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we have had a share in them. It is worthwhile to look back briefly, for Hong Kong's recent history is truly so startling and unusual, indeed unique, that it is only by reflecting on the works and achievements of the past that we can really tackle the problems which together we are facing now.
In the twenty years which have just gone by, to try to sum them up in one sentence, our population has more than doubled; we have housed more than one-third of the people in state housing built by the Government and paid for from current revenue (which has increased ten-fold); this small and barren territory has achieved a position amongst the first twenty-five of the world's trading nations; and we suddenly find ourselves with nearly 60% of our population under twenty-five years old, all of them young people who know no life, no society, except the highly concentrated complex, urban society of Hong Kong. So far as I know no changes so sweeping as these have ever happened so quickly anywhere else in the world, not any one of them, let alone all of them together. Inevitably the nature of our community has greatly changed. In the old days people came to old Hong Kong from China just to work, often leaving their family behind in the village, or to travel onwards to the many countries which then welcomed Chinese immigrants. Today most of Hong Kong's millions were born here and have lived here all their lives. Their future lies in Hong Kong and therefore more than ever before they care about how society is organized and what the Government does. Hong Kong is no longer a transit point or cross-roads or place for temporary sojourn but a living city in which people grow up and work and expect in due course to grow old.
Great achievements are woven into the fabric of this story, but I am not concerned to dwell upon them here. I am concerned rather to describe the new problems they have brought and to look ahead at the way in which these too will be solved in their turn. The creation of a modern industrial society; the building each year of resettlement estates the size of a town which in China or England might take hundreds of years to grow; the advent of young Hong Kong, the young people searching for an outlet for their energies, for inspiration, for fulfilment, at a time when many great countries elsewhere seem to be treating their youth almost as an alien race to be approached with caution or even fear; let us look at these new developments, these new forces, and consider how best we can all serve Hong Kong in the nineteen-seventies.
Our Resettlement and Low Cost Housing were born of compassion, so were the many other services. In early post-war years, starvation in Hong Kong was common, massive and frequent disasters destroyed by fire the homes of tens of thousands of people, elementary schooling was a privilege, medical services available only to the few. In all these fields of social need the voluntary agencies have provided and continue to provide for the unfortunate. Today the Government is to a large extent able to provide for these basic social needs. Starvation is unheard of, public assistance measures are on the threshold of considerable expansion, no child need miss his primary schooling, Government housing has steadily replaced dangerous shanty huts, and medical clinics are found in all parts of town and country. This is not to say that the need for compassion does not remain; of course it does, but the needs of the community may be more difficult to identify. Laws, policies, practices and procedures must change with changing times and must fit the needs of where we work. At a time when our task of assessing and enunciating these needs has become more difficult, we in the Civil Service have tried to reorganize and expand our work so as to lend a more attentive ear to what others have to say. We are here to work, to wrestle with the problems of modern Hong Kong.
In our deliberations throughout the proceedings of the present session, we have heard mention of such matters as the continued existence of squatters and their chances of early resettlement, the desirability of direct resettlement for homeless people accommodated in licensed areas, rehousing of persons from old tenement buildings and of other categories of persons, and of re-examining the Rent Advance Scheme. All these potential claimants for public housing must of course be considered.
These tasks are not, however, so simple and straightforward as may appear at first sight. Take, for example, one of the categories which has been suggested as deserving our attention: squatters living in areas not due for redevelopment. All such squatters are of course free to apply for subsidized housing in Government Low Cost Housing or Housing Authority flats, according to their income; and there are vacancies in these estates, though somewhat limited in number. These vacancies are in the less attractive outlying areas; but with the increasing scarcity of sites in central areas, it would be physically impossible to build sufficient accommodation to provide for all persons in housing need in the areas where they would prefer to live; this means that, so long as we depend on a system by which subsidized housing is allocated to voluntary applicants, we shall never rehouse all those persons whom the public conscience considers to be in housing need, since there will always be some of these people who prefer to remain where they are rather than move out to the areas where subsidized housing is available. The only other way to rehouse such people would be by compulsory resettlement; but this would mean compelling them to move to the same areas to which they are unwilling to move voluntarily. It would also raise the question whether the persons being resettled were necessarily the most needy section of our population or should be given priority for subsidized housing at the expense of other sections of the community. However, these issues are
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