=
E
=
FOREWORD
E
F
=
==
==
F_
Hong Kong 1996 is the 50th edition in a series of annual reports prepared by the Hong Kong Government since relatively normal operations resumed after World War II.
=
Before the yearbook, annual reports appeared more in the form of financial accounts or ledgers. They were filled out by hand, mostly in copperplate script which
=
enhanced even the most prosaic entries. The past half-century has been far from prosaic. The first annual report, produced by what is now the Information Services Department, reported on Hong Kong's experiences during 1946 and was printed in March 1947.
It noted that Civil Government was restored on May 1, 1946, when Sir Mark Young resumed the Governorship, the Legislative and Executive Councils were reconstituted and normal administrative organisation restored after the interruption caused by the war. Among Sir Mark's first acts was to open discussions on the best method for giving
Z
the people of Hong Kong a greater share of responsibility in the management of their own affairs. -The result was a proposal to form a Municipal Council, two-thirds.
elected by voters and one-third appointed by "Chinese and non-Chinese representative bodies". This was approved in general the following year and
H
its constitution and electoral procedures have changed gradually since then.
E
In May 1947, Sir Mark retired after a term of office interrupted by World War II. He paid a farewell visit to the authorities in Guangzhou and several agreements were concluded to further,
the cordial relations existing between Great Britain and China.
=
Also in 1947, when almost 80 per cent of the territory's current population were yet to be born.- Hong Kong was admitted as an Associate Member of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East. It was the first time
Hong Kong had been represented as an individual territory in a UN organisation. Kai Tak Aerodrome - "never very satisfactory". - was deemed totally inadequate for modern requirements and liable to cramp Hong Kong's development as an air centre.-
No resolution to the problem was found by the end of 1947— and air traffic growth? was such that no remedy would last more than a year or two until Chek Lap Kok was chosen- One of Hong Kong's worst disasters came the following year, when 173 people died in a godown fire at West Point (now well inland behind successive Western District reclamations)
on September 22, 1948. Hong Kong also experienced the world's first case of attempted air piracy that year. Some of the 23 passengers in a Catalina flying boat en route from Macau belonged to a gang which tried to rob the rest of those on board. The plane crashed and the four crewfand 22 of the passengers died—
The first reliable post-war figures became available, and Hong Kong was estimated to have a population of 1.8 million— which the yearbook pointed out was "greater than
the population of New Zealand". In 1949, Hong Kong was pressed to provide housing and water for refugees fleeing from the civil war which was about to reach its climax on
the mainland. Those two issues became key factors in shaping modern Hong Kong, as Tide Cove turned into Sha Tin, Tuen Mun was created from
Castle Peak Bay, and High Island became the seaward wall of a fresh-water reservoir. Some things never change. The 1948 yearbook complained about the traffic congestion created by Hong Kong's 9 266 vehicles — and ran two photographs to prove it. One shows cars parked "on the waterfront” along both sides and in the centre of Connaught Road outside the Hong Kong Club. The other shows a street that no longer exists.
·
F
So it went, year by year, as a succession of editors collated the facts of Hong Kong's growth through riots, typhoons, boom, bust and boom again. Browsing through them reads more often like
a novel than a government report but then, that is Hong Kong. And, as the series of yearbooks shows,
it has been 50 years of change for the better.
=
=
==
ΞΙ
=
=
==
B: