This book owes its genesis to a tragedy. Some six years ago, my dear friend, Ong Chin-aun, died quite unexpectedly. He had just completed a PhD thesis which had been submitted to Bond University, Australia. The dissertation compared the law of Hong Kong and the Philippines in relation to credit advances that were secured against personal property rights. Sadly, he did not live to celebrate the award of his degree and his doctorate was bestowed posthumously.

As a result of this chain of events, and with the enthusiastic agreement of his widow, Rebecca, I conceived the notion to have a modified version of his manuscript published. The result is this book. Lu Haitian and I have worked together to rewrite the original text and to alter its focus, but not its analytical structure, to compare the common law-based provisions relating to personal property credit security lending in Hong Kong with the new chinese law which is largely (though exclusively based on civilian concepts.

This book attempts to create a comprehensive analytical framework to assess whether either system of credit security law can be assessed as being ‘efficient’. As the reader will discover, we come to the conclusion that neither of them pass muster, though for different reasons. The current state of the law in Hong Kong is in the same deplorable state as it is in England, largely as a result of the plethora of security devices and the highly technical, complex and (often) confusing legal rules that govern their creation and perfection.