Development, Colonial Rule, and Intergroup Conflict in a Chinese Village in Hong Kong

Abstract

u P UNTIL THE LATE 1960s the rural areas of Hong Kong, called the New Territories, lagged far behind the urban areas in socioeconomic development. Since the early 1970s, however, the situation has drastically changed. Overpopulation in urban Hong Kong has impelled the government to look for land in the New Territories in order to meet the increasing need for housing, industrial sites, and room for recreational and sports facilities. The process of acquiring land in the New Territories involves the requisition of privately owned land at a rate of compensation set down by the government, a rate that is normally far below the market rate. In the process of land requisition, the government inevitably runs into conflict with local people, many of whom are opposed to the development of the New Territories, either because of the perceived unfair rate of compensation or because they want to preserve the rural character of the area. Consequently, along with the planned development of the New Territories by the government has come the rise of conflicts over land resumption. Such conflicts have to be resolved if an orderly developmental process is to be attained. Because the government is the dominant actor in the process of planned development, its role in conflict resolution is crucial. Planned development in the New Territories has brought to the surface another category of conflict that is the inadvertent result of past administrative measures. This is the conflict between two groups of local people: the original inhabitants and the outsiders in the villages. When the New Territories were leased from China in 1898, the British distinguished between two types of inhabitants in the area and granted special rights to one of them that were denied the other. The original inhabitants, called the pun-ti-yan, are those, or the descendants of those, who lived in the New Territories before o r in 1898, when the area was leased from China. The outsiders are those who have moved into the New Territories after that date. It is apparent that such a differentiation is merely administrative,