CO129-595-1 Anti-British feeling in China- memorandum by J V Braga 15-2-1946 - 15-8-1946 — Page 28

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However just and

Furtoar comments, and a brief analysis of causes and factors which

hare led to Britisi incirility in the Cuinerg.

benevolent a Government may be, if it is served by men of overbear-

ing and uncivil manners, that Goverment will lose the respect and

loyalty of its subjects, who will ultimately seek to rise against

it. If this be true of any Coverment in relation to ita own

subjects, how much more ac in the case of Hong Kong, where the

Chinese are not 'subject peoples' and differ in race, culture,

manners, language and outlock from the British.

In

Nevertheless, before the Japanese occupation, the attitude

of a large proportion of British people in Hong Kong and the Treaty

Ports was much that of a conquering people towards a subject race.

In all probability this attitude is traceable back to that of the

British firstcomers to the Colony after it was ceded to Britain.

face of the well-nigh implacable hostility of the Chinese, the atti-

tude of the British firstcomers is understandable, but with the

development of the Colony and the increased intercourse with the

Chinese, it is deplorable that this attitude towards them should

have persisted and, throughout a whole century, successivo newcomers

from Britain should have emulated the exazıple of 'old handɛ' in

their treatment of the natives'. My father, who was born and

spent the greater part of his seventy-two years in Hong Kong Many

of which were spent in close touch with the administration of the

Colony, and nine years of which he served as a member of the Legis-

lative Council, was of this opinion.) The attitude of the 'old

China hand' in despising the Chinese is further supported by a