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5.
13. By the 31st December 1949 four Kaifong Welfare Associations had been formally inaugurated and six more urban ones were in an advanced stage of preparation. Tai Hang district's post-war Residents' Association had associated itself with kaifong welfare principles, and so had the hundred- year old Stanley Land and Sea Citizens' Association. The Social Welfare Office continued to try to keep as far as possible in the background, pursuing the same aims as it did during the Shamshuipo experiment. During the last quarter of 1949 Mr. C. N. Li attended an average of 30 meetings a month, nearly all out of office hours, as well as taking part in many informal discussions; the Social Welfare Officer and certain other members of the Relief Section also attended or assisted at large numbers of meetings. At the office and in between our other regular duties we kept ourselves as well informed as we could of Chinese press and public opinions, took steps to forestall unfortunate raids on Preparatory Committees' meetings by suspicious or uninformed policemen on the lookout for infringements of the Societies Ordinance or other laws, were involved in policy discussions. and ways and means, and personalities, and when necessary smoothed the paths between other government departments and the new kaifong associations.
14. By July 1951 there were fifteen fully established Kaifong Welfare
Associations or similar bodies
(a) Four new ones at Shamshuipo, Mongkok, Yaumati and Kowloon City
(not the "Walled City"), and a re-organised pre-war one at Hung Hom, which between them covered all urban Kowloon except the Tsimshatsui
area.
(b) Eight new ones in Kennedy Town, Western, Central, Wanchai, Happy
Valley and Canal Road, Causeway Bay, North Point and Shaukiwan, and a similar residents' association at Tai Hang, which covered all the urban areas along the northern half of Hong Kong Island.
(c) Stanley Land and Sea Citizens Association on the south of Hong Kong
Island.
Official recognition was also about to be extended by the S.W.0. to two more would be Kaifong Welfare Associations in the large villages of Aberdeen and Aplichau on the south of the Island.
15. As already mentioned the early history of the Shamshuipo Kaifong Welfare Association was not essentially different from that of any other new Kaifong Welfare Association. The principal later divergences and innovations, some
of which were in turn adopted by Shamshuipo, were
(a) It was never again necessary for the Social Welfare Office to take the lead in stirring up local interest, though in two districts it was involved in local antagonisms.
(b) In some districts there were long established Chinese social or
benevolent organisations whose loading members were not only anxious to devote themselves to kaifong work as well, but who also put some of the amenities and services of the existing organisations temporarily at the disposal of the new movement. This was especially useful in districts where there was no nearby S..0. Welfare Centre.
(c) The aims and objects and the approved principal activities set
out in some constitutions were both wider and more detailed than Shamshuipo's.
(d) Difficulties were met in quietly ensuring the elimination of
undesirable but powerful individuals who would bring discredit on an Association even if they did not set about manipulating it for their own ends. (Care was taken that the S.W.O. did not direct or
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