ENG-1981 — Page 39

18

REVIEW

we need today to fit our increasingly sophisticated social and economic pattern, nor are products of the Cultural Revolution with training in arms and too ready a disposition to open fire in a hold-up.

Perhaps the most compelling reason for halting illegal immigration lies in one projection of the 1981 Census. Assuming that the half million who have arrived and been allowed to stay in the past few years follow the projected rate of natural increase of the population between 1981-86, Hong Kong's population in 1986 will increase not by seven per cent to 444 700 people (had there been no immigration from China) but to 477 800.

It is too much of the same story since 1949. The total influx from that time until 1980 is estimated at 1 142 600. That figure represents 35 per cent of Hong Kong's total population growth of 3 295 700. However, the figure of 35 per cent is definitely an under-estimate of total immigration impact because part of the total population growth was also caused by the natural increase of the immigrants themselves during-the 30-year period. And that increase cannot be separately estimated.

Whatever may be the real total, it is the multiplier effect of successive influxes following the communist assumption of power in China in 1949, the shock fortnight 'invasion' of 100 000 in 1962 and the recent half million influx after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Added to this is one group tiny Hong Kong cannot really be expected to absorb. These are the thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese refugees who have flooded in over the past few years and have been given first asylum under the most compassionate policy of any country in Southeast Asia. They hardly fit the Hong Kong pressure-cooker and the world has recognised this, settling most in places like the United States, Canada and Britain. But many thousands still remain awaiting the generosity of those who have pledged to take them, but still haven't done so.

Three times in 30 years Hong Kong, like the Arabian phoenix, has been through the fire of disruption and hardship, only to rise renewed from the ashes of its cyclical human inundation. And like that single, mythical bird, Hong Kong is unique as well as remarkable in this world.