ENG-1961 — Page 57

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Population

THE total population of the Colony at the end of 1961 was estimated to be 3,226,400. This estimate being based on the census of the population taken in February and March of this year can be accepted with confidence.

The actual census population, after deducting 3,483 transients, was 3,129,648 of whom 1,607,779 were male and 1,521,869 female. Details of the census have already been given in Chapter 1, where the reader will also find an explanation of why a precise division into 'Chinese' and 'non-Chinese' cannot be made. If language be taken as the criterion, we find that of the census population 2,579,207 (1,321,452 male and 1,257,755 female) spoke some kind of Chinese as their usual language, 48,153 (27,855 male and 20,298 female) spoke a non-Chinese language, and 502,288 (500,706 under five years of age and 1,582 dumb) could not be classified by tongue. If ancestral origin be taken as the criterion, 260,505 (127,365 male and 133,140 female) gave Hong Kong as their place of origin, 2,819,396 (1,451,318 male and 1,368,078 female) gave some part of China and 49,747 (29,096 male and 20,651 female) gave other parts of the world. From the cross-classification of these two characters we can be pretty sure that on any workaday definition of the word 'Chinese' not less than 3,074,000 or 98.2% of the population would answer the description.

The last census in 1931 found the total population to be 849,751. Another census should have been held in 1941, but the unsettled conditions which followed the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the fluctuations in population after the attack on Canton in 1938, and later the Japanese invasion of the Colony, caused the plan to be abandoned. An unofficial count by air-raid wardens in 1941 before the Japanese attack put the population at about 1,600,000. This number was greatly reduced during the occupation and it is estimated that the total amounted to less than 600,000 when the Colony was liberated in August 1945. The population grew rapidly again with peace, and by the end of 1946 it was believed that the