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Colony is specialized labour brought to the Colony with the transfer thereto of certain industries, such as silk weaving from Shanghai and more recently banknote printing and the manufacture of wireless apparatus. Certain employers of such labour have contracted to repatriate it on discharge. There is no legal provision for repatriation except in a regulation of the Miscellaneous Licences Ordinance No. 25 of 1933, the application of which regulation is confined in practice to Shanghai dancing hostesses. A small number of specialized Indian labourers was recruited for the construction of the Shing Mun Dam, but such importation of labour is very rare. When trade in the Colony is bad many labourers return to their homes in China.
22. Although the great majority of factories is situated in urban and sub-urban areas, well furnished with roads and bus services and a tramway from end to end of the urban area in Hong Kong and ferry services between Hong Kong and Kowloon, most workers cannot afford transport expenses and are compelled to live in proximity to their place of employment. Certain of the larger employers provide housing accommodation near their works.
This concentration of population may be undesirable from a health point of view, but until town planning and proper zoning are instituted little can be done in the matter. Section 49 of the Tramway Ordinance No. 10 of 1902 provides for workmen's cars and workmen's tickets. Various difficulties appear to have been experienced in the working of the section, and no workmen's tickets have been sold since 1913.
23. The housing of labourers in lines at the New Territories mines presents a different problem and will be dealt with in a later paragraph.
24. The working classes are immune generally from direct taxation. They are subject to the incidence of such indirect taxation as tobacco duties (1939 Estimates- $4.600,000) and the most productive form of revenue, assessed taxes (rates). ($6.212,000) affects their rent, as although the rate (at present generally 17 per cent.) is an occupier's rate, in the case of tenements used by the labouring classes it is paid by the owner and recovered in the rent. In the matter of indirect taxa- tion it may be noted that the Bus Companies, the Hong Kong Tramways and the Hong Kong and Yaumati Ferry Company all pay royalties to Government.
China.
25. China has an estimated population of 450,000.000 and is the largest reser- voir of labour in the world. For centuries it enjoyed the benefits of a stable civilization without hereditary aristocracy or castes, where the scholars became the rulers as the result of a competitive examination, as
as administrative officers were once chosen for the Eastern Colonies, and the subordinate classes were the farmers. artisans, and merchants, in that order. Laissez-faire was exalted to the principle that the government governs best that governs least, and Confucius inculcated that social order depends on every man knowing his place and acting accordingly.
26. It is estimated that at least three quarters of this population live a hand to mouth existence and the average individual wealth is about one five hundredth that of a citizen of the United States of America. The population is mainly agricul- tural, but flood, famine, and war have driven increasing numbers into the industrial labour market. Ancestor worship, the maintenance of the male line, and the belief that of all unfilial things the greatest is to have no posterity, led to over-population which made Dr. Sun Yat Sen exclaim "At present China is suffering from over- population which will bring impending danger in its wake. How are we to appease the hunger of swarming millions?" Families are large and the standard of living low. Uncurbed procreation with the inability at times to support the offspring has led occasionally to infanticide in the case of female infants and more frequently to their sale as "mui-tsai."
'mui-tsai." This problem will be referred to later.
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27. China has been described as not a state but a society, and the Chinese as a familial and not a political animal, society being merely the family writ large. The family as the basis of society has been not inappropriately referred to as a com-