ENG-1973 — Page 259

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Population

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HONG KONG's rate of natural increase in population has dropped significantly in the past few years. Natural population increase was 14.7 per thousand in 1973, against 27.5 in 1963. Births dropped from 114,550 (33.5 per thousand) 10 years ago to 82,252 (19.8 per thousand) in 1973.

The total estimated population at the end of 1973 was 4,219,300, with 2,163,300 males and 2,056,000 females. Compared with the estimated population in 1963 this represents an increase of 757,500 over the last 10 years.

More than 98 per cent of the population can be described as Chinese on the basis of language and place of origin. Immigration Department records show the number of Commonwealth citizens residing in Hong Kong at the end of 1973 as: British 13,239 (excluding members of armed forces); Indian 6,164; Malaysian 3,830; Australian 3,007; Singaporean 1,991; Canadian 1,571; and other Commonwealth countries 1,772.

Non-Commonwealth alien residents (excluding visitors staying for periods of less than six months), based on records kept by the Aliens' Registration Office, totalled 26,825. The largest groups were American (6,875) Japanese (2,971), Portuguese (2,666), Pakistani (2,652), Filipino (2,284), Indonesian (1,387), German (1,074), Korean (704), Dutch (688) and French (652).

Approximately 55 per cent of the urban population is of Hong Kong birth. Most of these, and the greater part of the immigrant population, come from Kwangtung Province. The districts of Kwangtung which have supplied the largest percentage of Hong Kong's urban Chinese population are Po On, Tung Kwun, Wai Yeung, Mui Yuen, Chiu Chow, Sze Yap, Nam Hoi, Pun Yue, Shun Tak and Chung Shan. The urban population also includes immigrants from Fukien and Kiangsu, and overseas Chinese whose families originally came from Kwangtung or Fukien.

In the New Territories, the indigenous inhabitants consist principally of Can- tonese, Hakka, Tanka and Hoklo. The Cantonese and Hakka groups are traditionally land-dwellers, and the Tanka and Hoklo groups boat-dwellers. These people differ from each other physically and in dress and custom. The usual village community consists of a single clan but two and three clan villages are common and multi-clan villages also occur. By custom, men are compelled to marry outside their own clan but, intermarriage between land and boat people is rare.

Cantonese form the biggest community in the New Territories, occupying the best parts of the two principal plains in the north-western section and owning much of the most fertile valley land in other areas. The oldest Cantonese villages-those of the Tang Clan in the Yuen Long district-have a history of continuous settlement