Book review of "Public Sector Power and Public Sector Pay in Hong Kong: a survey of the political economy of pay determination in a British Colony (1965-1985)" by Thushar K. Ghose, Contemporary China Research Project City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2008, 372 pp. (pbk)

Abstract

This book was developed from the author's doctoral dissertation, which hypothesises that the absence in Hong Kong of government checks and balances led to excessive pay settlements for civil servants and undue expansion of the civil service, and that the elite policy-making bureaucrats exploited this absence to increase their salaries disproportionately to those of their subordinates. It rejects the former and confirms the latter.