As early as 1841, Britain declared Hong Kong a free port. But it wasn't until 1860, when Britain annexed Kowloon and took possession of the now famous Victoria Harbour, that Hong Kong took its place as a vital center of global trade. At that time, colonial business capital swarmed into Hong Kong's harbor and urban areas, quickly developing them into an international trading center with British companies at its core. Nineteenth-century Western businesses, offices, residences, and warehouses sprang up, instantly transforming the face of this traditional Chinese fishing village.

Although the New Territories preserved an agrarian economy and for many years provided Hong Kong and Kowloon with rice and vegetables, Hong Kong and Kowloon quickly urbanized under British rule. This left little room for Chinese residents to continue their traditional land use practices.

At the end of the 19th century, China was being invaded and divided up by foreign powers. Colonial Hong Kong's relative stability attracted a great many Cantonese, Hakka, and Southern Min immigrants. Among these immigrants were a number of talented, hard-working people. However, in Hong Kong, unlike other immigrant destinations, they were unable to buy and work their own lands. As it was a colony, some of them became purchasers and administrators for Western firms. Some became businessmen themselves, providing goods from the mainland to the local Chinese market. Still more became manufacturers and sellers of their own handicrafts. They gradually accumulated wealth and began to form a Chinese business class.

This business class was, of course, primarily interested in making profits, but its members also began to absorb a more international perspective, taking on jobs that grafted Western techniques onto Eastern traditions.

It was these Chinese business people, with their beginnings of a modern world-view, who began to do medical charity work in 1869. In 1872, they established the famed Tung Wah Hospital which provided medical care and education to Chinese. These same wealthy business people also established the Tung Wah Society, a social welfare and charity organization. In addition, in 1896, the elite among Hong Kong's British residents and these Chinese business people together established the Po Leung Kuk to protect public safety, and promote social stability and solidarity in the colony. The above activities show that by the end of the 19th century, a new breed of Chinese businessman had taken the stage and claimed a place for himself in society.

Although wealthy Hong Kong Chinese traders, shippers, agents, purchasers, and administrators were discriminated against politically and socially, they nonetheless held a place in society which could not be ignored. According to historical documents, there were 832 propertied, tax-paying British subjects in Hong Kong in 1880 compared to 647 Chinese. The top 17 taxpayers were all Chinese, while the 18th was the British trading house Jardine Matheson.

Skilled administrators, the British began to absorb some of the Chinese business elite into their ranks, giving these Chinese a higher social position. Having undergone a Western legal education, Ng Choi was appointed a Member of the Legislative Council. An avid proponent of Western medicine and modern education, Dr. Ho Kai also served as a Member of the Legislative Council for 25 years. The very wealthy Ho Tung was even knighted and broke down the "whites only" restriction on Victoria Peak residences, building himself a luxurious villa there.

But for most of Hong Kong's Chinese, life was hard. Most of them were poor farmers who had fled the turmoil in the mainland. In Hong Kong, they lived in poor areas such as that around Tai Ping Sham. They pulled rickshaws, made small handicrafts, did heavy labor, served as coolies, were slaves, were barbers, were fishermen. Hong Kong's British authorities established a policy of absolute separation of Chinese and whites. Even Chinese businessmen wealthy enough to inspire flattery were not allowed to live on "The Peak," nor were they allowed to live in most neighborhoods in the central part of the city. Moreover, being insulted by whites was an everyday occurrence. On streets all over the city, whites could be seen beating Chinese coolies with umbrellas and canes. In 1880, the commander of the British Garrison at Hong Kong, General Donovan, wrote that the local Chinese give "ocular, auricular, and nasal demonstration of how unfitted they are for the neighborhood of Europeans," giving clear expression to the discriminatory sentiments of the day.

In the winter of 1894, there was an epidemic in the poor, crowded Tai Ping Sham area where Chinese refugees lived. Of the 150,000 poor laborers living in the primitive conditions of that place, more than 2,600 died. Between 1882 and 1892, Hong Kong's poorer residents were afflicted by several outbreaks of plague which killed more than 2,500. The dead came primarily from Hong Kong's lower classes. Fear of contracting plague intensified the prejudicial attitude of Hong Kong's white residents towards its poor Chinese.

The low place of Chinese in Hong Kong's society was the result of their living in a white colony. However, for tens of years before 1870 Hong Kong was also a transshipping center for Chinese laborers, mostly bankrupt farmers from the interior. Thousands of Chinese workers, half-slaves, were sent from Hong Kong to North America and Australia to work on the railroads and in the mines. Many died a cruel death abroad. The English colonialists, living amid this tragic reality, very naturally developed a strong impression of their own superiority and a bone-deep prejudice against Chinese.

Looking at the return of Hong Kong from the perspective of that dark year 155 years ago when Hong Kong was ceded to the British, one can appreciate the depth of this place's history. The 19th century Chinese businessmen became the Chinese capitalists of the 1960s and 70s. Hong Kong's Chinese business leaders acquired the resources to buy British assets and expand. Their enterprises included air transport, finance, trade, warehousing, real estate, shipbuilding, and travel, while collectively, their assets came to be second only to those of British capitalists holding special concessions.

Since the 1980s, capital moving south from the PRC has become involved in a broad range of areas including finance, department stores, civil engineering, real estate, airlines, shipping, and warehousing.

Traditional Chinese capital, with the addition of PRC capital and money from overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, has already taken a leadership position in Hong Kong. And since the 1970's, Hong Kong's growing middle class has emerged to take the stage. Comparing the past with the present, it's like the world turned upside down.

(reprinted from The China Times, 1 July 1997)