Chapter 2: Population
The population at the end of 1955 was estimated to be about 2,400,000.
No census has been taken since 1931, when the population was found to be 849,751. Another census should have been held in 1941, but with the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 conditions became unsettled, and the Colony has since been subject to a long succession of fluctuations of population which has made impracticable the holding of a census. Details of these fluctuations are given in the History Chapter.
The population is clearly rising. At the beginning of 1954 the official estimate was 2,250,000; in mid-1955 the estimate was 2,340,000. Only a small percentage of this rise is due to any continued entry of refugees from China; the principal factor is an already high, and evidently still rising, birth rate. A large proportion of the newcomers who entered the Colony after the war were young men and women uprooted from their homes, coming in search of employment and security. Most of them have been absorbed into the economic life of the Colony, and, having found security, are marrying and raising families.
The natural rate of increase is somewhere in the region of 3% a year. During 1955 registered births exceeded register- ed deaths by 71,431, the respective figures being 90,511 and 19,080. This gives a birthrate of 38.7 and a death rate of 8.1. These figures must be used with caution, however, as it is probable that registration is not complete.
URBAN POPULATION
More than 99% of the population is Chinese, the great majority of whom came originally from Kwangtung Province. Apart from Chinese, and excluding Services personnel and their dependants, there are about 13,000 British subjects from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. Other communi- ties include the Americans, with about 1,800 residents, the Portuguese, numbering about 1,700, Filipinos 370, Dutch 300, French 290, Italians 250, and Japanese 200. The total number of non-Chinese residents, excluding British nationals, is about 6,500.