[ { "id": 205709, "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-1969", "page_number": 15, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\nAs things turned out, Gibb did not return to Hong Kong, and Ng Choy was therefore appointed on a three-year term. This appointment was unfortunately interpreted by some members of the British community as an attempt to create an anti-English party feeling in Hong Kong.\n\nIn May 1880 when one of the magistrates went on leave, the Governor replaced him temporarily by Ng Choy who thus became the first Chinese to hold a senior appointment in the Hong Kong Government. This led to a question in the House of Commons as to why Ng Choy should combine a paid official post with an unofficial seat in the Legislative Council; but by the time these explanations were required the original holder of the post had returned to the Colony.\n\nThe attitude of the British community towards him and the Governor as a result of his appointment to the Legislative Council as well as this parliamentary question must have embarrassed Ng Choy very much. During this time, China having suffered repeated defeats from the hands of foreign powers, there was a movement in China to promote western technology and to modernize China, and any Chinese who had been trained or educated abroad would be welcome back to China. Thus when an invitation came from China for him to serve China, Ng Choy accepted it gladly. He left Hong Kong in 1882 before the expiry of the 3-year term in the Legislative Council, and later sent in his resignation from Tientsin.\n\nNg Choy became Secretary and Legal Adviser to Viceroy Li Hung-chang, one of the most important Chinese political figures of the time. Now known as Wu Ting-fang, he soon rose to become Chief Director of Railways and later Ambassador to the U.S.A. After the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911, he held important appointments respectively as Minister of Judicial Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Financial Affairs. In 1917, when China entered the First World War, he was for a short time nominated as Premier. In 1922 he became Governor of Kwangtung and died the same year in office, soon after General Chan Kwing-ming's revolt in Canton.*\n\n* In his The Chinese (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1909) p. 196, John Stuart Thomson praises Wu and styles him \"the Chesterfield of China in all the graces of speech and manners.\" Ed.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206317, "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-1971", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "128\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nmonthly meetings, but it is clear that consensus was usually arrived at and the Registrar General/Secretary for Chinese Affairs given sound advice on important local matters for it was politically unwise for the Committee to be deadlocked or sharply split for long. If that had occurred too frequently, the utility of the Committee as the chief consultative body would have declined46,\n\nIt would be wrong, however, to think of the Committee as being, in modern parlance, a purely 'Establishment' body. Certainly its members had very close links with European businessmen in the Colony. At the beginning of this century over half its members were compradores to European firms and banks. On the other hand it is clear the Committee did succeed in expressing what we can only call a Chinese point of view”. There are a number of reasons for this. Most committeemen had contacts of one sort or another with the commercial world of Canton and some were involved in the politics of Kwangtung Province and one in particular, Ho Kai, with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement47. Many owned property and land in Kwangtung and were interested in the economic development of that area48. And nearly all sent their male children back to China for education49. Thus the members of the District Watch Committee were involved in two sets of interests: those of Hong Kong and those of Kwangtung.\n\nYet when they spoke up about an issue they represented principally the interests of the compradore bourgeoisie, suggesting a narrower but perhaps more complex set of interests than would be conveyed by the use of the word 'Chinese'. Even the highly westernised Ho Kai, a Chinese who had studied Western medicine at Edinburgh University, dispensed with the queue and wore London suits, who married an Englishwoman and wrote better English than Chinese50 was still able to represent the generalised opinions of the Chinese community and, more importantly, the point of view of a segment of Hong Kong's Chinese community, that of the Chinese businessman and speculator. The advice given by the Committee to government must be seen then as a distillation of all these complex sets of interests.\n\nThere were, as I have already emphasised, several reasons why the Committee became so important as a key advisory body.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207373, "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-1975", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT\n\n133\n\n6 On this point, see John K. Fairbank, \"The Early Treaty System in the Chinese World Order,” in J. K. Fairbank, ed. The Chinese World Order (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). See also L. S. Yang's article entitled \"Historical Notes on the Chinese World Order\" in ibid., 22, for a discussion of Kuo Sung-t'ao's innovative outlook.\n\n7 See Fairbank's introductory essay in The Chinese World Order; also, John K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, “On the Ch'ing Tributary System,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 6 (1941). An exception to the standard tributary view of China's foreign relations is John Wills' Pepper, Guns and Parleys (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).\n\n8 James Legge, The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong, 1961), 5:521. For the use of this phrase in various contexts, consult Li Te-yü, chüan 8: 59; Li Hung-chang, Li Wen-chung-kung ch'üan-chi [The collected works of Li Hung-chang] (Nanking, 1908), Letters to the Tsungli Yamen, 11:24b; Chang Ch'i-yün, Chung-kuo chin-shih shih-lüeh (A short history of Chinese military affairs] (Taipei, 1956), 115.\n\n9 Dai Kanwa jiten [Sino-Japanese Dictionary] (Tokyo, 1955-1960), 1926, 6437. For random examples of this common usage, see Su Ch'ing-pin, 1, 2, 35; Hsin T'ang-shu, 145:14b; Ch'ou-pan i-wu shih-mo [The management of barbarian affairs from beginning to end] (Peiping, 1930; hereafter, IWSM), TK, 72:34b, TC 4:25b; 5:51; 8:64b; 12:2b; 23:36b; etc.\n\n10 See the illuminating discussion in Mi Chu Wiens, \"Anti-Manchu Thought during the Early Ch'ing,\" Papers on China, 22A (May, 1969), especially 2-3.\n\n11 Legge, 2:253; Wiens, 2; Wu Hung-chu, \"China's Attitude towards Foreign Nations and Nationals Historically considered,\" The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, 10.1 (1926), esp. 17-19. On the reverse theme, consult Li Hung-chang, Letters to Friends, 1:9b; Lu Shih-ch'iang, Ting Jih-ch'ang yü tzu-ch'iang yün-tung [Ting Jih-ch'ang and the self-strengthening movement] (Taipei, 1972), 241-244.\n\n12 Chinese policy toward the \"sinicization\" of foreigners was not consistent, however. See Schafer, 22, 49, 291 note 75; also Ch'ien Hsing-hai and L. C. Goodrich, trans., Western and Central Asians in China under the Mongols, by Ch'en Yuan (Los Angeles, 1966), 6ff.\n\n13 Cited in Ch'ien and Goodrich, 9. I have modified the translation slightly after consulting the Chinese original. For a view contrary to Ch'en Yuan's, see Legge, 5: 355: \"If he is not of our kin, he is certain to have a different mind”—an oft-cited passage from the Tso-chuan. These two conflicting views suggest a central question: What constituted a barbarian? Unfortunately, no clear answer can be given. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao noted in the late nineteenth century that the implications of the term had changed over time (see Wiens, 1); but even his comparatively sophisticated analysis oversimplifies an enormously complex problem. Lacking an objective standard by which to judge barbarian-ness, one is perhaps best served by deferring to the Chinese chronicler. If, for whatever reason, an individual appears in the record as a barbarian, then that is what he is. Such an arbitrary classification is in many respects unsatisfactory, but it reflects accurately the Chinese viewpoint at a given time, and underscores the uncertain status of even the most \"sinicized\" barbarian. An argument against writing about China's relations with foreign peoples \"in the Chinese idiom and from the Chinese point of view\" may be found in Timothy Connor, \"Translating the 'Barbarians': A New Book in an Old Tradition,\" Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (hereafter, HJAS), 32 (1972).\n\n14 Cited in Benjamin Schwartz, \"The Chinese Perception of World Order, Past and Present,\" in Fairbank, The Chinese World Order, 280.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209287, "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-1981", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "176\n\nNG LUN NGAIHA\n\nthe Chinese population. This was to make Sun different from Ho Kai and other intellectual or bourgeois reformists whose interest in economic reform was centred more on industry and commerce. He maintained that improving agricultural productivity was the most urgent and important reform in China. He found it deeply regrettable that in the recent westernization movement undertaken by the Government, agricultural affairs had been neglected as no one was sent abroad or into agricultural college to learn Western techniques. It was perhaps for these reasons that he offered to serve the state, to promote agricultural reforms. He did not claim to have specialized training in this field. But \"for many generations my family had been engaged in farming, and I was able to gain some experience in it\", and \"when I was educated abroad, I often read books concerning Western farming methods, geology and other science subjects\". He admitted that practical knowledge was essential and he was ready to go abroad to study sericulture and other Western agricultural methods.\n\nDr. Sun Yat-sen's years in Hong Kong being an essential part of his formative age, had a significant influence on his intellectual development. He mentioned more than once in his recollections that his revolutionary ideas germinated in Hong Kong, and in his few early essays that can be found, it is evident that he also shared some reform notions of the time. Much of this thinking then, as expressed in his presentation to Li Hung-chang in 1894, was also nurtured by his experience and observations in Hong Kong.\n\nNOTES\n\n1\n\nAccording to Wang Teh-chao, this was published in the September and October (1894) issues of the Wan-kuo kung-pao. It was then republished in issue No. 19 of Yu-shih. See Wang Teh-chao, “Tungmeng hui shih chi Sun Chung-shan hsien-sheng k'o-ming szu-hsiang ti fen-hsi yen-chiu”, Chung-kuo hsien-tai shih ts'ung-k'an, vol. 1 (Taipei, 1960), p. 66, note 3.\n\n2 ibid. note 4.\n\n3\n\nFeng Tzu-yu, “K'o-ming i-shih” (Taipei reprint, 1957), and K'ai-kuo chien k'o-ming shih (Taipei reprint, 1954); Ch'en Shao-pei, Hsing-Chung hui k'o-ming shih-yao (Canton, 1934). See also Chou Hung-jan, \"Kuo-fu 'shang Li Hung-chang shu' chih shih-tai pei-ching”, Ta-lu tsa-chih 23.5, pp. 157–161.\n\n4 The pamphlet, Kidnapped in London, was published in England in 1897. In this, Sun recalled that a Ch'ing official in the Chinese legation said to him, \"You have previously sent in a petition for reform to the Tsung-li yamen in Peking asking that it be presented to the Emperor.\" See Kuo-fu ch'uan-chi vol. 5 (Taipei, 1973), p. 16.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213873, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "199\n\non the Canton-Hong Kong group. As shall be seen in this article, since the opening of China in 1840 to 1927, when China was nominally united by Jiang Jieshi (7), settlers in Hong Kong at least found three good seasons to invest in China - they were the Western Affairs Movement in the 1870s, the late Qing reform in the 1900s, and the post-revolution “rehabilitation” in the 1910s and the early 1920s. Each occasion was accompanied by investment blooms in China - ship-building and mining in the 1870s, railway, steamship land reclamation and port developments in the 1900s, banking (especially for currency redemption) and real estate in the 1910s and 1920s.\n\nThe Western Affairs Movement\n\nSince the forced opening of China in 1840, and the subsequent establishment of trade ports in Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai and Tianjin in 1843, 1844 and 1861 respectively, a commercial axis was gradually extending northward within coastal China. This development gave rise to an urban population which was linked by telegraph, railways, steamship, printing, census, minting, urban planning and western schooling. Before the peasant population in the inner parts of China was appealed to in the political movement of the 1930s, it was this urban population in coastal China that was being appealed to in the national politics of China. Among others things, this coastal population played a significant part in the Western Affairs Movement, as well as the \"late Qing reform\" in 1904.\n\nThanks to the hard work of Rev. Carl Smith, we recognize that in the late nineteenth century a Cantonese group was emerging within this commercial axis along coastal China. They were western-educated Cantonese, including Eurasians, who emerged in Hong Kong and Macau, where western missionary schools found their earliest presence. These Cantonese, without proper education in classical Chinese, were regarded by the Chinese as a group marginal to the Chinese community. Their job market was small - they could not climb up the traditional social ladder in the same way as their Chinese-educated counterparts could through the Imperial Examination, and the number of their potential employers was very few. This explains why their career paths were more or less identical - at one time or another, they were employed by the Maritime Customs, the Hong Kong government, or for the lucky few, they would be employed as compradores in western firms.\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213874, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "200\n\nThe influence of these western-educated Cantonese extended northward in the 1860s when western firms such as Jardine and Swire established their branch offices in the newly opened Treaty ports — Shanghai in 1850, Fuzhou in 1854 and Hankou in 1861. It was in these new Treaty ports that the Cantonese recognized that a new job market in politics was open to them. A \"Western Affairs Movement” was initiated by several powerful provincial officials in China by the 1870s. Under the patronage of these officials, economic and legal reforms were introduced into China in the name of westernization. These officials who rose to power after suppressing the Taiping Rebellion without Beijing's support, developed huge business enterprises in the name of the \"official supervision — merchant management” or “western-affairs movement\". The Hong Kong compradores were mainly responsible for the collection of capital. Their credibility came not from the enterprises they set up, with or without the legal backing of a company law, but from their own reputation as well as the political patronage behind them.\n\nAmidst the rhetoric of these western affairs movements, “reform-minded\" officials recruited their own advisors and set up their own personal governments, known as Mufu, literally, tent government, or what we now call think-tanks. Many Cantonese, with or without imperial degrees, were sought to fill these posts. The strength of this “Cantonese party” rested on their early access to things western — the \"Cantonese faction established predominance in China's internal affairs and foreign relations... [their strength] lies in the monopoly in the matter of emigration overseas ... Before 1840, Canton was the only port open to foreign traders”. On how these think-tank members were appointed, westerners observed that:\n\nin the exercise of patronage... the principle is that which animated Washington in the selection of his first cabinet. Latterly the Canton party, ultra-progressive, has come to the front.\n\nIn the 1870s amidst this rhetoric of westernization, and with the assistance of western-educated Cantonese, the \"reform-minded\" officials managed to bargain with Beijing and develop huge business enterprises under their patronage. In an environment where company law and stock markets were absent, these reform-minded officials started these modern enterprises under an arrangement known as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213875, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "201\n\n\"official-supervision merchant-management\" (A). The formula went like this: the reform-minded officials provided the political patronage - they bargained with Beijing for charter, franchise, monopoly or tax concessions for the enterprises, and the merchants provided the capital and management. Concerning merchants' ability to raise capital, their credibility came not from the enterprises they set up, but from their own reputations, as well as from the political patronage which they managed to establish. Some of the most famous of these merchants in the western affairs movement were such Hong Kong compradors as the Tang Jingxing (Tang King-sing) brothers.\n\nThis kind of business environment made China unique when compared to Europe. Historically, the political fragmentation of Europe, and the frequent wars it led to, had forced the kings and the princes to be bound by their commercial commitments - one refusal to repay their debts meant that the princes would find tremendous difficulty in raising funds for the next war. In China, on the contrary, the Emperor needed not to (and actually had not) surrendered his right to interfere into the market; the government was not bound by legislation it made. Several incidents which occurred in the fifteenth century help to illustrate these divergences. Firstly, while the Ming Emperor abolished the national debt (in the form of salt certificates) overnight in 1667, the King of England was forced to grant his debtors a charter for the formation of a national bank (the Bank of England). Secondly, while the four Atlantic states (Spain, Portugal, France, England) were competing for overseas expansion and experiencing the “Age of Discovery”, the Chinese Emperor issued an edict to stop all his subjects from going overseas in 1667, just three years after the famous Zhenghe fleets (Tr Admiral) arrived at Malaya. Business endeavours in Europe were first protected by privileges granted by the Kings (in the forms of charter or monopoly) as in the case of the East India Company. This practice was later developed into a kind of rights guaranteed by legislation (company laws). In China, with the prohibition of sea-going, overseas trades were restricted in the forms of tribute, smuggling and piracy. No legislations were developed in China to guarantee and to protect commercial endeavors. An easy alternative for the Chinese merchants, therefore, was to rely on personal networks. On this, China and Europe went their separate ways. While the feudal society in Medieval Europe based on the ties of allegiance to a local land-owning aristocracy for protection, in China, authority was nominally resided in the central", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213877, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "203\n\nBy the 1890s, however, these patronage networks developed by the western affairs movement underwent very drastic changes. Many of the “reform-minded\" officials in China had passed away due to old age.\n\nThe most serious blow came in 1895 with China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. This destroyed the credibility of the western affairs movement. With the downfall of Li Hongzhang, the basis of political patronage began to diversify.\n\nAs for Li Hongzhang, after having been disgraced, he was assigned by Beijing to be the Viceroy of such peripheral provinces as Guangdong and Guangxi. It is where the first attempt to make south China independent came into play.\n\nIn 1900, the issue of the Boxer Uprising divided the viceroys into two factions. The viceroys of the northern provinces followed Beijing and declared war on the foreigners. The viceroys of the southern provinces, led by Li Hongzhang, declared themselves neutral.\n\nHo Kai, a former member of Li Hongzhang's think tank, and then the Legislative Councillor of Hong Kong, was the agent in a deal between Sun Yat-sen, the Hong Kong Governor, and Li Hongzhang to establish a proposed independent government in the South. He sought the Governor's assistance to persuade, even with military coercion, Li Hongzhang to declare Guangdong independent. The Governor, anticipating that China was about to be partitioned, was anxious to find ways to protect British interests in Southern China. Without committing himself, Li was said to have reacted favourably. In addition, it is recorded that Li Hongzhang wrote to Sun Yat-sen inviting him to Canton for a \"parley\".\n\nAt this juncture, Beijing offered Li Hongzhang attractive high-level posts in northern China. He was called to Beijing to tidy up the political chaos after the Boxers. The rumour that Li was about to leave for the North evoked great fear among the Chinese in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Telegraph reported that to stop Li from leaving, the merchants threatened to \"lie in front of the wheels of his carriage\".\n\nThe Governor of Hong Kong, through the Consul in Canton, urged Li to reconsider his decision. Politely refusing this advice, Li inquired whether he could be granted an interview when he passed through.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 } ]