ENG-1958 — Page 18

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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

The Japanese reduced the number to 600,000, but by the end of 1946 the population had again risen to 1,600,000 as people in search of safety and work drifted back to the Colony from South China. In 1949, when the new regime was securing its grip upon the mainland, immigration became a torrent. By April 1950 the population had increased to 2,360,000. A survey conducted by Dr. Hambro on behalf of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1954 estimated that the rise in population included some 700,000 refugees. The majority of these people were indigent, and their entry into the Colony created the gravest problems. They had to find housing; they had to find food and clothing; they needed medical treatment when sick; and their children needed schooling. The Colony was already short of these facilities for its existing population. The pressure on buildings and on the small area of developable land became intense.

The vast horde of refugees, many of peasant stock, could not be absorbed on the land. They settled in and around the urban areas in conditions of profound distress. But it was these people in their ramshackle huts, crowded cheek by jowl on the hillsides and on the rooftops of tenement blocks, who turned their hands to new trades and within a few years attracted the curious gaze of the world to the results of their activities.

The Korean War began in June 1950 and the Colony started introducing controls over trade in strategic materials the following month. The next year was even more fateful for Hong Kong. As a result of the United Nations' resolution of 18th May 1951, a partial embargo on trade with China was imposed in June. This was a crippling blow to local commerce. Although total trade for the year was valued at $9,303 million, the increase over the 1950 figure was due partly to a general rise in world prices and to the need to obtain raw materials for local industry in a seller's market from whatever new sources could be found. A more accurate index of the real value of trade in 1951 is given by the tonnage figures which fell by over one million tons (17.5%) compared with those of the previous year. Up to the present time the entrepôt trade with China has continued only as a shadow of its former self and Hong Kong has, in fact, been saved from economic disaster mainly by its exertions in the field of industry. If it was from China that the main ingredients of the industrial