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Walled City
[LORDS]
acrc.
[Lord Kennet.] 45,000. That gives us a population of 8,500 people per acre. With what shall we compare this? We can compare it with the greatest density of population known in this country, which is about 300 people per acre in our old city centres. New development in this country at the highest density allowed-high-rise buildings is 120 people per Probably other slums in Asia reach a density per acre of 1,000 or 2,000 people. In the Walled City of Kowloon it is 8,500 compared with 300 which is the highest we can see in our own rundown city centres. There are thus 45,000 people bringing up children in a place where they can never see the sky. You cannot see the sky anywhere in these 18-inch wide alleys.
Those who wish to visit their neigh- bours in the Walled City walk across a plank at the tenth storey over the street into the window opposite. In some places they do not even need a plank; they just step across. It is as near as one can ever come in this world to the ideal con- cept of the city of dreadful night. How did this arise? It arose because when Britain leased Kowloon from Imperial China in 1898 an exception was made to the sovereignty granted in the lease for the old Walled City itself. A Chinese magistrate was left there with Chinese jurisdiction by the agreement of Britain. Within about three or four years there was disagreement about his functions and he left or was removed by the Imperial British Government. The history is obscure and I cannot properly go into it.
The present Chinese régime, as we all know, regard the whole lease of Hong Kong and Kowloon as being virtually null. They regard it as an unequal treaty and do not admit its existence. De facto, as we all know, they do not object; there is a de facto agreement that the economic and political phenomenon of Hong Kong shall continue; they do not seek to upset it. But within their de jure objection to British sovereignty in Hong Kong, there is an area of especial de deure objection, and that concerns the Walled City itself. They say to the whole of Hong Kong and Kowloon," We do not admit your pre- sence, but in practice we do not object". About the Walled City-this 6 acres- they say, This is especially Chinese
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of Kowloon
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although everything around it is also Chinese.
In the modern age with the enormous increase in the population and the pros perity of Hong Kong, the Colonial Government have developed @ very effective, a very admirable, slum clear- ance policy. Great areas of Kowloon, most of it, have been slum cleared and new blocks of flats have been built. They are good, sound blocks. The density of population is much higher than we know in Europe but not higher than is general in Asia. Life there, though not pretty. is certainly quite tolerable and I think there is little ground for complaint. In 1963 the Colonial Government of Hong Kong faced the question of the Walled City, which was then a normal Asian slum. There was no water, no electricity: there were insanitary conditions, open drains, rats. But the buildings were only on or two storeys high and the alleys were the normal width, 8 feet to 10 feet of mud. The Colonial Government began to clear that slum, as they had cleared all the slums round about.
In
There came rumblings from Peking and desisted from their slum clearance. London, and the Hong Kong Government
effect, this action gave the green light to speculators. The speculators took the message. They realised that here was a place where there was no law, neither British Colonial law nor Chinese law, I have described its outward appearance. Inwardly, perhaps, socially and in terms of social philosophy, we see here what happens when lawlessness meets soaring land values. There is lawlessness else- where: there are soaring land values else- the world is there the combination of where, but I believe that nowhere else in
lawlessness with soaring land values. The result is as I have described it: 13-storey buildings, 18 inches apart. There are no building regulations. Those skyscrapers have been built without foundations-they could fall at any moment. The only law which has been observed by the specula- tive builders in the Walled City is the law which says they shall not encroach on the approach funnel to the airport. In practice they have not done so. If one approaches Hong Kong by air one flies in a few feet from the top storeys, and looks in at the people having their evening meal. The builders have kept out of the approach funnel.
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