ENG-1954 — Page 176

Chapter 11

Social Welfare

Social Welfare in Hong Kong is characterized by the very close collaboration which exists between official and voluntary agencies. There are now nearly a hundred voluntary welfare organizations in Hong Kong, a few of which have been established in the Colony for over a century. It was not until after the last war that Government provided its own organization for the administration of social welfare.

In the early days, Hong Kong's population numbered but a few thousand. From time to time, whenever civil strife or famine occurred in China, immigrants flocked over the border from Kwangtung province, the majority of whom returned to their native villages when the situation in their homeland was more normal, or when there was a decline in the Colony's economy. As the Colony developed, its population steadily increased until at the time of the official census in 1931 it numbered nearly 865,000. By mid-1941 this figure had doubled as a result of the Sino-Japanese war, but following the outbreak of the Pacific War in December, 1941, two thirds of the people in Hong Kong again sought refuge on the mainland. With boom- trade conditions prevailing after the end of World War II the influx from the interior of people attracted by prospects of work and better living standards, reached higher proportions than ever before and the

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