TNAG-0984-FCO40-1203-Immigration-from-China-to-Hong-Kong-1980 — Page 111

IMMIGRATION

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HONG KONG'S PERENNIAL PROBLEM

14.

A problem of people

For the past 140 years Hong Kong has provided either temporary or permanent shelter to those who for a variety of reasons have entered its confined area. Its community and its Government can justifiable take pride in this tradition; and their humanitarian response to the tragic exodus of Vietnamese but refugees has been second to none, in Asia.

However, there comes a time when an established community, which is already overcrowded, begins to suffer intolerably as a direct result of continuing waves of immigration, the majority of it illegal. Hong Kong's estimated population at the end of June 1980 was 5,067,900. More than 460,000 (just less than 10 percent) are immigrants who have entered Hong Kong from China since the beginning of 1975. With a land area of only

much of it unstable

Uviloya

1,061 square kilometres, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world (4,776 people per square kilometre). The density in one district, Mong Kok, at 145,000 per square kilometre, holds the dubious record of the highest density in the world.

Mainly because of the significant increase in the rate of illegal immigration from China, the annual rate of population growth (excluding Vietnamese refugees) in Hong Kong has more than doubled, from an average of 2 percent during 1971 1977, to more than 5 percent in 1979./ Including Vietnamese refugees, the total growth rate in 1979 was 6.3 percent, over five times the natural

This rate of immigration is unique

growth rate of 1.2 percent.

in Asia.

growth h

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