Capital Accumulation, Ethnicity and Production of Space in the Squatter Problem

As has been discussed earlier in this book, existence of the colonial administration relied upon the extraction of wealth from pristine space. Here lay a hidden contradiction: to extract wealth from the Crown lands, it would be necessary to foster the macro-economy of Hong Kong through more competitive industrial production, which necessitated space more affordably available to industry and people, whereas this policy imperative functioned as an impediment to extracting wealth from pristine spaces. The solution to this dialectic resulted in massive public works projects in spite of the official claim of ‘laissez-faire’, including squatter clearance, construction of public housing and industrial districts as well as the Mass Transit Railway. This book deals with these typical public works projects waged by the colonial government in Chaps. 4– 6.