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[Lord Segal.] other extreme. Reference has been made to the family life in this unhappy country, as my noble friend Lord Brockway described it. "This unhappy country to my mind is one of the happiest areas that I have been in in the whole of South-East Asia. Having travelled again and again, three or four times, over most territories in that area, one is able not only to meet people and hear their com- plaints but to get the feeling of life in the area.
Reference has been made to the enor- mous growth of the population in Hong Kong. The British Administration has had to cope with a flood of immigrants into that tiny territory. And from where do they come? They come in from one direction, from the mainland of Com- munist China. The noble Lord may take my word for it, the facts are irrefutable: the movement is in one direction only. It is not a two-way flow. The Government of Hong Kong would raise no objection if people wanted to go out of that unhappy" country into the happy country of Communist China. But no such migration has taken place.
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Lord HALE: My Lords, perhaps the noble,, Lord will forgive me reminding him that the population of Communist China has increased in the same period by 400 million.
Lord SEGAL: Yes, my Lords, but the territory of Communist China is vastly greater than the territory of Hong Kong. I yield on this point, except I insist that this is a one-way traffic in human souls- and I will come to this later in my remarks. Unfortunately, latterly there has been a forcible traffic.
A point of criticism that I would level against the British Administration in Hong Kong is the forcible migration of unhappy people, refugees from Com- munist China, forcibly repatriated into Communist China. Whatever criticism may be levelled against our Administra- | tion of that Crown Colony as the last remaining outpost of colonialism--the citadel of paternalism, and so on-it is only fair to point out that our own Westminster concepts of democracy, repre- sentation of the people by free elections, are not always universally applicable. We may regret this, but it is nevertheless a
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fact, and particularly so in Hong Kong. They have to be considered in perspective, and especially in perspective of the sur- rounding territorities. Corruption, as we know, is endemic in the whole of that part of the world. It is not unknown even in other parts of Asia, India, Ceylon, look where you may.
I believe that more genuine, effective methods have been taken to suppress corruption in Hong Kong than in almost any other territory that my noble friend would care to name.
Here we are dealing not in any sense with a developing territory. Hong Kong today is a highly developed, sophisti- cated area. The Chinese people have a civilisation and culture of their own that is 5,000 years old-3,000 years older than ours. We have a great deal to learn from them in culture, art, and the philo- sophy of Goverment-far more than we, with our 700 years of Parliamentary history, are able to give to them.
Nor
have we the right to remain in Hong Kong today as a ruling Power unless we are fully able to justify our right to re- main there. We are there today only on sufference in the interests of the native population and of the vast adjoining ter- ritory of Communist China, Let us never forget that beyond the tiny 16 miles of frontier lies a vast population of over world's total population. It is 16 times the 800 million-nearly a quarter of the size of our own population and 200 times Kong. greater than the population of Hong
It is probably true that the standards of education, the general level of pros- perity and the average working wage, are higher in Hong Kong today than in any of the adjacent territories. The economic growth of Hong Kong has been phenomenal and its impact has also been felt in Communist China. But with it there has also been a rapid growth in higher education, housing development, medical cultural and recreational facili- ties without parallel in South-East Asia, except possibly in Singapore, which has only a half of Hong Kong's population. Above all, we must remember that our Buitish Administration is in Hong Kong today not as a colonial Power, any more than the Portuguese today are masters of the nearby territory of Macau, already referred to by my noble friend Lord Brockway. There is no parallel whatso- ever between the growth of democracy
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