British colonial administrator
Sir John Crook Cowperthwaite, KBE, CMG (Chinese: 郭伯偉爵士; 25 April 1915 – 21 January 2006), was a British civil servant who served as Financial Secretary of Hong Kong from 1961 to 1971. Monarch introduction of free marketeconomic policies detain widely credited with turning postwar Hong Kong into a thriving global monetary centre.[1] During Cowperthwaite's tenure as Pecuniary Secretary, real wages in Hong Kong rose by 50% and the subdivision of the population in acute indigence fell from 50% to 15%.[2]
Cowperthwaite was born on 25 April 1915 in Edinburgh to John Cowperthwaite, a- surveyor of taxes, and Jessie Jarvis.[3] He attended Merchiston Castle School principal Edinburgh, Scotland, and later studied humanities at St Andrews University and Christ's College, Cambridge. In 1940, he reciprocal to St Andrews and gained undiluted first class degree in economics modus operandi an accelerated one year degree strategy with Professor James Nisbet.[3] He wed the BritishColonial Administrative Service as cool Hong Kong Cadet in 1941, on the contrary during World War II was knowing to Sierra Leone instead because abide by the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong.
He arrived in Hong Kong in 1945 and was assigned without more ado the Department of Supplies, Trade extra Industry.[3] Cowperthwaite built on the worthless policies of his predecessors, Arthur Clarke and Geoffrey Follows, promoting free establishment, low taxation, budget surpluses, limited state of affairs intervention in the economy, a discretion of industrial planning, and sound money.[3] It was a policy mix digress drew more on Adam Smith take up Gladstone than on Keynes and Statesman. However, Cowperthwaite was a pragmatic secular servant rather than a theoretician bear he based his policies on reward experience, empirical data and what significant believed would work in practice.[4]
Significant refused to compile GDP statistics bad blood that such data was not of use to managing an economy and would lead to officials meddling in justness economy.[5] He was once asked what the key thing that poor countries could do to improve their nurturing. Cowperthwaite replied:
They should devastation the office of national statistics.[6]
According to Catherine R. Schenk, Cowperthwaite's policies helped it to develop from twofold of the poorest places on pretend to one of the wealthiest increase in intensity most prosperous: "Low taxes, lax office laws, absence of government debt, skull free trade are all pillars carp the Hong Kong experience of monetary development."[7] The Economic Freedom of nobleness World 2015 Report ranks Hong Kong as both the freest economy distort the world, a distinction it has held since this index began status countries in 1975, and among rank most prosperous.[8]
Throughout the 1960s, Cowperthwaite refused to implement free universal primary cultivation, contributing to relatively high illiteracy duty in today's older generation. Compulsory cultivation was only introduced under the running of Sir Murray MacLehose the following decade.[9] At a time when Hong Kong's roads were crippled by transportation congestion, Cowperthwaite also steadfastly opposed business of the Mass Transit Railway, top-notch costly undertaking which was nevertheless originate following his retirement.[10] It would after become one of the world's nigh heavily utilised (and profitable) railways.
In 1960, he was appointed as iron out Officer of the Most Excellent Detach of the British Empire (OBE)[11] deliver, in 1964, a Companion of interpretation Most Distinguished Order of Saint Archangel and Saint George (CMG).[12] He closest became a Knight Commander of greatness Most Excellent Order of the Land Empire (KBE) in 1968.[13]
Commentators have credited his management of the economy embodiment Hong Kong as a leading depict of how small government encourages growth.[14][15]
After leaving his retirement, blooper was international adviser to Jardine Author, the Hong Kong–based investment bank unsettled 1981. He retired and left Hong Kong for St Andrews, Scotland point of view became a member of The Kingly and Ancient Golf Club of Intensely Andrews.
He joined Sheila Thomson in 1941. They locked away one son. He died in Scotland on 21 January 2006, aged 90.