BRITISH CROWN COLONY OF HONG KONG and Adjacent Areas...

Hong Kong is a high point on the skyline of the Free World. As a free port operating on a free-world basis, it is too valuable to lose. — Sir Robert Brown Black , Governor of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, 1962 Except for Portugal’s tiny overseas province of Macao, Hong Kong is the last Western outpost on the mainland of China. It is the Berlin of East Asia, poised in perilous balance between two ideologies and two civilizations. The government and people of Hong Kong have performed a ma

The common disposition of the English barbarians is ferocious, and what they trust in are the strength of their ships and the effectiveness of their guns. — Governor Lu K’u of Canton , 1834 In 1841, the British crown colony of Hong Kong attached itself like a small barnacle to the southeast coast of the Celestial Empire. The single offshore island that constituted the whole of the original colony was a spiny ridge of half-drowned mountains forming the seaward rampart of a deep-water harbor. Befo

“When one reads of 1,000,000 homeless exiles all human compassion baulks and the great sum of human tragedy becomes a matter of statistical examination.” —“ A Problem of People ,” Hong Kong Annual Report, 1956 From the end of World War II until the fall of 1949 the mainland of China rumbled with the clash of contending armies. Thousands of Chinese, uprooted and dispossessed by the Nationalist-Communist struggle, streamed southward across the Hong Kong border in a steady procession. The orderly n

“There is a saying in China; ‘If the east wind does not prevail over the west wind, then the west wind will prevail over the east wind.’ I think the characteristic of the current situation is that the east wind prevails over the west wind; that is, the strength of socialism exceeds the strength of imperialism.” — Mao Tse-tung, Moscow , 1957 So spoke the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party at a time when all the winds seemed to be blowing his way. For eight years the People’s Republic of Chin

In the past, he believes, colony industries just took orders as they came. Now, in his opinion, the industries must develop their own marketing facilities to discover what products are needed, and then work to meet these needs. He feels that there must be greater diversification if Hong Kong is to hold its place in the industrial world. These three men, like practically every leader in its industrial and political community, are acutely conscious of the many hazards that Hong Kong faces. And not

“It is unfortunate that the space between the foot of the mountains and the edge of the sea is so very limited.” — Hall & Bernard , The Nemesis in China , 1847 Hong Kong has always had more land and water than it could use, because most of the land is a hilly waste and most of the water is salty. From the first years of the colony until today, the persisting shortage of usable land and fresh water has confronted every governor with a problem that he could neither solve nor ignore. They h

“On our small and peculiar land area, it would be impossible to reach a high order of self-sufficiency in food production.” — W. J. Blackie , former Hong Kong Director of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry For more than a thousand years men have wrested a precarious living from the farms and fishing grounds of the New Territories, yet they remained outside the economic and social orbit of Hong Kong until a few months after World War II. Politically, the New Territories had been part of th

“We have absolutely no doubt from the evidence and statistics we have studied that corruption exists on a scale which justifies the strongest counter-measures.” — Hong Kong Advisory Committee on Corruption , January, 1962 The British crown colony of Hong Kong came into existence under circumstances bearing less resemblance to the majesty of British law and order than they did to a territorial dispute between the Capone and O’Banion mobs during the Chicago of the 1920s. Its founding fathers were

“Care must be taken not to confound the habits and institutions of the Chinese with what prevails in other parts of the world.” — British House of Lords (circa 1880) Hong Kong has furnished the Sino-British answer to a universal question: What’s in it for me? Its progress from the earliest days has been more powerfully influenced by the lure of gold than by the Golden Rule, with its British and Chinese residents having little in common except their human nature and an equal dedication to the max

“The journey of a thousand miles commences with a single step.” — Chinese Proverb At the upper terminus of the Peak Tram, two-thirds of the way up Victoria Peak, a narrow promenade called Lugard Road winds around the mountain until its name changes to Harlech Road and then continues along the south face of the mountain to return to the Peak Tram terminus. By strolling along this route on a fine clear day, a visitor can see the whole of Hong Kong stretching out in all directions. Often the view i