Javanese Leave,

New Caledonia’S Query

Tonkinese Stay

(From Our Own Correspondent) ABOUT 1,500 Javanese are left in New Caledonia after the July repatriation of 590, which marked the winding-up of the Cov er n m e n t-financed repatriation •system.

Any Javanese who wish to go back to Indonesia in the future will have to do so at their own expense, hut it is improbable that any will want to go.

A good many of the 1,500 were born in New Caledonia and believe —apparently with good reason— that they are better off here than in their ancestral homeland.

New Caledonia’s total population is 65,463.

It is safe to say that people of other races in New Caledonia genuinely regret that so many of the Javanese have gone.

They (the Javanese) get on well with the indigenous people and with the Europeans. They are like able people, with the capacity to make the best of things. They are not constantly looking for griev ances and imaginary slights. They are generous and possess a sense of

humour, and they are conscientious workers.

Unfortunately, the same thing cannot be said of the Indo-Chinese.

In many respects the Tonkinese is the opposite of the Javanese.

Although it would be unfair to gen eralise too broadly, experience leads to the conclusion that the average Tonkinese is grasping and hypo critical, with a smile that masks a contempt for almost everything and everybody not of his own race.

He has been called something of a parasite. Whether or not that description is justified, it is an in disputable fact that he spends not a centime more than is necessary to sustain life and is perpetually seeking to make a profit out of something—or somebody.

No Indo-Chinese went home in the July repatriation ship.

After much hesitation, about 300 had applied for repatriation to Northern Vietnam, after the Noumea authorities had promised that the ship would carry them to Haiphong, but then, almost at the last moment, the project was torpedoed by the Northern Vietnam Communists.

ON January 1, 1955, Government population figures gave the Indo-Chinese total as 4,242. In 1954, there were 119 Indo-Chinese

births and only 22 deaths, although 178 persons left for Indo-China, paying their own fares.

Of the 4,242 no fewer than 2,320 were children.

The Indo-Chinese rate of increase is, to put it mildly, disturbing.

The indications are that in another decade or so New Cale donia may be confronted with a fast-growing Asiatic problem com parable, though on a smaller scale, with problems created in some other South Pacific territories.