In its own protection, the colony has been forced to forbid further immigration, except at an approximate rate of fifty a day. Its only shield against a smothering horde of advancing people is the effectiveness of its land and marine police. To the extent that the border police can restrain illegal immigration, the colony may be able to catch up with its housing needs, provided, of course, that the birth rate tapers off.
The colony’s marine police are a small, well-trained force contending with overwhelming odds. Their fleet of 27 boats and 610 men is charged with patrolling 400 miles of coastline and 728 square miles of territorial waters. They have one 58-foot boat with a top speed of 22 knots and three jet boats of 20-foot length, useful in hot pursuit, with a maximum speed of 42 knots. Their 70-foot launches mount a 50-caliber Browning machine-gun on the foredeck and carry a cache of smaller arms, but they deliver no more than 11 knots.
As many as five of the patrol boats may be out on duty at one time, but the sea lanes from Macao and China are crowded with ships at all hours. A police launch cruising along the western edge of Hong Kong waters on a clear day will often have forty vessels within its sight.
There are red sails in every sunset off Lantau, largest and westernmost of Hong Kong’s 237 islands. The skipper of a police launch may spend every spare moment scanning the horizon for suspicious-looking craft, but even in full daylight he cannot hope to detect and halt all the smugglers. At night, when the smugglers slip through fog or run without lights, the skipper’s chances are considerably slimmer. The Red Chinese gunboats are also on the prowl just beyond territorial limits, hoping to catch their runaway countrymen, but they are often unsuccessful.
The Hong Kong courts charged 1,551 illegal immigrants in 1961; another 1,763 were intercepted by the marine police and sent back to China. Thousands of others slipped through the net either at Macao or Hong Kong. Here are a few typical incidents that occurred during two months in the winter of 1961-62.
Eighty-three men, women, and children stole a Chinese military launch and escaped to Macao. Marine police caught seventy-three illegal immigrants in a motor junk off Lamma Island. Police discovered thirty-two men and women attempting to slip past Castle Peak in a sailing junk. A woman and two children were arrested in Tai Tam Bay, Hong Kong Island. A Communist gunboat intercepted a sampan near Lappa Island, opposite Macao, firing shots into the hull and driving the dozen women and children aboard back to Red territory. A Red gunboat fired on a junk at the mouth of the Canton River estuary, sinking it with all twenty-nine immigrants aboard.
During the same period, an unknown number of illegal immigrants swam across Starling Inlet from the Chinese mainland to Hong Kong, using rafts and basketballs to keep themselves afloat. A middle-aged man swam from Lappa Island to Macao under the muzzles of Communist guns to visit his son. On every dark night or at any time there is a chance of screening their passage in foggy or overcast weather, the immigrants keep coming in.
Marine police inspectors say there is a well-organized traffic in smuggling illegal immigrants. Smugglers can buy a second-hand junk in Macao and stuff its hold with twenty to forty immigrants. They have a regular scale of prices based on the financial blood-count of each customer; $40 for well-heeled Shanghai Chinese, $30 for a moderately solvent Fukienese, and $13 to $20 for a Cantonese farmer or laborer. If the smugglers fall into the hands of the marine police, they may spend a year in prison, and their passengers will be sent back to an ice-cold reception in Red China. Jail sentences seldom keep smugglers from returning to the trade; the profits justify the risk.
“If we catch a boat with people that look like genuine fishermen, we may warn them to get a Hong Kong operating license and let them go,” a marine police inspector said. “If we spot one that looks like a regular smuggler, we arrest the whole bunch.”
The marine police crews are predominantly Cantonese; first-class seamen and courageous policemen, but at best they can scarcely hope to snare more than a minority of those who are determined to break through the blockade. When the successful ones reach Hong Kong Island or one of the sheltered coves of the New Territories, they are met by friends, relatives or confederates of the smugglers. They vanish into the almost impenetrable masses of Chinese and emerge a few months later to register as residents. In most cases the British have no alternative but to accept them.