ABSTRACT
By 1898, when the New Territories was leased to Britain, the Hong Kong government had established a sophisticated land law, suitable for the highly sophisticated and modern commercial city of Hong Kong. In 1899, when the Hong Kong government took the New Territories over, the villagers there managed land under a flexible and effective local land law. At the heart of the traditional land law was a system of tenancies of various kinds. These traditional tenancies were all held under the dual-ownership system. The land was assumed to have two land-holders, the subsoil land-holder, and the topsoil land-holder. As the land survey proceeded, it became clear that the great majority of the villagers had no written deeds of any kind, either red deeds or white deeds. The government established new land registries for the New Territories, so that alienations of the lots listed in the Block Crown Lease could be registered.
