RAS-1976 — Page 51

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DOUGLAS W. SPARKS

The 1961 Census and 1966 By-Census include "place of origin” and “usual language” as variables and cross-tabulate them with a number of other variables, including age, education, number of children, place of residence in Hong Kong, length of residence, etc.1 The two variables are not cross-tabulated, however, with oc- cupation and income. The only sources of information concerning Teochiu occupational structure are unpublished data from the 1971 Census, provided by Mr. M.C. Leong of the Census and Statistics Department, and data from Teochiu publications,

Tables III and IV provide occupational information from the 1971 Census. The first category in Table III includes unemployed women and children. Many of these women, who may have been represented as unemployed housewives to the census interviewers, are in fact doing piece work in their homes. The largest category is "craftsmen production workers and laborers" which reflects the large number of Teochiu semi-skilled factory workers and coolies, and represents 20% of all employed Teochiu. The next largest category is "clerical and sales workers” which represents over 29,000 workers, followed by "service, sport and recreation workers" (17,581), transport and communication workers (9,460), and then the smallest significant category — administrative, executive and managerial workers (8,826). The large number of transport workers recorded in the census reflects the fact that probably a majority of mini-bus drivers in Hong Kong are Teochiu.

Table IV classifies economically active ever married men by occupation. The same ordering of categories is found in this table as in Table III. It should be noted that many unmarried, young men and women are employed as unskilled and semi-skilled workers in large factories. These tables suggest a preponderance of Teochiu in relatively low paid and unskilled jobs. Unfortunately, the oc- cupational classification presented in these tables do not include ownership of businesses, particularly ownership of small shops, small workshops or flatted factories, and large-scale factories. There are numerous Teochiu owned light industrial firms, including plastic factories, machine tooling factories, garment factories, aluminum factories, as well as many import/export trading firms, banks and financial companies, stock companies, insurance companies and restaurants (Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce, 1961; Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce, 1971).

1 A more extensive analysis of the census statistics appears in my dissertation.