HONG KONG MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN THE SIXTIES
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years of post-primary education with a strong practical bias for the 12 to 15 age group.
It became clear during the late sixties that the continued develop- ment of Hong Kong's industry will require an increased supply of technologists and managers, not only for manufacturing industry itself but also for the service industries and commercial services on which the manufacturer is so dependent. The Government has therefore decided to expand very considerably the facilities for higher vocational education by setting up a Polytechnic to provide courses in both industrial and commercial fields at levels varying from junior technician up to those of the examinations required for professional qualifications. A Polytechnic Planning Committee has been set up and it is hoped by about 1974 to provide for an enrol- ment of 4,000 full-time and up to 20,000 part-time students.
Housing and Land Development
Of greater immediate concern to manufacturing industry than training systems were the massive government resettlement and low-cost housing schemes, the provision and location of which became of crucial importance to labour supply. The relationships in time and space of such housing to effective development of planned new industrial areas has been well demonstrated at Kwun Tong. By and large, a remarkable degree of co-ordination has been achieved. The result-that characteristic vista of factories grouped among huge blocks of coloured, balconied, small flats-taken for granted by so many who live here, compels admiration, and even some degree of aesthetic satisfaction, in the perceptive visitor landing by air at Kai Tak.
It is almost impossible to picture the change in the physical environment in which manufacturing industry now goes about its business. In 1959 factories, at the most four or five storeys high, were concentrated in Tsuen Wan, already a substantial town; along the Lai Chi Kok Road, in Tai Kok Tsui and Ma Tau Kok, and among squatter clusters in northern Kowloon; at North Point and Quarry Bay on the island.
Tsuen Wan's factories are now unrecognisably different in height, in size, in number. At the northern end of the neighbouring valley of Kwai Chung large factories jostle for position on the most