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shareholders will, in all likelihood, result in a species of competition such as must gradually work a complete revolution in enterprises of the natives.
The foreign businessman did not have long to wait before this prognostication began to be realised. In 1872, under the patronage of the Chinese Government, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co was organised at Shanghai. Progressively the Chinese entered areas of business formerly monopolised by foreigners.
In 1877 the On Tai Insurance Co was organised in Hongkong. At the annual meeting of the Chinese Insurance Co, the chairman took notice of the new competition. The two companies had almost the same constituencies.
The chairman reported at the meeting that this overlapping threatened to have a serious effect on the company's resources, but as yet was not as disastrous as had first been expected. He remarked: “This is proof that the habit of insuring is being developed amongst the natives of this mighty empire.”
In 1881 the On Tai Insurance Co applied for and was granted membership in the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce. They were its first Chinese members.
At the annual meeting at which the firm was elected as a constituent member, Ho A-mei thanked the chamber and then asked if the rules permitted him, as a new member, to propose anything. If so permitted, he wished to bring up a matter that was to the general interests of the commercial life of the whole Colony. The chairman ruled him to be quite in order.
A-mei then proposed: “That a memorial be addressed to His Excellency, the Governor, asking that restrictions recently put upon emigration to Honolulu be done away with.”
Not only had Ho A-mei a long-standing interest in emigration, but the Wo Hang firm of the Li family, whose interests he represented and who were the principal shareholders in the On Tai Insurance Co, had been engaged in the sending of Chinese labour