ENG-1959 — Page 15

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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

culminating in disaster on Christmas Day, 1953, when a fire in the Shek Kip Mei squatter area left 50,000 people homeless in a single night. By this tragedy, a dilemma was resolved: for the razed area provided an extensive site unencumbered by squatters' huts on which to build the first resettlement buildings. These buildings were able to house considerably more people than were originally displaced by the fire; thus allowing the clearance of further areas of squatter huts not only for the development of more resettle- ment buildings (again allowing more land to be cleared) but also for the siting of schools, hospitals, clinics and all the other multi- farious social services which the Colony so urgently required.

Thus land, without which nothing could be done, became available; and the Government was able to take upon itself the gigantic task of accepting the new arrivals and providing them with social amenities at as high a standard as the circumstances permitted. Once it had decided upon this policy, the Government pursued it with tenacity.

It is, of course, a valid criticism that Hong Kong did not accept this responsibility immediately the first immigrants began to arrive: but this criticism, quite apart from the fact that the rate of entry would in any event have made it physically impossible to build fast enough to prevent the squatter areas developing, ignores the fundamental facts inherent in any refugee problem. There are, indeed, only three basic solutions to such problems. Either the refugees return to their country of origin, or they move on to yet a third country, or the country in which they find themselves accepts them as an integral part of the community. In past waves of immigration into Hong Kong following upon disturbed condi- tions in China (and there have been many such), large numbers of immigrants have usually returned sooner or later to their homes in China as the conditions which gave rise to their migration sub- sided; although some remained in the Colony and others moved elsewhere, particularly to the countries of south-east Asia. The distinguishing features of this particular wave of immigration, however, were its size and the fact that, although the Hong Kong Government has placed no physical bar on return to China, it is apparent that there is nevertheless no general desire to return home. Moreover emigration, never recently possible in any degree because of the unwillingness of third countries to receive large

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