ENG-1950 — Page 27

1.

POPULATION.

Until a census can be held any estimate of the population of Hong Kong is necessarily tentative. When the last official census was taken in 1931 the total population was found to be 849,751. Since then violent fluctuations have occurred, firstly on the influx of refugees from Canton when the Japanese attacked that city in 1938, and later during the Japanese occupation of the Colony and after its subsequent liberation in 1945. In 1941 an unofficial census carried out by Air Raid Wardens gave a figure of over 1,600,000, a total which is believed to have been reached again in 1946 after an estimated reduction of one million during the Japanese occupation. Even after the end of 1946 the population continued to grow. far as it is possible to estimate, the population at the close of the year 1947 was about 1,800,000. The influx continued steadily through- out the following years until April 1950 when it is estimated that the total population reached its highest point at about 2,360,000. During the following months, for the first time since the reoccupation of the Colony, the trend of migration was outward, and at the close of the year the population is estimated to have been about 2,060,000.

The

So

Of the total population the majority is of Chinese race. number of Europeans and Americans permanently resident, excluding Service personnel and their dependants, is about 14,500, including some 9,500 British subjects from the United Kingdom and Common- wealth, 3,000 British subjects of Portuguese race, and 1,890 aliens permanently resident. In addition there were some 2,000 aliens temporarily resident.

The population of the New Territories is composed of Cantonese and Hakka, with a sprinkling of Hoklo. The farmers are the Cantonese, mainly settled, some families for several hundred years, in the comparatively fertile western plains, and the Hakka, whose incursion into the more difficult hilly land on the eastern side of the peninsula is said to have started about two hundred years ago and may not have finished yet. Generally speaking, the Hakka appear to have occupied any potentially arable land disregarded by the Cantonese. Thus long fingers of Hakka penetration have been extended from the eastern side of the New Territories down into the south-west of the mainland and out on to the islands. The two sections maintain excellent relations, and although Hakka help Hakka more noticeably than Cantonese help Cantonese it is remark- able that in their penetration the Hakka have been partly guided

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