28
HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
can be brought under control more quickly. And land is at last being earned for future operations (and not only for resettlement operations) by the 'decanting' process whereby accommodation on any given area is built for more people than occupied it previously, thus providing free space into which squatters from a second area can be put while that area itself is being re-developed.
Although the rents from the resettlement estates are now being collected without difficulty and according to plan, and although 40% of the squatters are now resettled in tolerable homes, it must not be thought that resettlement, in the particular conditions of Hong Kong, is ever a once-for-all operation that can be forgotten as soon as the tall buildings are completed and occupied. No-one yet quite knows to what new problems these vast communities, living their uniform lives in uniform surroundings, will give rise. All are direct tenants of the Government. But the rights of a landlord rest ultimately on the final sanction of eviction. These people cannot be evicted without re-creating those very dangers which the establishment of the tenancies was intended to remove. They are where they are, not from the exercise of any choice on their part, but because there was nowhere else for them to go and because they were put there by the Government, now their landlord. It is a strange, involved problem, but one which is not devoid of potentialities both for bad and good. The recent riots alone provide an indica- tion of the possible threats to public order that may be sparked off and spread like a forest fire in such conditions. And it would be criminally foolish to overlook the opportuni- ties which these estates offer to political or even subversive agitators. On the other hand, such compact and uniform communities probably present a unique field for experimental education in the social and civic spheres. There are now clubs, schools and other forms of communal activity in the estates, but it is difficult to see how these somewhat tentative social services can be developed to reasonable standards until