hong kong, singapore, south korea and taiwan: oikonomic welfare states

Catherine Jones

Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan: Oikonomic Welfare States’

THE ‘LITTLE TIGERS’ ’ REPUTATION AMONGST WESTERNERS (and for that matter with the Japanese) is rich in negatives. Exploitative, unprincipled, uncontrolled; minimalist on welfare, maximalist on profit: the unacceptable face of capitalism indeed, to those feeling themselves on the receiving end of the Tigers’ determination to compete and get rich quick. Nevertheless the image is misleading. These are no chance miracles of laissez-faire capitalism unbound. On the contrary, the rise ‘from nowhere’ to world trading notoriety has to an extent been contrived in every case.

Moreover it has been contrived in a particular fashion: via the ‘household management’* of each national ‘household economy’ (oikos in classical Greek), with the aid (amongst other things) of ‘ Western-style’ social services. Hence the expression ‘Oikonomic welfare states’. This paper looks first at some of the explanatory characteristics (see Table l), before commenting (see Table 2) on the Tigers as welfare states.

MOTIVATION. OPPORTUNITY

They grew because they were pushed. This is scarcely a sufficient explanation of the speed of take-off and rates of economic growth

’ Ideas presented in this paper stem from researches originally conducted into social policy development in Hong Kong (ESRC personal research grant 1984- 85). C. Jones, Promoting Prospt+: The Hong Kong WQY of Social Policy, Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 1990.

* Literally, Aristotle’s ‘household management’ style of government, e . g . , E. Barker (trans. and ed.), The Politics ofdristotle, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1946, p. 12: ‘Rule over wife and children, and over the household generally, is a . . .kind of rule, which we have called by the name of household management. Here the rule is either exercised in the interest of the ruled or for the attainment of some advantage common to both ruler and ruled.’

TABLE 1: 'Pacific Challence' 0

HONG KONG SINGAPORE SOUTH KOREA TAIWAN JAPAN Population (millions) 5.7 2.6 42.6 19.8 122.6 GNP (USfm. 1986') 37,360 19,160 98,370 72.621 1.559.720 GNP per capita 61720 Percentage unemployed 1.7 (87) Percentage labour force in agriculture

1960 7.8 1970 4.3 1986 1.8

1960 51.6 1970 54.8

1986 35.8

Percentage labour force in industry

Percentage labour force in manufacturing

7,410 4.2 (86)

7.5 3.4 0.9 (87)

23.0 30.3

26.7

2;370 3.8 (86)

66.4 51 .O 22.7

9.3 20.1

23.7

3,750 2.2 (86)

56.0 35.0 15.3

11.0 16.0

35.0 (87)

121850 2.8 (87)

32.9 19.0 8.0 (87)

29.5 34.5

23.4 GDP annual average growth

1965 - 80 1970- 77 1980 - 86

8.5 8.0 6.0

10.4 8.6 5.3

9.5 9.9 8.2

10.0 7.7 7.2

6.3 5 .O 3.7

Percentage DoDulation 11

0- i4 23.1 (86) 23.4 (87) 29.9 (85) 29.3 (86) 20.0 (88) 60 t 11.5 8.2 6.8 8.3 16.0

2 rn Government fxpenditure as percentage GNP (86- 7)

Percentage Government expenditure 18.29 33.6* 25.11 30.33 27.48

Del'ence/L&O 13.1 18.0 32.8 35.3 6.5 Education 18.3 11.4 20.6 20.5 8.6 Social security 5.8** 1.4 5.4 18.2** 18.3 Health care 9.7 3.0 2.6 2.2 17.0 (80) Housing 11.9 8.1

*The remainder of rhia calurnn has hrrri cumputed from material conraincd in Sinzapore 1988 ln~iudcs 'social wrlfarr'

.I

+ + al TABLE 2: ‘Gang’ Social Service Provision as of 1989

SERVICE IIONG KONG SINGAPORE SOUTH KOREA TAIWAN

SOCIAL Statutory public assistance. Discret. pub. assistance. Central Discret. pub. assistance. Discret .pub. assistance. SECUR~~Y Spec. Allowances (indexed) for Provident Fund (compuls. nat. National Pension (1988): Labour Insurance compuls. for

employee (1/5): total 7%; lump sum on retirement.

elderly/disablcd. savings; employer lo%/ compuls. for ind. empl./wkers nrly all wkers; employer (4/5) employee 25%); - Medisave (hosp. bills), - housing deposits etc, - lump sum for annuity.

total (shared) contrib = 3%; pension after 20 yrs.

€3 EA LI‘H Government & Govt subs. clinic & hosp services. No stat. health ins. Extensivciexprnsive orivate medicine.

HOUSING 47% pop. in ‘govt hsing’ (incl. home ownership). High rise.

Govt low fee health servs. Medisave (above) re insured + dependants in govt & private hosps.

Medical ins. schemes for civil servts, teachers, wkers, farmers., . (~66% of pop. 1988). Govr subs. health servs. (some).

86% + pop. in ‘govt hsing’ (maj. = home ownrrshiD). Hieh rise. (Dro urban home ownershb).

1982 - govt hse-blding drives ., .I

Increasing high rise (urban).

~~

EDUCA’ITON Govtigovt aided schls: 1033; private (us. small): 1580; grad. expans. of freeisubs. places owing to demand; v. competitive. Curriculumilang. complics.

Social Welfare Department; extens. subventions system; extens. network vol. orgs.; Council of Social Service, Community Chest etc.

SOCIAL WELFARE

Govtigovt aided. schls: 386; private: 4. Streaminglv. competitive. Govt. controlled curricula. Lang. complications. (Education = largest Min.)

Min. of Community Devt (former Soc. Welfare Dept); extens. network vol. orgs.; Council of Sucial Service; Community Chest ( +employee payroll deduction scheme).

8 2

5 3

Ltd compuls. wker health ins. Sep. schemes for civil servts, + teachers. 78% ofecon. active (38% of

childrenistudents. Ltd freeisubs. servs. for needy. Govt + vol. (e.g. missnary) hosps; most hosps. = private.

1976 - 10 yr Hsing Plan - but:- poor quaMmagelsites, costly/big downpayments. Pro home ownership.

;a pop.). Special provision for z

> z U

23 High rise (unpopular). In -. I 8

Govt & private schools. 12 yrs compuls educ. (7 free). Govt

competitive; hence lottery (e.g. to high schl)!

100% government schools. 9 yrs free education ( + free textbooks

controlled curricula. V. for poor). z

Min. of Health & SOC. Affairs; extens. reliance vol. agencies + ‘traditional Confucionism’ Increasing govt investment.

Department of Social Affairs & county welfare services. Subventions to vol. agencies. Increasing govt investment.

OIKONOMIC WELFARE STATES 449

thereafter, but it is certainly part of the explanation. Ironically enough, all four countries had been occupied by the Japanese, their latterday e ~ a m p l a r . ~ Hong Kong was ‘first off after ‘liberation’ : once massive immigration from the mainland - compounded by the Korean War blockade on trade with China - had ruined its prospects as an entrepht by the early 1950s. Whereas for Taiwan (coming to terms with the need for long- term viability), South Korea (in the wake of war and military takeover) and Singapore (thrust into high-risk independence from the Federation of Malaysia), it was rather in the 1960s that industrialization was ‘forced’ to the forefront.

There were (and remain) further pressure points in common. Notwithstanding huge variations in land area and population size, all were bereft of natural resources other than people and were short even of land for easy de~elopment .~ Moreover, the population resource, so-called, was suspect to the extent it was presumed to be either ‘rootles~’~ or ‘alienated’6 - this for a collection of peoples and places for whom the notion of vulnerability (physical, social, geo-political, military, in varying combination) was to remain a primary fact of life.

But naturally there was also a positive side to the coin. There was no shortage of cheap, eager manpower, as has already been remarked. In the case of Hong Kong, in particular, there was the bonus of the ‘Shanghai translation’ : of entrepreneurs possessed of some capital, some plant and frequently a nucleus of skilled labour to what had hitherto been that great city’s poor relation(s). In the case of both Hong Kong and Taiwan there was some industrial base on which to build. In the case of both Hong Kong and Singapore there was a powerful trading tradition upon which to build. In the case of all four there was ready access to maritime trading routes. And in the case of all four, most decisively, there was massive incentive on every side to seek out the fastest path to profitability.

No mere ‘wartime occupation’ in the cases of Taiwan (from 1895) and Korea (from

‘ NB. Inhospitable terrain in the case of Taiwan and South Korea; sheer lack of space in

’ The migrant Chinese of Hong Kong and Singapore; refugees in South Korea. ‘ The indigenous inhabitants of Taiwan and of New Territories’ Hong Kong.

1910).

the case of Singapore; lack of space and inhospitable terrain in the case of Hong Kong.

450 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION

POPULAR CULTURE

They were (and remain) populations Chinese (Taiwan), overwhelmingly Chinese (Hong Kong), predominantly Chinese (Singapore) and Chinese acculturated (Korea). None of them, of course, is or was to be accounted a Chinese society of high t r a d i t i ~ n . ~ Nonetheless shared ‘Chineseness’ , in this context, has meant a common core of attitudes and beliefs of particular significance for the conduct of society; so pervasive and persistent has been the force of Chinese tradition.

At the heart of this tradition is Confucianism: or rather a set of precepts and axioms popularly associated with the teachings of the great philosopher and, as such, still commanding overwhelming respect.8 Foremost amongst these is the notion of the family as the key unit of society, indeed its model unit. The ideal family has a place for everyone - and has everyone in his or her place. Filial piety ensures due deference ‘upwards’; family honour ensures due care and protection ‘downwards’. The ideal family epitomises harmony, solidarity, pride, loyalty as between members of the group. And the ideal family goes on for ever.

Of course, in recent times real families have rarely approximated to any such ideal; least of all in conditions of migration, modernization and competition. With ancestors left behind,g urban accommodation tight-packed and even wives going out to work, the old ways have seemingly been stretched to breaking point. Yet this has not meant that traditional values associated with family life have been robbed of all significance. On the contrary, it is in the image of the ideal family - and hence the well-run household - that the good society is seen as resting not on individuals but on interlocking groups, not on equal rights but on ascending orders of duty and obligation, not on ‘constructive conflict’ - perish the thought - but on the maintenance of stability and harmony at all costs. Once again, reality may be at a conspicuous remove from the ideal; yet the ideal has been enough to ensure some show of popular deference to elders and betters.

Members of government and administration rank higher or lower in such a hierarchy according to the weight (or otherwise) of influence they are presumed to possess. Chinese popular culture

The commercial rationale per se was antithetical to ‘high’ Chinese tradition. Confucius (K’ung-Fu-Tzu or K’ung Tzu) 551 - 479 BC. Literally, in family graves.

OIKONOMIC WELFARE STATES 45 1

has had no place for abstract concepts of government per se; none at all for notions of government as being the property of ‘the people’. The tradition was one of subjects, not citizens; of coming to terms with officials (as and when necessary), not of exercising ‘rights’. It was only when ‘normal bargaining’ was perceived to have broken down or to have given rise to an unacceptable (and rejectable) outcome that people ‘in general’ were liable to protest (i.e. riot) against government ‘in general’: though when this happened the mayhem could be awesome indeed.

It was not until the coming of age of educated young people entertaining Western notions (however etiolated in practice) of ‘citizen rights’ and ‘government for the people’, that any real change of attitude was to be expected. Yet even here the evidence remains uncertain. Had it not been for mounting concern over 1997, for instance, the articulate, vociferous young ‘social professionals’ of Hong Kong would probably have been no more interested in championing grassroots democracy than was anyone else in the colony. Hitherto their ambition had seemed rather to secure entry for themselves to the Hong Kong Establishement, in order (not least) to represent the interests, as they understood them to be, of the ricebowl classes. Assumptions of due authority and deference die hard.

GOVERNANCE

Constitutionally this is a motley collection: one British Crown Colony (Hong Kong), one former British Crown Colony now a ‘parliamentary, prime ministerial democracy’ (Singapore), one ex-military dictatorship now a ‘presidential democracy’ (South Korea) - and the ‘democratic’ Republic of China (ROC) which is Taiwan. Nevertheless there are characteristics of governance in common. Whatever the extent or otherwise of notional democratization, Western-style politics does not come easily - or fit easily whenjif ever it arrives. Arguing on public issues in public, taking sides on the basis of rival points of view, engaging - heaven forbid - in open pressure group activity: such are still more likely to be viewed as proofs of government failure than political maturity.

Successful government, in this context, is government with least appearance of politics. The proper place for politics is behind


the scenes, out of sight, absorbed into the administration.” There is in consequence not much place - or respect - for ‘professional politicians’. People who matter will as far as possible have been recruited, co-opted or assiduously cultivated, as appropriate, by representatives of the ruling establishment. Meanwhile ordinary people are there to be watched, instructed, protected, encouraged, rewarded, reproved as the corporate (‘household’) interest dictates. It is not a recipe for minimum rule.

Indeed, only in ‘capitalist paradise’, low-profile colonialist Hong Kong has there been so much as a pretence of minimum rule. And even here the analogy characteristically drawn has been between running Hong Kong (whoever is supposed to be in real charge at the top)” and managing a corporation. This is not corporatism - there being no serious independent voice for labour - but ‘corporationism’ or rather (given the tradition of family firms in Hong Kong) household management writ large: top-down direction calling for bottom-up compliance, in the interests of society as a whole. It is an image which more than holds good for the other three countries.

SOCIAL POLICY

The Three Principles said to underly the Constitution of ROC Taiwan are Nationalism, Democracy and Social Welfare.“ The constitution of ‘Fifth Republic’ South Korea requires the state to promote ‘social security and welfare’ over and above guaranteeing human rights ‘to the greatest possible extent’. l3

Singapore and Hong Kong are not possessed of such constitutional niceties, yet have nonetheless accumulated social policies at a conspicuous rate.

Initially there was never anywhere any question of ‘social investment’ as recompense for popular effort or desert.14 Nor

lo Witness A. Y. C . King, ‘Administrative Absorption of Politics in Hong Kong: Emphasis on the Grass-Roots Level’, Asian Suruey, Vol. 15, No. 5, May 1975, pp. 422 - 39.

I ’ In the words of the old clichC: ‘Power in Hong Kong resides in the Jockey Club, Jardine Matheson, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and the Governor - in that order. ’

’* Republic of China: A Reference Book, Taipei, Government Information Office, 1983. l 3 Korea Annual 1987, pp. 114- 115. ’‘ Cf. the ‘war then welfare’ line of accounting for the British welfare state.


was it a case of responding to popular demand - for there was none to speak of. The priority was rather to build a sense of community where none - or none sufficient - was deemed to exist. ‘Community’ stood for order, discipline, loyalty, stability, collective self help: all the traditional virtues so conspicuously lacking in the pathological non-societies of postwar, post- revolution East and South-East Asia. Without order, there could be no sustained economic growth; without economic growth there could be no future. It was in just such terms that ordinary people were to be instructed in the facts of life.

In particular, community building was about restoring the family to its role as bulwark of society and rendering the neighbourhood (e. g the apartment block) the functional equivalent of a traditional village: scarcely trivial undertakings either of them, yet appropriate targets for ‘good government’ as already discussed. Witness (even) the Hong Kong authorities’ eventual high-profile, multi-faceted investment in ‘Family Life Education’, not to mention Mutual Aid Committees to promote ‘good neighbourliness’ in their own housing estates. There was not much ‘from the grassroot’ about either development, l5 any more than there was about ‘Parent Education’ or the formation of Residents’ Committees in Singapore. l6 Then again, President Park’s Suemuul Undong (New Community Movement) seems to have pulled few punches in its determination to instil the spirit of ‘self-help, diligence and mutual cooperation’ into the common folk of South Korea,17 just as ‘planned change’ was also bein pressed on the designated ‘new communities’ of Taiwan. 6

l 5 Understandably, the colonial authorities of ‘anachronistic’ Hong Kong, were the latest to get around to explicit community building. It took the ‘Cultural Revolution’ riots of 1967 - 68 to convince Government-and-Establishment that (even) Hong Kong required to be rendered a proper Chinese society. The first prescribed tasks of Mutual Aid Committees (from 1973) were to help ‘Fight Violent Crime’ and keep down litter in each their own housing block. By definition they were not intended to serve as vehicles for ‘spontaneous’ let alone confrontational community action. See C. Jones, op. cit.

l6 e.g. S. Vasoo, ‘Residents’ Organisations in the New Towns of Hong Kong and Singapore: A Study of Social Factors Influencing Neighbourhood Leaders’ Participation in Community Development’, PhD thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1986.

l 7 Chung Hee Park, Korea Reborn; A Model f o r Deuelopmnt, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice Hall, 1979.

e.g. W. Chao, ‘Planned Change in Community Development: Its Application in Taiwan’ in P. C. Lee (ed.), Dimensions of Social Weyare Transition: Sino-British Perspectives, Taipei, Chu Liu Book Company, 1988.


Clearly, ordinary people were too important to be left alone or taken for granted.

Yet there was another side to the picture. Ordinary people thus exposed to ‘active government’ could develop notions of their own importance hitherto unforeseen by either side; at the same time as government ‘in the service of the economy’ could increasingly be coming to mean government as a provider of seruices useful to the economy. Once exposed to such services ‘courtesy of government’ - and to the extent they themselves perceived them to be useful - ordinary people were liable to demand more of the same: if not as a right then certainly as a perk to go for in the perennial struggle to get ahead. Just so has a popular learning exercise been taking place, beyond the bounds of any formal public education programme.

So practical community building could be as much about striking bargains as imposing grand designs. It was Sir Murray MacLehose (former reforming Governor of Hong Kong) who remarked, not before time in 1976, that ‘people will not care for a society which does not care for them’.’’ And it was Hong Kong’s by then ‘social services’ that he had in mind as the basis for a quid pro quo: putative pillars, as he saw them, for a new form of consensual society; not because these services had been designed and introduced with any such end in view, but because they happened (in the meantime) to have proved their popularity on the ground.

True, with the situation in Hong Kong so fraught of late, it is not surprising to find ‘social services’ prominent amongst items of concern: not least in the wake of hints from the New China News Agency that people should not expect to be so lucky in this respect after 1997. Without the same quality of threat hanging over it (and without the burden of ‘colonial embarassment’ to boot), it would be unrealistic to expect similar frankness from government spokesmen in Singapore. But this scarcely signifies that the popularity (or otherwise) of key services has come to be taken any the less seriously there. On the contrary, popular service satisfaction is recognised as critical to the maintenance of Singapore’s variety of ‘socialism that works’ .*O

Naturally, the longer and better established the provision of popular useful services, the further advanced any such learning

Address at the Opening Session of the Legislative Council, 6 October 1976. C. V. Devan Nair (ed.), Socialism That Works. . . The Singapore Way, Singapore, 20

Federal Publications, 1976.


process is likely to be. In the cases of Taiwan and South Korea - wherein compulsory contributory social insurance seems to have continued more as a community-building imposition than a truly ‘popular’ device (see below) - positive expectations of government have been slower to develop.21 Though this seems set to change as social services in-kind proliferate, not least in consequence of the quest for First World status and respectability. 22

Nowhere has there been a popular call for ‘social justice’ in principle - let alone for (forced) redistribution in practice, whether across or between generations. Nor has there been much enthusiasm for the idea of selective social services targeted explicitly and exclusively at ‘the poor’ (though services loosely designed to help ‘the less well off’ have had a different ring to them). Again (to repeat), there seems to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for long-term ‘earned welfare’ in the sense of wage/contribution- conditional old age insurance. The preference has been rather for services and benefits which everyone can see the immediate use of - and which many families, if not most, will endeavour to gain particular advantage from. Services for minorities - particularly ‘non-economic’ minorities - tend naturally to lose out in the face of such competition.

SOCIAL SERVICES

The most popular service, from the point of view of governments and peoples alike, has been education. After defence (not even that, in the case of Hong Kong) it is the largest single item of government expenditure. Then again, it ranks as the single most important item go-ahead families are wont to invest in, with or without government help. So persuading parents to send their children to school has never been much of a problem; the problem has been rather one of reconciling parental expectations and demands with schooling capacity and perceived national requirements.

Respect for learning is traditional; but no less traditional has been the perception of education as being instrumental to family

*’ N. W. S . Chow, ‘Social Security Provision in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea: A Comparative Analysis’, Journal of International and Comparative Social Welfare, Vol. 11, Nos 1 - 2, 1986, pp. 1 - 10.

22 Both of these are regimes more anxious than average to win friends in the West.


The parental ideal is for an academic education of the sort (and extent) to command prestige and open doors to a promising career for their offspring and hence (as it were) for the family at large. Traditionally (again), prestige is only to be acquired via competiton; so today’s parents tend to value forms of education and educational institution according to the number and difficulty of examinations required to qualify for entry. On the other hand, today’s governments tend to be less concerned with exams for their own sake but more concerned about manpower requirements.

The scope for mismatch is obvious. There is (or at any rate has been) not so much competition for and (hence) prestige attached to forms of vocational, non-academic education. Whereas in the case of mainstream academic education, the difficulties and embarrassments are of an opposite order: too many people self- defeatingly in pursuit of targets which, by definition, are bound to elude most of them.24

In the case of Hong Kong it has meant the proliferation of government-aided ‘ Anglo-Chinese grammar schools’, at the expense of other forms of secondary educationz5 - and the proliferation of seemingly semi-literate, semi-confident ‘worst of all worlds’ teachers and pupils as a result.26 In the case of Singapore, by contrast, it has prompted government (1980) to impose a system of streaming on all schools, whereby degrees of ability are first identified by examination at the end of Primary Three and educational schedules distributed accordingly. ‘’ In the case of South Korea, most intriguingly, it has led to the imposition of lotteries in place of exams to settle entry to middle school, high school and now at last collegez8 - so destructive and expensive had the ‘examinations hell’ become, not least for parents faced with out-of-school tutoring fees.

Naturally, the extent to which governments have been able to moderate or manipulate parental preferences in practice has been

” NB. The Chinese tradition of entry to the Mandarinate by competitive examination

24 cf. F. Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press,

25 Not least at the expense of Chinese-style secondary education. 26 ‘Possibly the best memorizers in the world.’ ” Singapore 1988. 28 Between candidates already possessed of basic entry qualifications, Korea Annual

- well worth an ambitious family’s investment.

1976.

1987.


a function, in part, of the extent to which each government is seen as being in charge of its own schools system as opposed merely to being its principal financier. The government of Hong Kong - studiously careful not even to seem to be dictating curriculum content within and between schools which are by and large government-aided rather than government-run - occupies the least directive position on this spectrum; in greatest contrast, probably, to the nationalist government of Taiwan. But none can afford to appear neglectful of parental preferences altogether. They are, after all, in the business of encouraging ambition and enterprise (within bounds) not passive dependency.

Meanwhile, by contrast, two other sorts of service are of anything but traditional appeal. Rather the popularity of housing and (Western-style) health care facilities has been of governments’ own making. The initial concern was with public health and safety measures as a precondition for economic growth. Too much dirt and disease was bad for trade; urban squatters constituted a fire and health hazard (quite apart from taking up valuable development land); orphans (not to mention ‘orphaned parents’) cost money to support. Naturally these were not the only sorts of sentiment to find official expression, but they were the sorts presumed to carry most weight as grounds for government intervention. Just so did the government and establishment of postwar Hong Kong become convinced of the need for a (renewed) public health/health education campaign backed up by cheap health services available on demand - and eventually, even, of the need for a mass public housing programme.

It was to prove an embarrassing success story all round. So popular does cheap Western medicine become there are soon charges of government favouritism from the defenders of traditional Chinese medicine,29 as the colony’s Medical and Health Department struggles to keep pace (never to catch up) with mounting demand for its services. Hence, as queues and waiting lists lengthen, health care becomes a principal focus for popular dissatisfaction with government - only to be rivalled by mounting discontent over public housing also.

Mass resettlement estates had never ever been intended as an exercise in consumerism in Hong Kong. The object had rather been to clear squatters from valuable sites and decant them in to

29 i.e., there are demands for government subsidies to be made equally available for Chinese as for Western medicine.


blocks of units (’apartments’ would be much too grand an expression) cheap enough for them to be able to afford and hence for them to be likely to stay in. It also came to be seen as a good way of concentrating labour supplies where convenient for industrial development. What was not apparently envisaged was that such housing estates themselves would come to require positive management if they were not to sink into total social chaos; nor was it foreseen that the better the standard of amenity eventually provided, the more likely were such estates to emerge as a desirable (i.e. useful) ‘service’ in their own right.

Still, not looking too far ahead has long been a hallmark of defensive government in colonialist Hong Kong. The evolution of health and housing services in Singapore has been more contrived and, as most would have it, much more successful. Here too there has been extensive investment in cut-price primary health care services ‘to bring health care within the reach of all’.3o Unlike in Hong Kong, however, there is self-financing Medisave to take care of most people’s hospital bills, thus relieving one major call on the government purse at the same time as (presumably) boosting the utilization of private in addition to government hospital facilities.

The investment in public housing has, meanwhile, been that much more spectacular. Proportionately speaking there is more of it. Absolutely speaking, Singapore’s Housing and Development Board has been able to offer a greater variety of product, to apparent greater popularity effect, than anything the Hong Kong Housing Authority has been able to match. Notably, this has included the promotion of home ownership on a mass scale: a strategy designed deliberately to ‘root’ the so-called transients of Singapore. (The efforts of Hong Kong’s Housing Authority to do the same in respect of its own tenants have been inevitably less successfu~.~’)

Without such dramatic population pressures experienced anything like so soon, the governments of South Korea and Taiwan have taken longer to go in for mass housing provision. Creeping urbanization - as compared with the threat of imminent social collapse - seems to have been the problem characteristically perceived. Thus Taiwan’s first Ten-Year

30 Singapore 1988, p. 198. Most of those responding to the Hong Kong Housing Authority’s home purchase

schemes have been families disqualified from applying for public rental accommodation (by reason of income at time of application) or else simply tired of waiting for it.


Housing Plan dates only from 1976 and Korea’s (five-year) Socio-Economic Development Plan only includes a mass housing component from 1982. First achievements, furthermore, were disappointing. The Korean construction industry proved (not surprisingly) incapable of delivering uite the requisite number of units within the requisite time se3’ - whilst Taiwan’s first public house-building efforts seem to have resulted, most embarrassingly, in quantities of accommodation nobody actually wanted to purchase.33 Nevertheless it was a beginning in each case, not an end.

Meanwhile government and government-subsidized health services continue thinner on the ground in South Korea and Taiwan by comparison with Hong Kong and Singapore. Yet in this case there is a clear difference - rather than mere ‘deficiency’ - of policy to be observed. The former have characteristically gone in for compulsory, employer/worker social insurance in general - and medical insurance in particular - to an extent quite removed from the norms of Singapore and especially Hong Kong. The less ‘rootless’ the mass of the population - perhaps the more American-influenced the content of government - the stronger the apparent prospects for thrusting this particular form of compulsory self-help (as against expensive services in kind) on key sections of a labour force and their employers.34

Though even in Korea and Taiwan the emphasis has always been on minimum and above all short-term social insurance benefits. Pensions provision in Taiwan, for instance, still consists of a lump sum on retirement - no less than it does courtesy of the Central Provident (forced savings) Fund of Singapore.35 It

’* Though it did manage 81.5% of target, 1,166,000 instead of an intended 1,431,000 for 1982 - 86. (Korea Annual 1987.)

33 Note the prime object in each case was to produce homesforpurchase. But building standards (in the Taiwan case) had evidently been appalling. Sites were inconvenient if not downright disreputable (what fung-shui-respecting Chinese would wish to live next to cemetery, for instance?) and the price (plus level of downpayment) was too high. See for instance Hsiao-Hung Nancy Chan ‘Public Housing Development Plan Experience in the Republic of China’ in P. Ching-Yung Lee (ed.), Dimmsions ofSociul Welfare Transition: Sino- British Perspectives, Taipei, Chung-Lin Book Company, 1988.

34 e.g. N. W. S. Chow, op. cit., and cf. Bismarck’s exercise in social insurance. 35 By definition not social insurance, since the sum thus saved represents the amount -

no more no less - deposited by the individual worker and his employer on his behalf. Though nowadays, ‘beneficiaries’ can be compelled to keep enough in the Fund at least to purchase an annuity on their retirement (Singupore 1988, p. 126).


remains to be seen how far South Korea’s latest-launched plan (1 988) for a part-earnings-related pensions scheme serves, in practice, to break this particular mould.36 Meanwhile, the most generous of short-term responses to the needs of the elderly remains the ‘no strings’ Special Allowances system of Hong K ~ n g . ~ ~

Chinese tradition has had little to say about the needs (let alone rights) of the disadvantaged per se. The emphasis has rather been on the duties of families and villagers [sic] to take care of their own. As a strategy for social welfare, it was inseparable from notions of good family and good community behaviour in general - and as such ill-equipped to travel well on its own. In the changed, charged circumstances of Tigerlands in take-off, there was no natural fount of public sympathy - let alone sense of public responsibility - for ‘anonymous unfortunates’ littering the streets. If anything, indeed, competition between strangers heightened a sense of fatalism: losers were people not ‘destined’ to succeed - and so were best to be avoided.38 Hence the signficance in this context of one particular Western innovation: specialized, professionalized, ‘free standing’ social welfare.

True, there was precious little ‘ free-standing’ about the original missionary pre~ence.~’ Nevertheless caring institutions could outlast excesses of proselytizing zeal” - and stand as examples for others to emulate or improve on. In the case of Hong Kong, ‘second stage’ expansion took place exceptionally and most spectacularly in the years of China’s Communist Revolution, as (Western) international charities scrambled to offer each their own care and relief services to refugees in flight from the Red Menace.41 Eventually (again) people moved on, many of them, but agencies remained. Hence the names of prominent voluntary organizations, in present-day Hong Kong as elsewhere, can still strike Western audiences as familiar.

36 Znt. SOC. Sec. Review 1988, Vol. 2, pp. 202-3; 1989 Vol. 3, p, 265. 37 Non-means-tested, indexed-linked payments for the severely disabled and the elderly

38 e.g. L. Ching, One ofthe Lucky Ones being the ‘true story of a blind Chinese girl’s

’’ NB The principal attraction of Hong Kong et al. for nineteenth-century missionaries

aged 70 + .

triumph over prejudice’, Hong Kong, Gulliver Books, 1980.

seems to have been as a launching pad for forays into China. Note that the Chinese were reckoned ‘impervious to religion’ in any case.

’’ C. Jones, op. cit.


But then names can be deceptive. Economic growth has been forcing and facilitating Western social welfare’s patriation for a long time. The more impressive the economic performance (and the more ‘unscrupulous’ the trading reputation) the less deserving of international aid (or an expatriate presence) were the Tigers liable to appear (no matter how many refugees there might yet be to cope with - as Hong Kong was to find to its cost).*‘ So: to the extent that Western-style welfare services had in the meantime ‘proved their credentials’, here was another deficiency for governments - and thence community-building - to endeavour to make good.

Witness the efforts to inculcate ‘charity-mindedness’ amongst the peoples of Hong Kong and Singapore, via massive annual Community Chest campaigns and a ‘voluntary’ payroll deduction scheme, re~pectively:~~ campaigns designed not to impose ‘Western’ values so much as to revive and modernize traditional Chinese sentiments of social obligation - not to mention familial self-respect. Yet giving to the anonymous ‘other’ was never likely (or intended) to be the same as volunteering, personally, to help unknown individual strangers in need. Hence what some have declared to be the ‘misleading’ successes of high profile fundraising: the sums raised are not proof necessarily of a shift of attitudes towards the disadvantaged per se, so much as of a renewed awareness that charitable giving constitutes a component of correct, respectable behaviour for families and societies alike.

But then again, the social workers typically responsible for such remarks have scarcely themselves been of Western ideal-type. Theirs is a new profession: still finding its level and very much in search, therefore, of ‘status supports’. Witness the eagerness to impress ‘upwards’ that they are no ‘free lunch merchants’ at the same time as impressing ‘downwards’ that they can be relied upon to know and do best for ordinary (not just disadvantaged) people. There is not much scope or call here for the likes of non- directive casework or mere ‘enabling’ community action. The requirement is rather for social workers confident enough to tell people what to do, with conviction. As seems already to have been

’’ e.g. in the wake of China’s Cultural Revolution: long before the advent of boat people from Vietnam. ‘’ NB. in the wake of this scheme in 1984 - 85 the people of Hong Kong raised as much

for Oxfam’s Ethiopian Famine Appeal as did the entire population of the United States. They had emerged as givers indeed.


appreciated - witness the expansion of professional social work education in Hong Kong, Singapore and latterly Taiwan. And witness the evidence, such as it is, of growing popular respect for the profession per se: not least as evinced by the return of no less than 20 out of 22 community social work candidates standing for District Board election in Hong Kong 1985. A modest triumph, at east.^'

THE OIKONOMIC WELFARE STATE

The ‘household economy’, as here portrayed, is no more open- ended in its promises than egalitarian in its philosophy. Economic success stands as the prime objective, indeed rationale, for everyone’s sake. Success - in these most modern of Chinese societies - is deemed to rest on the exercise of informed authority by some over others, complemented by the said others’ recognition and performance of their duty.

So these are not ‘leveller regimes’; they are not participatory democracies; there is no sentimental tradition of indiscriminate, unconditional citizen rights - let alone of indiscriminate, unconditional social obligation; there is no mystique attached to concepts of welfare state or social service per se: quite the reverse. It is the pursuit of prosperity which here calls for discipline and duty no less than family ambition. In which cause social services (like any other sort of service) are there to be useful, no more no less.

It is an ‘ideal’ which will strike some Western audiences as unappealing and others as plain inconvenient: the ‘no frills’ welfare state. Or alternatively, as yet, welfare capitalism that works.

44 Given the distinctly modest status and ‘powers’ of the District Boards.

hong kong, singapore, south korea and taiwan: oikonomic welfare states

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