war.
In the latter months of 1950, for the first time since the war, the direction of migration was outward, largely due to the return of more normal conditions in China resulting from the conclusion of the civil At the beginning of 1951 the estimate stood at 2,060,000 and there are indications of a very slight fall-off since then throughout the year. These post-war estimates of population are based on the population surveys made by the Statistical Department in 1947 and 1948 and assessed thereafter from the figures of arrivals and departures by land, sea and air, checked against numbers of recorded births and deaths.
The registration of the population, commenced in 1949, was completed in September 1951, and the total of persons registered afforded a useful cross-check against the Statistical Department's population estimates. The total was 1,627,608 and the Commissioner of Registration estimated that there were between three and five thousand people in the Colony still for various reasons unregistered. To this approximate total of 1,632,000 should be added the children under 12, who did not have to be registered under the registration scheme. The 1931
census showed the age distribution of the population under 12 years of age to be 19.6 per cent; on that basis the total population would be 2,030,000, which coincides with the Statistical Department's estimate made in the spring of 1951 and may be taken as reasonably accurate.
The overwhelming majority of the population is of Chinese race. The number of Europeans and Americans permanently resident, excluding Service personnel and their dependants, is about 14,500, including some 9,500 British subjects from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, 3,000 British subjects of Portuguese origin, and 1,660 aliens permanently resident. There are some 2,770 aliens temporarily
resident.
The population of the New Territories is composed of Cantonese and Hakka, with a sprinkling of Hoklo. The farmers are the Cantonese, mainly settled, some families for several hundred years, in the comparatively fertile western plains, and the Hakka, whose incursion into the more difficult hilly land on the eastern side of the peninsula is said to have started about two hundred years ago and finished yet. Generally speaking, the Hakka appear to have occupied may not have any potentially arable land disregarded by the Cantonese.
Thus long fingers of Hakka penetration have been extended from the eastern side of the New Territories down into the south-west of the mainland and out on to the islands. The two sections maintain excellent relations, and although Hakka help Hakka more noticeably than Cantonese help Cantonese it is remarkable that in their penetration the Hakka have been partly guided by existing Cantonese settlement. Thus, for instance, one of the biggest New Territories villages, Wang Toi Shan,
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