CO129-587-15 Excess Population Reduction Committee Report- Chinese Immigration Bill 1-10-1940 - 6-1-1941 — Page 53

ORIGINAL

ON

53559/40. M.K.

152

No. 1940

4

HONG KONG.

REPORT OF THE EXCESS POPULATION

REDUCTION COMMITTEE.

1. We were appointed on the 6th June, 1940, by His Excellency the Officer Administering the Government as a Committee

a Committee with the following terms of

reference:

"In view of the fact that the number of the poor population in Hong Kong is higher than is desirable both from the point of view of defence and public health, to consider and report as soon as possible to Government what immediate steps should be taken to reduce the excess population of the Colony and to secure that the immigration of further persons is properly controlled."

2. The history of the population of the Colony during the last century has been one of steady growth, mainly due to unchecked and uncontrolled immigration with occasional set-backs during years of plague or depression, from a few thousand fisher- men, cultivators and traders to a number which under present conditions it is im- possible to assimilate without grave danger to defence, especially in the necessary conservation of food supplies in a time of war, and to public health and security.

3. The census of 1921, a year of considerable post-war prosperity resulting in a land and building boom showed a total population for the whole Colony of 625,166. The years of political stress and strife from 1922 to 1927 may have resulted in some reduction in those years, but the census of 1931 showed an advance to 852,932; and it is probable that normal increase would have brought the population to the million mark at the Colony's Centenary in 1941, notwithstanding a temporary reduction in the later years of World depression. It is probable also that such a normal increase could have been absorbed into its system by new building and in- telligent town planning without detriment to the health and security of the Colony as a whole.

4. This normal growth and absorption has been completely upset as a result of the Sino-Japanese conflict since 1937 and especially since the area of hostilities spread southward to the Colony's borders and hinterland from 1938 to the present day. By the middle of the year 1938 (that is to say a year after hostilities had caused a flow towards the Colony and the South generally of those refugees who were able to escape from devastation in North and Central China, but before the Japanese landings in South China, East and West of the Colony, and before the general evacuation of the civil and military population of Canton less than a hundred miles to the North of the Colony) the population of the Colony was estimated in official publications at 1,028,619.