The Travel Agents

Along the eastern shore of Hong Kong last week the waves rolled in with a tragic flotsam: the bodies of 32 refugees from Red China whose overloaded sampan swamped and sank in mirror-calm seas. They were grim evidence of the desperate craving of thousands of Chinese to make their way from the shackled mainland to the glitter of prosperous Hong Kong, whatever the dangers.

Feeding on their desire are dozens of "travel agents" in Portugal's flyspeck colony of Macao, which juts off Red China's southern shore. What the agents offer is a one-way "ticket," at prices of $70 to $125 a head, for the 40-mile voyage from Macao to Hong Kong. The price is steep, but since Hong Kong is already bursting with 1,250,000 refugees and legally admits only 50 more a day, impatient hordes from the mainland are willing to pay dearly to be smuggled into the crown colony aboard crowded, leaky junks.

Peking is actually anxious to get rid of most of the refugees. The Communists readily grant exit permits to those who are burdens on the regime--the old and the unproductive, women without jobs and tuberculous children. Others who want to escape buy their way out, paying cash-hungry Communist cadres up to $2,275 for a permit. Since the Portuguese have no restrictions, refugees use nearby Macao as a handy jumping-off point to Hong Kong. In Macao, operating openly under the aegis of the China Travel Service, no fewer than five Communist agencies with enticing names like "Favorable Wind" and "Sojourn Intercourse'' steer customers to smugglers for a fee of $3.50 a head. After dark the travel agents put them aboard junks.

Concerned over the swelling tide of seaborne refugees, Hong Kong police have been searching up to 500 junks a day in the teeming waters around the city. But many slip through the cordon. When tragedy strikes, as it did for the 32 hapless victims who drowned off eastern Hong Kong, the trade falls off for a few days. Then the human cargos begin moving once more across the Pearl River estuary. Says Father Luis Ruiz of Macao's Roman Catholic Casa Ricci, which has sheltered more than 35,000 refugees from Red China in past years, "Nothing will stop this smuggling. Nothing can prevent these people from going."

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