HONG KONG: Law in the Jungle

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One by one, the fabled fleshpots of Asia—Saigon, Bangkok, Shanghai—are vanishing before the stern puritanism of new nationalistic leaders. A sordid exception was tiny Kowloon City, a kind of Asian casbah six acres in size on the tip of the mainland opposite Hong Kong.

In Kowloon's alleys—some of the widest are only 6 ft. across—prostitutes peer from hundreds of dark doorways, and hordes of emaciated Chinese line up outside tiny, shuttered shops to buy pinches of heroin (at 5¢ a pinch), then squat on a corner to inhale it through rolled paper tubes or matchbox funnels. The dingy restaurants serve dog and cat meat supplied by members of Triad, Kowloon's secret society, which also operates the booming gambling, narcotics and prostitution rackets.

Hong Kong's British government has specific laws against this sort of thing, and Kowloon City sits in a part of the so-called New Territories, which a 19th century Manchu Emperor leased to Britain as part of the crown colony. But only when Kowloon City's rip-roaring illegal activities spilled over too flagrantly onto the island itself some two miles away, have the British tried—not too successfully—to enforce the law there. In 1947 the British tried to clear out thousands of Kowloon squatters, but the Nationalist Chinese then ruling the mainland disputed British authority, correctly pointing out that the original lease provided for Chinese administration of Kowloon City. To reinforce their complaints Chinese demonstrators burned down the British consulate in Canton.

The Communists took over in China, but the status of Kowloon's six acres was not changed. The British were content to claim authority over Kowloon City while staying out of it, letting the jungle govern itself. But last month, when a police constable was attacked and a heroin-parlor attendant stabbed to death, exasperated Hong Kong cops finally moved in on the town. In one night they arrested 150 people, and nine-man patrols began nightly dawn-to-dusk raids, concentrating on the narcotics trade.

The shocked thugs who operate the Triad tried psychological retaliation: they put up posters protesting police brutality, many of them signed ominously, "People's Republic of China." But Hong Kong police went ahead anyway last week, convinced that Red China, 15 miles away, was unlikely to intervene on behalf of dope pushers and other spivs, who if caught in Red China for similar activities could get death sentences from the People's courts.