The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1963. China And Kowloon

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30038, 24 January 1963, Page 12

The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1963. China And Kowloon

Britain and its friends will wait with some concern to see just what is behind the Chinese Government’s protest about British actions in Kowloon. The policy of China towards relatively tiny Hong Kong has been one of tolerance. All the evidence has appeared to show that Communist China valued Hong Kong as a door through which it could develop a vigorous trade with the outside world. The Chinese Government may indeed be excluding Hong Kong from its protest over Kowloon; this impression could be gained from distinctions in the Chinese protest. However, Hong Kong, Kowloon, and what are known as the New Territories are administered by Britain as an integral colony. The island of Hong Kong was ceded by China to Britain in 1841; the area of the island is 29 square miles. It is separated from the mainland by a fine natural harbour. On the opposite side is the peninsula of Kowloon (3| square miles), which, with Stonecutters Island (one-quarter of a square mile), was added to the colony by the Convention of Peking in 1860. By a further convention of 1898, 365 J square miles, consisting of all the immediately adjacent mainland and numerous islands in the vicinity, were leased to Britain by China for 99 years. This area is known as the New Territories. The total area of the colony includes large areas of steep and unproductive hillside. The colossal expansion of Hong Kong’s population—--800,000 before the war, 2 millions in 1949, 3.2 millions now—has made it necessary

to use the mainland territories extensively. For instance, the New Territories now include several flourishing market towns and two rapidly developing industrial towns, Kwun Tong and Tsuen Wan, with large textile, enamel, and rubber factories, iron works, etc.

During the upsurge of population, Kowloon was occupied by squatters in huge numbers. The squalid conditions under which these people lived moved the Hong Kong Government to a struggle that was little less than heroic. Since the war, no fewer than one million new homes have been built. The Resettlement Department tried at first to deal with the squatters by building cottage estates, but this proved to be too slow. It now builds tenement blocks of reinforced concrete seven stories high; they provide a massive but unlovely addition to the suburbs of Kowloon. There are 11 estates of these buildings varying in size from seven to nearly 70 thousand persons. In the Resettlement estates the schools have been put on the roofs of the tenement blocks. The protests of the Chinese Government appear to be directed against extensions of these Resettlement estates, the building of which involves demolitions of existing buildings. No doubt the British authorities will do their best to heed the objections of the giant neighbour; but can they do so while doing their duty to the many Chinese who prefer to live in the British colony to living in the adjacent areas of China itself?