ENG-1958 — Page 37

POPULATION

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and recorded both ways across the frontiers is usually equal to or greater than the estimated total number of the population.

The population increased during 1958 by some 129,000 to reach an estimated total of 2,806,000. Of this increase 86,070 was due to the excess of registered births over registered deaths, and 43,156 to recorded immigration. The actual number of registered births was 106,624 in 1958 compared with 97,834 in 1957, and of registered deaths was 20,554 compared with 19,365 in 1957. These figures yield for 1958 a birth rate of 38.8 per mille and a death rate of 7.5 per mille, on a mid-year population of 2,748,000.

URBAN POPULATION

The majority of urban residents originally came from Kwang- tung. As a result of economic and political changes in China during the past several years, a large number of people from Shanghai and the neighbouring area have established themselves in the Colony.

At the end of 1958 the number of British subjects from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, excluding Service per- sonnel and their dependents, numbered about 15,000. The total of non-Chinese residents, excluding British nationals, was about 7,900; of these the most numerous national communities were: American, 2,147; Portuguese, 1,630; Filipino, 581; Japanese, 359; Dutch, 354; French, 312; and Italian, 281.

The districts of Kwangtung which have supplied the largest elements of Hong Kong's urban Chinese population are neighbour- ing Po On and Tungkwun, Waiyeung and Muiyuen (principally Hakka), Chiuchow, the so-called Four Districts (Sunning, Sunwui, Hoiping and Yanping), Namhoi, Punyü, Shuntak and Chungshan. Other elements in the urban population include a Fukien com- munity and numbers of overseas Chinese whose families originally came from Kwangtung or Fukien.

The chief linguistic characteristic of the urban area is that, although a wide variety of Chinese languages and dialects are used in daily life, Cantonese is the lingua franca. Apart from Cantonese, the languages or dialects most widely heard are Hakka, Chiuchow, Kuoyü (the national language), the Shanghai dialect and, of course, English, the popularity of which has increased considerably in