XN000022-1977-06-24 — Page 12

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group including a number of 'old China hands' this evening, and thus

giving me the chance to catch up with life in this last remaining

British Colony.

It an

"This seems to be a great year for reminiscing, or at least

for reviewing events of the last 25 years. I hope therefore you will

forgive me if I fall in with the popular trend for a few moments to

reflect on what has happened in Hong Kong over that time.

happens that my first visit to the colony was exactly 25 years ago

when as a very young man, in fact I was still at school, I was taken

round the New Territories and shown with pride one of the first big resettlement schemes in Kowloon which were then starting to be built in order to house the large influx of population from China.

"At that time there were still fewer than a million people

in the colony

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in fact you could look down from halfway up the peak

and actually see the harbour then now you have to go to the top to

look over the skyscrapers

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-

but the line on the graph was beginning

to shoot up and there were many who were convinced Hong Kong was about

―

to burst at the seams that such numbers of people in such a small

area could scarcely be housed, let alone fed, or giver work.

There were gloomy prophesies of starvation, disease and of

violent revolution. As you know better than I do, the Jeremiahs were

confounded. Today, not only has the number of inhabitants multiplied

five times, but by dint of remarkable foresight, superb planning and

incredible human exertions this staggering number of people has been

housed some of the densest housing anywhere and this alone is

—

impressive enough (I could scarcely believe the amount of building

that had taken place in the 10 years between my first and second

/visits)