ENG-1959 — Page 232

Chapter 11: Social Welfare

WORLD Refugee Year which started in July 1959 is now bringing to the notice of many member states of the United Nations the social conditions which have been created in Hong Kong by the influx of about a million people from China. Coupled with this influx has been a high rate of natural increase, with the result that the population, now estimated at about three millions, has almost doubled in ten years and over_two million people are packed into the twelve square miles of the twin cities of Victoria and Kowloon on either side of the harbour, where most jobs are to be found. During these ten years the Hong Kong Government, out of its own resources, has spent very large sums, amounting to nearly a third of its total revenue on social services such as low-cost housing, schools, hospitals and clinics, which would now be reasonably adequate if the population had increased at a normal rate and there had been no great volume of immigration. As it is, the grossly overcrowded housing conditions, the shortage of school places, and the difficulty of obtaining full time employment have induced or accentuated a number of serious social evils such as the abandonment of babies, the exploitation of children, juvenile delinquency, prostitution and widespread undernourishment or even destitution; in brief, social conditions are dominated by the struggle for survival. Children are left to fend for themselves in the streets and the business of somehow earning enough to keep alive in a fiercely competitive society means that for the majority there is little energy left for the graces of life or indeed for the development of any community sense in the newer urban areas. Fortunately the traditional Chinese moral code is still a powerful influence, even in families whose only home is a bedspace, though these traditions are now challenged by a variety of fresh influences.

The present social problems of Hong Kong have been vividly depicted in photographs in a broadsheet prepared for the World Refugee Year Committee of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, several hundred thousand copies of which have been dis- tributed to many of the countries taking part in World Refugee