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CHAPTER I
THE BACKGROUND
1. The Colony's accommodation has never been as elastic as its population. For instance, when Canton fell to the Japanese at the end of 1938 there took place an influx of refugees into Hong Kong which caused a number of squatter colonies to spring up. During the Japanese occupation (December, 1941 to August, 1945) the population is believed to have dropped from 1-6 million to 600,000. The revival of prosperity which followed the end of the war, coupled with the political upheavals and un- certainty in post-war China, had by the end of 1948 raised the population to an estimated 18 million. Squatter colonies were were again in evidence and measures were put into effect to move the squatters into designated areas where they might put up in an orderly arrangement huts of standard design.
2. The events of 1949 completely overwhelmed such mea- sures as were then in force to deal with the housing and squatter problems. Communist forces reached the line of the Yangtze during the summer, the Chinese Communist regime was formally established in Peking on 1st October, 1949, and later in the same month the Communist armies took Canton and arrived on the Hong Kong frontier. The traditional policy of allowing free entry and asylum to all persons of Chinese race still remained unmodified. The population was probably well over two million by the end of the year, and the squatter colonies represented a very large and serious problem. Surveys carried out by the Social Welfare Office during the year indicated that 90% of the squatters were Cantonese and a great many were Hong Kong residents of long standing. The squatter population was estimated at the end of the year to be in the region of 300,000 as compared with 30,000 two years previously. Amongst the
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