72 en
- Jasis had been adopted earlier but it must be
remembered that if the claims for relief which Hong Kong
are not putting forward had been conceded earlier, the
contribution would have been considerably less.
You will
see from the Hong Kong despatch of the 1st of November,
X. 1928, that the estimated deductions amount to something
like a third of the total tribution, so that you would
have been decidedly worse off if these had been made. Moreover it must be remembered that the valuation increased
less rapidly than the aggregate revenue during the dis- turbance of prices in the war years owing to the natural slowness with which house and land rents adjusted themselves
to the new level of prices In the last three or four
years you will observe that the assessment has risen although the revenue has fallen, and looking at the pre- war years only the two systems give almost identical figures ($17,800,000 and $17,500,000 respectively). It is dangerous, therefore, to lay too much stress on a
comparison which includes the war years.
(2) I do not think there is very muchin this fear.
1 It is, of course, obvious that rents in Kowloon, which is
it ho
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187
undeveloped
R