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H O N G K 0 N G: PAST AND PRESENT
By I. Epstein
British Writers about Hongkong like to point out that when the Union Jack was hoisted over the island it was just a bare rock with a couple of tiny fishing villages clinging precariously to it, and that in the subsequent century it grew into a bustling city of over a million inhabitants and one of the world's greatest ports.
The Chinese, on the other hand, are distinctly unenthusiastic about this development. They often ask rhetorically how Americans would feel if Manhattan had been occupied and built up by a foreign power which clung stubbornly to it. They tend to regard Hongkong as a subtraction from China, rather than an addition to it. The situation was dramatized recently by Chungking's complaint to UNRRA that the amount of rice allotted to the tiny colony was roughly equal to that sent to all the rest of China. (1)
The two sides of the Hongkong picture are apparent to every visitor.
It is indisputable that the port has grown, under British administration, from nothingness to a powerful material and trading position. But its political life is dominated by a few thousand British and its economy by the British Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and such giant firms as Jardine's. Although they
form ninety-nine percent of the population, the position of the Chinese has been symbolized by their exclusion from the choicest residential section - the famous and beautiful "Peak."
The colony possesses a reasonable facsimile of modern administration. But its citizens have no political rights and
do not vote. (2) An opium monopoly existed before the war, under official control but a reminder of the trade that precipitated the first Anglo-Chinese war. There is protection for life and limb, but the police, whom the people fear because they have no control over them, are corrupt.
In
The skyline on either side of the harbor is imposingly punctuated by the great Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Building, the palatial Hongkong, Gloucester, and Peninsula hotels and the mansions of Chinese millionaires which present an opulent and modern façade. striking contrast to these are the brothels of Whanchai, stretching for many blocks, and the incredible slums of the western area where the crowding and tuberculosis rate are among the worst in the world. "Cockloft," "cubicle" and "bed-space" are the commonest
terms
Mr. Epstein was in China for some twelve years as newspaperman and correspondent. He resided in Hongkong from 1938 to 1940 as editor of the Sino-British Hongkong Daily Press, and was on the South China Morning Post from mid-1941 until the fall of Hongkong, after which he spent about three months in Stanley Camp.
(1) Figures supporting this statement were given by Dr. Tsiang Ting-fu to the UNRRA Conference at Atlantic City on March 20, 1946. The New York Herald Tribune quoted Dr. Tsiang as saying "I am full of anger against the Combined Food Board."
(2) Lennox A. Mills, in his British Rule in Eastern Asia, a standard work describes the Governor of Hongkong as "in law a benevolent despot."
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