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A prolonged discussion followed, mostly with local researchers into the history, economy and society of the Hong Kong Region. Dr. David Faure offered two contributory reasons for the KMT's failure to deal with land reform in addition to those mentioned by Dr. Myers. One was the effects of the World Depression of the early 1930s; another was the amount spent on military expenditure that might have been usefully spent on land reform. Dr. Myers agreed. Dr. Hayes said that if the time needed for land survey and settlement in the N.T. of Hong Kong (4 years) and its cost were any indication of the size and complexity of the task, it might indicate that it was beyond the KMT's capacity, even in one province. There was also the matter of sufficient trained staff.
The discussion then turned to tenancy itself. Dr. Patrick Hase said that, if the N.T. was in any way typical of the situation in the sub and top soil ownership situation, the amount of true tenancy was small, consisting of a small number of landless peasant families and others who had to rent land from others to make up for their own insufficient holdings. He also queried whether one could apply a broad brush. There was surely a difference between subsistence areas such as the Hong Kong Region and highly developed market-economy regions centred round big cities, as at Canton and in the Yangtze delta.
Dr. Hase went on to say that in discussion of tenancy an important factor in assessing its effect was the percentage of the crop taken in tenancy, either by the sub-soil owner or by the surface owner from sub-tenants. In the Hong Kong Region the percentage of the crop represented by the first was very low, below 25% and getting less as more land was opened. The latter was (and had long been) customarily set at around 50%, and there were no signs that it had created economic deprivation and social tensions. Dr. Hayes added that the desperate economic situation of the peasants attributed to the tenancy position, as reported by the Institute of Pacific Affairs' social scientists in the 1930s, seemed very unreal to those of us working on the Hong Kong Region.
Dr. Quested asked "who, then, were the tenants?" and what had been their experience and significance. Dr. Myers said they