HISTORY
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America and other distant places of refuge, the Colony's population fell for the first time since the war, until by the end of 1950 it was thought to be around 2,060,000. Since then, however, due partly to the arrival of more refugees from China, but principally to a high rate of natural increase, there has been another steady rise, bringing the population to the estimated figure of 2,340,000 in mid-1955.
Intense and unprecedented development has accompanied these increases of population. Throughout the urban area and the New Territories there has been tremendous building activity. In Kowloon, and at Tsun Wan in the New Territories, industrialists have opened large factories, pro- ducing textiles, enamelware, rubber goods, vacuum flasks, torches, etc.
As a result of the outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950, controls were progressively introduced over the export of strategic materials, beginning with petroleum and its derivatives in July of that year. As far as North Korea itself was concerned, a complete embargo on trade of any kind with that country was introduced on 8 July. In December, the United States Government placed an embargo on goods destined for Hong Kong. This seriously affected supplies of raw materials essential for much of local industry, and led, for a time, to a serious disruption of the Colony's manu- factures, with the threat of widespread unemployment. Fortunately, this embargo was modified by the introduction of a system of controls, which ensured supplies of these materials for legitimate use in the Colony.
In June 1951, as a result of the United Nations Resolution of 18 May 1951, a complete embargo on the export of strategic materials to China was imposed by the Hong Kong Government. This was a crippling blow to local commerce and the volume of trade in that year fell by over one million tons compared with the figure for the preceding year. During 1952, the United States Government introduced controls over imports of Chinese-type merchandise from Hong Kong, and even now commodities of this kind are admitted into the United States only under strict procedures designed to ensure that they are of non-Communist origin. The entrepôt trade, once the Colony's mainstay, has continued up to the present on a greatly reduced scale. The Colony has, in fact, been saved from economic disaster largely by its exertions in the field of industry.