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340
THE CHINESE
The influx of these people—which, over a period of twenty-four years. averaged more than fifty thousand a year-varies according to the internal situation in China. Very large numbers arrived in the years after the Libera- tion, and then the level gradually dropped off until 1960. It picked up again in 1961 and particularly in 1962, after the bad harvests and the failure of the "Great Leap Forward." Then it dropped off again until 1966 and the bloods start of the Cultural Revolution; in the next few years it was back to a trickle 11,000 in 1967; 14,000 in 1968; 7,000 in 1969; and 8,000 in 1970.*
Suddenly in 1971 the flow resumed. The year before refugees had been arriving at the rate of 650 a month, but by April 1971 the figure was up to 1,500, and in May to 3,000; then until the summer of 1972 they were coming over at the rate of 4,000 a month, the highest level since 1962.
Of course, these estimates are only approximate, and they represent fewer than seven emigrants per year per hundred thousand Chinese, whereas the corresponding figures for Italian, British and German emigrants in the United States are thirty-five, forty and fifty, respectively. But the numbers are not negligible and they are interesting. Is it a mild illness or a sign of something more serious?
Not Immigrants, but Fugitives
Edgar Snow has gone to great pains to establish that this movement of Chinese out of the country harks back to an old tradition. For the inhabitants of Kwangtung province all 50,000,000 of them--Hong Kong and the Kowloon peninsula are not foreign territory; they are simply an extension of Cantonese land which had been theirs before the Opium War. Back in ancient times, those who lived in the very densely populated villages of the Three Rivers used to spill over onto and around the Kowloon peninsula in their sampans. Children and slave girls were exported there as a kind of security. and even when they were very old they were still sending money home. The Canton delta was the Sicily of China. When Kwangtung province is hit by drought or flood, the natural reaction of the people is to move to the British colony, almost all of whose inhabitants are of Cantonese origin, rather than move north, where their dialect is not understood and where they have difficulty getting used to the cold climate.
*These figures come from the British authorities in Hong Kong. Most of the refugees take great care to arrive unnoticed; their friends and relatives who are already in the crown colony put them up and find them work. These estimates were obtained by multiplying by five the number of refugees whose arrival is actually registered by the British police.
The Fugitives of H
Is Snow's argument wholly con dangerous flight. Why is there the slackening, has grown since the distu down? The refugees no longer die of f are not even undernourished. If the because they have been waiting for at to get across the border. Ideology doe any more than malnutrition. They h Only rarely do they have anything cri of them try to get to Taiwan; none of t The Kuomintang tries hard to win the resist. So, what is it?
In Peril of Their Lives
Many more try to flee than act munist authorities in Kwangtung p anyone who wanted to go to Hong Hordes of immigrants swept into the and completely overwhelming the I thousand refugees arrived in a ma Whitehall protested to the governme The majority of the refugees were se guards let them through and persuad want to test how many Chinese wante hospitable the Western world would unskilled? Did they want to kill the o areas to leave by showing them, once a them"? Or did they want a temporary the bad harvest of 1961, which was f
This short, intense hemorrhage of the desire on the part of many Chine reasonable to conclude that millions
This is borne out by another ever government has since adopted the Chinese authorities have made it vir Now fugitives risk their lives to read
The barbed wire and watchtowe way from Canton to Hong Kong ar manages to get across; now and again reported of Chinese getting through by