[
    {
        "id": 213871,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1996",
        "page_number": 223,
        "title": "RAS-1996",
        "content_text": "197\n\n3) Politics, like other business investments, is risky but potentially profitable. It is very much the case in financing a government while trying to satisfy vested interests.\n\nMarket for Political Investments\n\nThis raises the question of under what circumstances financing a regional government is possible? A convenient starting point is to look into the mentality of the time. In a despatch to the Colonial Office, C. Clementi, the Governor of Hong Kong and a famous sinologist who graduated from Oxford, diagnosed a decade of unsuccessful British policy toward China by saying:\n\nA China united under a central Government is not applicable to the facts... China is a civilization, not a state\n\nHis contemporary also commented that\n\nIf Italy was but a geographical expression, China until very recent times has been but a social expression. China has been a society, not a state; and a Chinese, a familial not a political animal.\n\nIn a polity as large as China, regional distinctions are enormous, but these contemporaries believed that the split was between Canton and Beijing. In the book, “Oriental Trade Methods” one finds the following passage:\n\nI observed that the Cantonese have been called the Irish of China. They are traditionally and by temperament against the government, against the constituted authority of Peking [Beijing]...\n\nThe Beijing government was first under Yuan Shikai and his followers who were recruited from his Beiyang Military Academy. After Yuan's death, his followers divided into several camps such as Anhui and Zhili. They were named the \"Beiyang militarists\". The Canton government, nominally, was under Sun Yat-sen. Without an army of its own, until 1924 when the Huangpu Military Academy was established with Soviet aid, Sun and his Canton government had to rely on the \"guest armies\" from neighboring provinces - the Yunnan and the Guangxi troops, all of whom proved to be ungovernable.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213893,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1996",
        "page_number": 245,
        "title": "RAS-1996",
        "content_text": "219\n\nthe second was the Zhejiang clique under Jiang Jieshi. With Soviet aid and with Jiang Jieshi, Sun decided to embark on two important programs, the establishment of a central bank, and the setting up of a military academy in Huangpu.\n\nAt this point, things came full circle. The merchants, threatened by what they believed to be a “red invasion” in Guangdong, tried to organize a heavy-armed merchant corps to fight against Sun. This is a story in itself; it will have to await another article.\n\nSuffice it to state here that it was in 1924, through the Compradore of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, that a large quantity of arms for the Merchants' Corps, a sort of militia equipped and hired by merchants for self-defence, were delivered. By late 1923, these troops numbered around 20,000, and their armaments included “4,850 rifles and 1,150,000 rounds of ammunition, 433 automatic pistols fitted with stock, and 2,060,000 rounds, 660 revolvers, large and small, with 164,200 rounds, and 40 machine guns with a huge quantity of ammunition.” These armaments, however, were confiscated by Sun on their arrival. The dispute led to a military confrontation between the Huangpu cadets and the merchant's corps at the West Gate of Canton. Almost all available forces under Sun participated in a military confrontation against the merchant corps. The attack began at 5:30 p.m. on October 14th. The Merchants' Corps had barricaded itself in the densely populated commercial section. Corpsmen fired down upon the invading corps from the strong towers which pawn shops used for storing valuables. But before the fighting really started, many parts in the West Gate were simultaneously on fire. By nightfall, much of the commercial section was in flames. The corps retreated to the roof floor of such Hong Kong-registered companies as the Sincere and Tai Sun Department Stores. Twenty-four hours later, the corpsmen were forced to surrender. They were disarmed, and then leaders fled to Hong Kong. Troops looted freely until the next day, when the government threatened looters with immediate execution. Property losses due to the fires were huge, around 600 to 1,000 buildings were burned and many others looted. With the confiscated arms, the Huangpu cadets moved northward for their national unification.\n\nFollowing this, there were several interesting developments.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641",
        "rank": 0
    }
]