Chapter 2
Population
When in January, 1841 the British first landed on Hong Kong Island the total population was about 2,000 persons engaged in fishing or farming, but shortly afterwards the population began to increase and by the middle of 1841 the population was about 6,000. The population grew steadily for the next 100 years, and Hong Kong developed into a large city and port, with a population estimated at 1,600,000 before the Japanese attack on the Colony in December 1941. When the Colony was liberated in 1945 the population had been reduced to between 500,000 and 600,000, but the next three years saw a large influx of people from China, largely of young men and women looking for employ- ment. In 1948 the population was estimated to be 1,800,000. The civil war in China increased the flow of refugees into Hong Kong in 1949 and 1950, and although some of these later returned to China when conditions became more settled, large numbers preferred to remain in the Colony.
In addition to the great influxes of recent years the population has been further increased by a rapidly rising birth rate. The difference between the annual rate of registered births and deaths, which increased from 29,000 in 1947 to 64,000 in 1954, has added a total of 365,000 to the population in the past eight years, and if the number of births continues to increase as it has done since 1947 the excess of births over deaths
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