Peak Reservation Ordinance

The Peak District Reservation Ordinance, 1904, originally enacted as the Hill District Reservation Ordinance, is commonly called the Peak Reservation Ordinance (Chinese: 山頂區保留條例) and was a racially based zoning law that reserved part of the Victoria Peak as a place of residence to non-Chinese people except with the consent of the Governor-in-Council. The law was in force from 1904 to 1930. According to Government record, it was "in order that a healthy place of residence may be preserved for all those who are accustomed to a temperate climate and to whom life in the tropics presents the disadvantage of an unnatural environment". Contemporary historians’ views toward the Ordinance vary, with some attributing the Ordinance to the Third plague pandemic, whereas others attribute it to racial segregation or social status. The debate on the second reading of the Bill is recorded in the Hong Kong Hansard, which shows that the two Chinese members, Ho Kai and Wei Yuk, did not oppose the Bill but a minority of the "leading Chinese" in the community were against it.

In 1894, the deadly Third Pandemic of Bubonic plague spread from China to Hong Kong, causing 100,000 deaths in Canton alone within two months. Dr. Gomes da Silva, the Principal Medical Officer of Macao, in recording the sanitary condition of the Chinese population, observed that they usually threw house refuse into the street, where it accumulated until such time as the torrential summer rains and the overflow of the Pearl River cleared it away. A study by City University of Hong Kong also attributes the spread of plague to the hygiene and sanitary condition among local population at the time.Governor of Hong Kong Sir William Robinson reported to the British Government that "the filthy habits of life amongst the 210,000 Chinese who reside here have rendered Hong Kong liable to the invasion and development of the germ of the bubonic plague".

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