more than a decade, to 1949. In that year the People's Republic of China replaced the Chinese Nationalist Government in South China and a new era began for the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. An era which has seen a great cut back in its entrepot trade but a great increase in industry, which has seen its population almost doubled, the partial absorption and housing of a million refugees, the building of new towns and great public works. All this has gone on within the confines of a small city state under conditions of political and financial stability at a time when nearly all its neighbours around the South China Sea have experienced changes of government, political unrest and a variety of economic ailments, resulting in some cases in dependence upon the great powers for aid.1 Reduced to its geographical elements of position and communications, of climate, land and resources, people, trade and industry, finance and politics, it is something of an enigma that Hong Kong should have flourished as it has, and that it should have been able to withstand the external stresses of the past decade and even turn some of them to good account. Closer inspection may provide some explanation and suggest some future trends. Its position on the fringe of the Communist dominated land mass stretching from the Elbe to the South China Sea, and the economic impenetrability of this area to any great extent, has had a great effect on the Colony's development in the last decade. The land links are very tenuous. There is no through motor trafHc and the Kowloon Canton Railway, which once operated through rail services to Canton to connect with the Chinese and Russian rail systems, now interrupts the service at the border and has not operated at anything like full capacity since 1949. The sea routes leading to the Pearl River inlet to South China, which were the deciding factor in the establishment of the Colony in 1841, have become, in the post-war world of shipping, sea routes to Hong Kong itself; one of the West Pacific chain of ports, trading on its own account, no longer the out-port of Canton. But it is to air routes that its position is most favourable. While Communist air space remains impenetrable it seems certain that Hong Kong's reclaimed airport will remain at a focal point of air routes. If the situation should change and there is greater freedom of air travel over China and Russia, it seems likely that the pattern of long distance routes would alter and the Colony would become a more local focus. Some of the climatie discomforts of a modified monsoonal regime have been over? come by air-conditioning and the motor car, while modern meteorology and engineering have done a little to lessen the effects of typhoon and rainstorm damage. But there is a lot more to be done and the toll of typhoons in lives, money and work? ing days lost is still considerable. Typhoon Wanda on 1 September 1962, described as the worst for over twenty years, with gusts of over 160 knots, killed 100 people, made over 50,000 homeless and directly caused many millions of dollars worth of damage. The expectancy of typhoons and periods of heavy rain, which have been known to bring over 12 inches in twelve hours, adds to the cost of building and public works to no small degree. For instance, in considering reclamation schemes and sea level reservoirs on the eastern seaboard of the New Territories, designers