Sir Sik-nin Chau, who has served on both the Executive and Legislative Councils, headed an antinarcotics publicity campaign which was solidly backed by the British and Chinese newspapers. The Kaifong associations joined in the drive with lectures and leaflet-distribution among the Chinese community. The public was urged to report any information about narcotics sales or divans, but the response was slow and timid; many ordinary citizens were obviously afraid of beatings and reprisals by the Triad gangs engaged in drug-peddling. Others hung back in obedience to a deep-seated Chinese tradition of not sticking your neck out by reporting on the other fellow’s dirty work. Some headway has been made against this attitude, but the general feeling of the drive’s publicity people is that their campaign must be sustained for years to overcome it.
Hong Kong’s drug problem is unlike that of New York City, where drug addiction among teen-agers is cause for grave concern. Few Chinese youngsters seem to be attracted to the habit. It is the middle-aged, the unemployed, and most of all, the desperately poor who chase the dragon for a brief sensation of well-being, ease and warmth that is succeeded by a crushing letdown, physical collapse and eventual death. Abrupt withdrawal of the drugs is like an earthquake from within, causing cramps, vomiting, excruciating bodily pain and pathological restlessness. Only a gradual withdrawal under close medical supervision will bring about a cure, and even that carries no guarantee if the rehabilitated addict is turned back to joblessness and squalor.
Much of the drug traffic into Hong Kong is not intended for local consumption, but for reexport to America and Europe. The crossroads position of Hong Kong on international air and shipping routes makes it particularly advantageous to this trade, and internal enforcement is insufficient to cope with it. To bolster their defenses against this traffic, colony drug-suppression officials depend on close coordination with police in Southeast Asia, with the World Health Organization Committee on Drugs Liable to Produce Addiction, and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The colony police force has opened its own sub-bureau of Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization) to strengthen its offensive against international drug peddlers.
One oddity of the colony’s widespread drug addiction is that it is seldom apparent to the average visitor; he may spend weeks there without seeing a single identifiable drug victim. Trained observers can often spot an addict by his dazed expression or emaciated appearance, but even in these cases they need further evidence to verify the appraisal. Dragon-chasers don’t charge through the streets like rogue elephants—not in the colony, at any rate—they stay hidden and comatose in their squatter shacks or divans.
Police find the Triad gangs perennially active in the sale of narcotics, just as they are in pimpery, extortion and shakedown rackets. Congested areas such as Yau Ma Tei and Sham Shui Po have the highest crime rates and the largest Triad membership. Only about five percent of the 500,000 Triad members are engaged in major crimes, yet the threat of vengeance from this militant minority is generally sufficient to keep the other members silent and submissive. The mere implication of Triad backing, in a threatening letter sent to a rich Chinese, usually produces cash to pay off the letter writer, although police have recently had more success in persuading prospective victims of these menaces to contact them instead of paying off. Kidnapings are rare, though at least one case made the headlines in 1961.
The makeup of the police department closely reflects both the hierarchy and the numerical grouping of the colony’s population. The line force of uniformed men and detectives in all grades totaled 8,333 in 1961. Nine-tenths were Chinese and less than 500 were British, with less than 200 Pakistanis and a handful of Portuguese. The top 50 administrative posts were almost solidly British, however. The force also includes a civilian staff of 1400.
For the purposes of the ordinary citizen, a colony cop is a Chinese cop, for these are the only officers he sees regularly. Taken as a group, they are an alert-looking, smartly uniformed body, predominantly young, slim and athletic. Day or night, they appear to be very much on the job, and the worldwide complaint that a cop is never there when you need him seems peculiarly inapplicable to Hong Kong. The Chinese officer quite obviously is proud of his job, but the swaggering bully-boy pose is alien to his nature.
A few Chinese officers, like police in all other cities, go bad. When they are drummed out of the force, it is generally for shaking down a hawker or a merchant. More serious cases involve the protection of gambling, prostitution, after-hour bars, or even collaboration with Triad gangsters who split their protection money with the man on the beat. Once in a great while a case like that of Assistant Superintendent John Chao-ko Tsang crops up, with a high-ranking Chinese officer involved in spying for a foreign government—Communist China, in this instance. But such is the exception and does not change one lesson the British rulers have learned in 120 years of hiring almost every kind of recruit from a Scotsman to a Sikh; that of them all, the rank-and-file Chinese cop is the finest the colony has ever had.
The command structure of the police department, which is highly centralized under an all-British top administration, is reflected in almost every branch of the colony government. There are approximately 15,000 natives of the British Isles in the colony, excluding members of the armed forces and their families, and they occupy virtually all of the top government posts.
A number of writers have expressed the view that Hong Kong is actually controlled by about twenty persons, and while this could be criticized as extreme—and certainly impossible to prove—it could just as well be said that it is controlled by not more than ten persons: The governor; the colonial secretary; the financial secretary; the director of Public Works; the managing director of Jardine, Matheson & Co. (the most powerful and longest-established business house); the general manager of the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank (the leading financial institution); the two most influential Chinese members of the Executive and Legislative Councils; and the most prominent Portuguese and Indian member of the Executive or Legislative Council. Perhaps the best way to test this top-ten theory would be to try running something in opposition to these ten, and no one has ventured that yet.