ENG-1968 — Page 372

278

HISTORY-

THE CHINESE REVOLUTION AND TWO WORLD WARS

The Chinese Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Manchu Dynasty. There followed a long period of unrest in China and again large numbers of refugees found shelter in the Colony. One of its leaders, Sun Yat-sen, who headed the Kuomintang republican group centred in Canton, had been deeply influenced by the British institutions he had seen while a student in Hong Kong. Chinese participation in the first world war was followed by strong nationalist and anti- foreign sentiment, inspired both by disappointment over their failure at the Versailles peace conference to regain the German concessions in Shantung and by the post-war radicalism of the Kuomintang. The Chinese wanted to abolish all foreign treaty privileges in China. Foreign goods were boycotted and unrest spread to Hong Kong where a seamen's strike in 1922 was followed by a serious general strike in 1925-6 under pressure from Canton. This petered out, but not before considerable disruption of the life of the Colony. Britain, as the holder of the largest foreign stake in China, was the main target of this anti-foreign sentiment, but Japan soon replaced her in this position.

Japanese plans for political aggrandizement in the Far East became apparent when she seized the opportunity of the first world war to present her 'twenty one demands' to China early in 1915. In 1931 Japan occupied Manchuria and her attempt to detach China's northern provinces led to open war in 1937. Canton fell to the Japanese in 1938, resulting in a mass flight of refugees to Hong Kong. It was estimated that some 100,000 entered in 1937, 500,000 in 1938 and 150,000 in 1939, bringing the population at the outbreak of war to an estimated 1,600,000. It was thought that at the height of the influx about half a million were sleeping in the streets.

The outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 gave Japan the advantage of being able to extend her ambitions over the whole of East and South-East Asia, and the position of the Colony became precarious. On December 8, 1941, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Japanese attacked from the mainland, and subsequently the British were forced to retire from the New Territories and Kowloon to Hong Kong Island. The Japanese crossed the harbour at Lei Yue Mun on the night of December