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MAURICE FREEDMAN
common ownership. How do such systems work? What economic consequences follow from the building up and breaking down of common properties? It would appear, for example, that a shift to new uses of land must often wait upon the dissolution of the tso which holds it, and there are sometimes long drawn-out disputes over the manner in which the division is to be made—as when the tso consists of two or more branches of unequal size such that a per stirpes distribution would benefit some people and a per capita one others. Again, detailed field studies would be able to show not simply how much land in a given area is being rented out to tenants, but also the different classes of tenancy and their rules, implicit as well as explicit. In this connexion, I may refer once more to the uncertainty which appears to surround the terms governing short tenancies by vegetable-growers.
86. There is, of course, a larger land matter at stake in the New Territories. Recent development has done more than merely put pressure on common holdings and convert paddies to vegetable gardens; it has created an urban market for country land and encouraged the idea that it is the landowner's right to convert his property to non-agricultural uses. No modern government can allow country land to be turned haphazardly into building sites, and it is not to be wondered at that, in their desire to put their land to new uses, New Territories people have had to face an official land policy which sometimes appears to them to be perverse. And a disinterested outsider might well comment that in this difference, the government appears to be the guardian of a rural integrity which the country people themselves are content to see disappear. Many small landowners would prefer to stop being peasants and either sell what they have to a dealer or develop it themselves by putting up accommodation for rent. The situation breeds misunderstandings. I recall, to take an example from official restrictions on housing—how, at the beginning of my work, I had great difficulty in extracting from what I was told the small kernel of truth about government policy. The fact that village houses up to a certain height and area are exempt from certain burdensome requirements becomes distorted into the belief that a limit is being imposed on the dimensions of houses; and complaints are heard about the lack of freedom to design houses according to the wishes of the inhabitants. It is certainly not easy to see how the Administration can overcome the difficulties arising from misunderstanding, but a