right of laissez-faire mobility in order to maximise revenue. Labour makes attempts to migrate from lower-income to higher-income regions in search of higher wages, much as multinational corporations and speculative financial capital seek regions with cheaper labour or lower tax rates. The ‘global convergence’ tenet, originally put forward by neoclassical economists, is substantiated only through the laissez-faire approach to the spatial mobility of capital and labour, and, in particular, to the acceptance on the part of the capitalist class of the unrestricted spatial migration of labour from lower- to higher-wage territories and countries. This is the prerequisite for the posited global convergence.

5. Chapter 4. Capital Accumulation, Ethnicity and Production of Space in the Squatter Problem

   Fujio Mizuoka

   Abstract

   As has been discussed earlier in this book, existence of the colonial administration relied upon the extraction of wealth from pristine space. Here lay a hidden contradiction: to extract wealth from the Crown lands, it would be necessary to foster the macro-economy of Hong Kong through more competitive industrial production, which necessitated space more affordably available to industry and people, whereas this policy imperative functioned as an impediment to extracting wealth from pristine spaces. The solution to this dialectic resulted in massive public works projects in spite of the official claim of ‘laissez-faire’, including squatter clearance, construction of public housing and industrial districts as well as the Mass Transit Railway. This book deals with these typical public works projects waged by the colonial government in Chaps. 4–6.

6. Chapter 5. Industrialisation and Space in the Development of Kwun Tong Industrial Area

   Fujio Mizuoka

   Abstract

   The production of the built environment as the physical foundation of laissez-faire was essential for solving dialectics of space and people towards sustenance of the colony of Hong Kong, through capital accumulation and ethnic integration.

7. Chapter 6. The Colonialism Behind the Making of the Urban Rapid Railway System (MTR)

   Fujio Mizuoka

   Abstract

   We discussed in the previous chapters that the colonial government developed the physical system of spatial configuration to function as the ‘arena’ of effective laissez-faire competition of incoming Chinese from the mainland, and as a means of obtaining the most revenue out of colonial space.

8. Chapter 7. Production of Colonial Consciousness Among Middle-Class Chinese: Legitimisation of British Rule Through Education

   Fujio Mizuoka

   Abstract

   We have so far dealt with the ethnic integration of Chinese into the colonial society through the spatial policies and production of the built environment. Nevertheless, development of the consciousness of the Hong Kong Chinese to conform to the colonial system must also be cultivated through teaching of ideologies. This is particularly important for the middle-class Hong Kong Chinese who had the opportunity to receive secondary and higher education and assume substantial positions after graduation. The contrived laissez-faireism through creation of scarcity, the common tactic that colonial government adopted for space, is quite visible here as well. It is to this topic that now we turn.

9. Chapter 8. Conclusion

   Fujio Mizuoka

   Abstract

   Lacking wide expanses of land for plantation agriculture or natural resources to be exploited, the administration of this colony that originated with the ‘barren island’ indeed needed a genius in the Art of Colonisation. Although Hong Kong had nothing in terms of natural resources, the colonial British consistently extracted wealth from barren, pristine space through creation of scarcity and growth of demand on it. With the curtailment of the entrepôt function after the founding of the PRC and Korean War, Hong Kong ensured the continuance of its position within the global relative space by creating a new function of export-oriented industrialisation. The growth of the macro-economy enhanced demand on space; and concomitantly the opportunities for land speculation co-opted wealthier Chinese into the colonial apparatus. The crux of the colonisation of Hong Kong lay nowhere but in the space itself. It had to be deployed and developed with great care and planning in an era when the British could no longer expand their empire.

10. 9. Correction to: The Colonialism Behind the Making of the Urban Rapid Railway System (MTR)

    Fujio Mizuoka

11. Backmatter