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to invalidate at once any comparison with places like Formosa, the Netherlands East Indies, or the
Phillippines, which are distinct from China, and
where the Chinese are an alien and not an indi-
genous race and form a very small fraction of the
total population. Even in such of these terri-
tories as have adopted them the systems of regis-
tration and rationing of opium smokers have (in
the view of the Governor of the Straits Settlements)
achieved only a limited success as regards the
indigenous populations and non success amounting practically to failure when it is sought to impose the same measures on the Chinese. The
Governor also makes a point of the fact that registration and rationing would check the flow
of emigration of Chinese into llalaya, with very
serious effects upon the labour supply and the promity of that country, and there would also, of course, be very serious effects on Hong Kong, if any measures taken impeded the free movement of Chinese from China to the Colony.
11. In Hong Kong in the view of the Hong Kong Committee (in which the Governor concurs) no system involving individual control of opium smokers (such as is involved in a system of registration and licenging) is possible. The key-
notes to the situation are the undoubted exis-
tence of a wide-spread demand for opium for the purposes of smoking, the complete absence of any public opinion condemning the practice, the existence of unlimited supplies of Chinese, Turkish, and Persian opium, and in the circumstances outlined above the virtual impossibility of/
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