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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
from February to September 1956 alone accounted for an increase of 56,000 in the permanent population.
The estimated natural rate of increase in the population of 3.8% was maintained throughout 1956. In actual figures registered births amounted to 96,746 in 1956 as compared with 90,511 in 1955. The total number of deaths increased slightly from 19,080 in 1955 to 19,295 in 1956, the rate per thousand being 7.9 and 7.6 respectively.
URBAN POPULATION
The majority of urban residents originally came from Kwangtung. As a result of economic and political changes in China during the past several years, a large number of people from Shanghai and the neighbouring areas have established themselves in the Colony.
During the year 1956 the number of British subjects from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, excluding Service personnel and their dependants, increased to about 14,000. Other communities include Americans, with about 1,870 residents, Portuguese numbering 1,770, Philippinoes 390, French 360, Dutch 340, Italian 280 and Japanese 250. The total of non-Chinese residents, excluding British nationals, is about 7,000.
The districts of Kwangtung which have supplied the largest elements of Hong Kong's urban Chinese population are neighbouring Po On and Tungkwun, Waiyeung and Muiyuen (principally Hakka), Chiuchow, the so-called Four Districts (Sunning, Sunwui, Hoiping and Yanping), Nam- hoi, Punyü, Shuntak and Chungshan. Other elements in the urban population include a Fukien community and numbers of overseas Chinese whose families originally came from Kwangtung or Fukien.
The chief linguistic characteristic of the urban area is that, although a wide variety of Chinese languages and dialects are used in daily life, Cantonese is the lingua franca. Apart
The Hong Kong Housing Society's Estate, Healthy Village, North Point.
J. M. Rowlands