Refugees and troop moves -- a report from Hong Kong.

Since Peking has offered no documentation beyond supporting evidence of general economic deterioration and peasant apathy an attempt to define the immediate reasons for the mass flight of refugees to Hong Kongs border in May must depend more heavily on speculation than may appear desirable in a scientific journal. In clearing the ground for a reconstruction of the whys and wherefores underlying the dramatic mass flight these preliminary points may be stated with some authority: 1. Judged by the promptness and efficiency with which Peking controlled the human flood at Britains urgent request the exodus was not ordered as a political gambit. 2. Hong Kong medical officials state that few if any of the 63000 persons seen at the detention camp in the New Territories before being sent back across the border appeared to be suffering from malnutrition. But it should be stated that the refugees were seen only fleeting by local immigration officials and doctors and not at all by political analysts; this rare opportunity to build up a picture of conditions in Kwangtungs rural communes in particular by interrogating one in every 100 say was passed by. 3. The mass appearance of refugees on the border was not altogether unheralded even though Peking appears to have been taken by surprise. The number entering the British colony illegally had increased steadily since the beginning of this year. Nor has the flow dwindled as much as Hong Kong officials had hoped since Peking re-established controls along the land border late in May; small as Hong Kong is the sea gives access to 400 miles of coastline. At the end of July Hong Kong still was registering 1200 illegal immigrants a day and officials predict that the influx this year may well reach 150000 more than three times the 1961 total. (excerpt)