香港のスクォッター問題における,階級,民族,および空間 : 植民地を支えた都市産業体系生産への序奏

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One of the tasks that the British in Hong Kong faced in the reoccupation of Hong Kong after World War II was to establish the Crown Colony of Hong Kong as a territorial entity distinct from China, to which Hong Kong had originally belonged. This task meant to create stable societal and economic relations, through creation of firm economic base supported by class and ethnic integration. The squatter problem of Hong Kong, which huge inflow of Chinese refugees after the British reoccupation had created, posed threat to this task in multiple ways: by wasting scarce space, by generating security problem and by draining public funds to aid the fire victims. The British, who had planned to deploy vacant space in the existing urban area on the territory ceded from China in perpetuity to urbanise Hong Kong, found it necessary to clear squatting Chinese on scarce space there. Some squatters, with capital and skills in hand, many of whom were former manufacturers in Shanghai or elsewhere in China, were considered to be of value to the British to alleviate labour shortage and to promote the economic development. The colonial government allowed squatters of this category (category 1) to resettle in bungalow-type housings erected in the 'Approved Areas', to transform them into the commodity labour power. The destitute squatters without capital or skills (category 2) were to be forcibly repatriated to China or concentrated in the 'Tolerated Areas' on the existing urban fringe in the leased New Territories. Nevertheless, ethnically motivated strives arose from squatters against coercive clearance scheme, rendering the initial Government policy dysfunctional. In dealing with the squatters, the British Colonial government had to take extra care not to trigger the anti-British sentiment and actions from the squatting Chinese as well as from the PRC. In the meantime, self-contained and closed economic spaces having emerged in the squatter settlements allowed little labour power to flow out, but created more serious threat to security and crime instead. The British ruling-class in Hong Kong was thus placed in a dilemma: the Colony would not grow unless the squatters were cleared and the vacant space made available for urban development; while it would not grow either if infected with the ethnic strife triggered through the coercive squatter clearance schemes to make room for development. The UN and US trade embargo of 1951 against the PRC gave the exogenous catalyst to solve this dilemma. In order to recover from serious economic stagnation that this embargo had created, the British was forced to shift the economic base of Hong Kong from entrepot trade to light, export-oriented industry. They resorted to economic and social incentives, materialised through deliberate production of urban spatial configuration that could accommodate them, and through provision of technical training and better education, to achieve the shift of economic bases. The public housing, albeit of the lowest quality, was built in the vicinity of the industrial agglomeration for both categories of squatters, so that the squatters of the second category could also realise themselves as the commodity labour power. Although it has often been claimed that success of Hong Kong economy lay on its laissez-faire policy, it was planned production of the urban space through deliberate public policy which was in fact crucial for the capital accumulation leading Hong Kong into one of NIEs. Only through the production of space which supported economic growth and concomitant rise of living standard of the Hong Kong Chinese, the British was able to create the class-cum-ethnic integration in Hong Kong, which gave rise to the peripheral Fordist relation, securing Hong Kong as a virtually independent territorial entity for almost another half a century in the era of decolonisation and ethnic autonomy.
政治経済学・経済史学会の論文
1998-10-20

香港のスクォッター問題における,階級,民族,および空間 : 植民地を支えた都市産業体系生産への序奏

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