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Statistical Appendix
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Statistical Appendix Estimating the Expatriate Population The enjoyment of expatriate status and the privileges that it conferred in the colonial era depended almost entirely on race, no matter how well-disguised by other labels. In the post-war era, overt racial discrimination was no longer an acceptable feature of government policies and practices. The racial distinction between rulers and ruled did not disappear, however; it was simply better camouflaged, principally under the guise of discriminatory terms of employment. In reality, "expatriate" was a label that identified, first and foremost, individuals of "pure British descent". That is, persons who were of European race and who had originated in the United Kingdom. It could be inherited by the offspring of "expatriates" who had served elsewhere in the British Empire or had sojourned in Shanghai and the former treaty ports. It was extended automatically to racially-qualified individuals from the "White Dominions" (Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) and, less enthusiastically, to those from the United States. The Chinese community assumed that the citizens of other European nations also belonged to the expatriate class. But for the colonial rulers, the full privileges of "expatriate" were extended more selectively, depending on command of English and precise nationality (Scandinavians, for example, were closer to "British" than Iberians). International relations also played a part. For example, the two world wars affected the status of the Germans. Any attempt to estimate how many were qualified for the privileges of expatriate status in Hong Kong is complicated by the growing sensitivity to overt racial prejudices as the twentieth century proceeded. Comprehensive statistical information on racial origins is not available from Immigration Department statistics because they merely recorded the statutory processing of foreign nationals. Its statistics on resident foreign nationals included ethnic 230 Uneasy Partners Chinese and other racial groups (with United States or Canadian passports, for example) who would not have been regarded as genuine members of the expatriate community. Furthermore, the department's figures excluded the significant numbers of expatriates (particularly from the United Kingdom) exempt by law from immigration controls because they did not need work or residence permits. Census data are more helpful although these did not include racial data in the second half of the twentieth century. But the censuses did collect information on nationality, place of origin and language, which can be combined to act as identifiers of potential expatriate status. Even so, these statistics are subject to serious limitations. For example, post-1982 statistics on nationality are bedevilled by problems of definition that reflect the efforts made by Hong Kong residents to obtain citizenship and right of abode overseas in the run-up to 1997. The British Nationality Selection Scheme, in particular, caused a surge of those who would be classified for census purposes as having "British right of abode in places outside Hong Kong". As a result, the estimates of expatriates defined by United Kingdom origins arejust credible for the 1991 Census, but become quite unacceptably distorted by the 1997 factor in the 1996 By-census.! Language is a more useful analytical tool. Nevertheless, English as "the usual language" is no more than a crude gauge of the size of the expatriate group because of the role of English as a widespread lingua franca throughout Asia (and elsewhere), especially among the educated and professional classes. English speakers from Singapore, the Philippines or the Indian Sub-continent would almost always be excluded from expatriate status in Hong Kong for purely racial reasons, no matter how many generations of the family had been English-speakers. In the 1961 Census, 1.2 percent of the population over the age of five claimed English as its usual language. This figure exaggerates the numbers of "genuine" expatriates since one in three of these individuals could also speak Cantonese, even though few expatriates learnt Chinese. The total number of English-speakers, it can be inferred, included many who came from Asian and other communities whose "usual language" was English, but who did not share the typical expatriate's aversion to acquiring Cantonese. Even after excluding these Cantonese speakers, almost 20 percent of the remainder of the Englishspeaking group gave their nationality or origins as China or elsewhere in Asia and would not necessarily have been considered genuine expatriates. Membership of the expatriate community in 1961, therefore, was unlikely to have been much above 21,000, or 0.8 percent of the population aged five and above.2 The most satisfactory post-war estimate is provided by data from...