Extract from
Shanghai Lvening Post & Mercury,
August 1, 1345.
AS A DRITON SEES IT
THE FUTURE OF HONGKONG--British Interests and Claims
Lade
By H.G.w. Woodhead, U.B.E.
65-
6
At the Jairo Jonference, at which President Roosevelt, General Chiang Kii-shek, and Mr. #inston Churchill ere present, the British Prime Minister mace it quite clear that there was no question of Britain's waiving her claims to the recovery of the British Crown Colony of Hongkong. It must have come as a serious shock to members of the British Government when news dispatches from Chungking stated that Chinese troops were facing for Hongkong to occupy it before the British could get there. To put it mildly, such action on the part of the Chinese Government could hardly be regarded as a friendly act to an Ally who had playeã major role in the defeat of the Japanese Empire. There are, of course, some circles in this country who would not be sorry to see a clash between China and Great Britain on this issue. There are others, not actually malicious, whose inconsistencies in commenting on British claims to Hongkong have come perilously near hypocrisy. To these it is not imperialistic for America to retain permanent occupation of a number of Pacific Islands--some of then formerly possessed by britain, Australia, France, Holland and Portugal; or for the U.S.S.n. to regain possession of Port Arthur, anu a large portion of the Tsarist regime's privileges in Manchuria, part of which were wrested from aussia by Japun, and the other porcion theatrically renounced as the fruits of aggression and exploitation, between 1919 and 1924. But it is imperialistic and immoral for the British Empire to reoccupy a Colony which it has administered with strikingly successful results for over a century.
The issue is dormat for the moment, General Chiang Kai-shek having uvoided the flux pus which he was alloyed to have contemplated, and the Chinese Government having openly admitted that oven if Chinese troops were the first to cater the British Colony, they would only do so to hold it until the British returned. Moreover, under orders from the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces, the Japanese are to surrender Hongkong direct to hear Admiral C.H. J. Harcourt of the British Navy. The future of Hongkong will remain a question for uiscussion between Great Britain and China. I do not for a moment believe that the British Government will agree to any third Power participation in any discussions on this subject.
Most Chinese criticisms of the British reoccupation of Hongkong have been anonymous. Mysterious "Chinese circles" are credited with stating that they are determined not to return if the British retain the Colony. Obviously there must be transient residents, for if they were domiciled in Hongkong they would not be Chinese, but British, nationals. Occasionally some critic comes into the open. Dr. B.A. Liu, for example, audrossing the Shanghai Tiffin Jlub, likened "a prospective British return to Hongkong to occupation of Manhattan by a foreign Power." I am afraid the logic of this argument is rather wak, unless one may also assume that for the Chinese to take over Hongkong would be like taking away Manhattan from the British Empire. Anyhow, there is no comparison between Hongkong and manhattan. A treeless, pirate infested, unhealthy island, annexed to the British Jrown in 1841, was under British administration and control developed into one of the world's major ports. Its administration may not have been perfect, but it was admittedly far ahead of that of any port under purely Ullinese control. I say admittedly, for did not the late Dr. Sun Yat-sen, on one of his last visits to the Colony inquire "how it was that foreigners, that Englishmen, could do so much as they had done, for example, with the barren rock of Hongkong within seventy or eighty years, while in four thousand years China has no place like Longkong?." and wuvise his fellow countrymen--not to grab it back but--to "carry this English example of good government to every part of China?"
Hongkong has never been selfishly administered. From the date of its first Charter it was an open and a free port, available without discrimination to the trade and shipping of the whole world, and thus, as an American Official Jommercial Handbook put it, occupying a position in the world's trade that was unique and without parallel. The population of the Colony enjoyed every form of freedom--other than open sedition--during years when China was driven by internal strife, and to many it was the only place off the China coast where they could reside free from persecution or oppression. It never became an important industrial centre--if one excludes ship-building, cement manufacture, and sugar-refining--the main efforts of the Government and community being concentrated upon developing it as gruat trans-shipment and communications centre, where railways, air services, and ocean-going steamship lines met. If Hongkong and other British ports in Asia had applied the sanc shipping restrictions as vere enforced in American Rossions, not a single Dollar Liner
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