HONGKONG PORT

Evening Star, Issue 25701, 26 January 1946, Page 12

HONGKONG PORT

ITS VALUE TO CHINESE AMERICAN TRIBUTE TO BRITAIN The first glance at Hongkong from the economic view convinces you of, the fact that Chinese are the primary beneficiaries from Britain's Dominion, writes Walter Robb in the ' Christian Science Monitor ' of Boston, lif a British fortune is made at Hongkong, it is left in the ruck by ten or a dozen Chinese fortunes. If a Britisher finds life in Hongkong comfortable, and endowed with well-being, at least 1,000 Chinese around him make a similar discovery. Perhaps it is Hongkong efficiency as an entrepot that gives rise to misleading judgments of the place—misleading snap judgments. Most ships that call at Hongkong are freighters, rusty tramps of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Others that frequently call at Hongkong divide their interest between freight and passengers. That is as high as the categories of ships run in the western Pacific littoral. The usual stay at Hongkong of a visitor there is limited to a few days—oiften no more than two, often merelv ( one—during which his ship is unloading imports for China and loading' exports from China. It is such brief opportunity to observe the life of Hongkong that leads visitors to think the colony extremely posh ; to assume, for example, that Topside is an arrogant suburb from which Chinese are arbitrarily excluded, which is not the case; or to assume that the usual run of opportunity is monopolised among'the British a conclusion_ as far from the mark as that Topside is colonially aristocratic. DEMOCRACY PREVAILS. Almost the precise opposite of all this is the, actual sociological situation at Hongkong. It is to the British that opportunity is limited and to ,the Chinese that it is thrown wide open; for Chinese are the workmen, and democracy prevails, and the man who starts at the bottom, who is always a Chinese, finds no obstacle in his way as he rises toward the higher rungs of chance and fortune and industry. Sir Robert Ho Tung, of Hongkong, Chinese and a multi-millionaire, told me he began as a workman and gained the status of a comprador, where he laid the solid foundations of his wealth. Innumerable careers of Chinese at Hongkong are similar to that of Sir Robert Ho Tung. Chinese are the big Hongkong property owners, by and large, not the British. Indeed, the general welfare of the Chinese at Hongkong is a reminder of the objective of the British in founding the port a century ago. It was done when the Emperor at Peking followed a reactionary isolationist policy that made China's foreign trade an outlaw commerce England's sole purpose was to found a port where . international commerce would he lawful and under legal regulations. WHY IT WAS FOUNDED. England exacted Victoria Island from imperial China and founded Hongkong, to end, so far as it had concerned England, an involved and irregular commerce. It is good commercial and police law in Hongkong that explains its remarkable growth from barren crags to the modern city and world port it is to-day. In time this growth entailed the use of Kowloon Peninsula, on which a lease was procured. This.addition, however, chiefly signified additional opportunities for Chinese to enjoy employment, personal security, and excellent investments of their savings and business profits. Hongkong also serves China well in the political sense. It has been a refuge for Chinese leaders. Often Hongkong was a secure retreat to Dr Sun Yat Sen, whose work, largely formulated at Hongkong—and there, as elsewhere, witli " General " Cohen, a Britisher, as his bodyguard—ended at last the Manchu dynasty, the power really responsible for China's abmoral addiction to opium, and to squeeze, illicit monopoly, and corruption in national affairs. BENEFIT TO FREE WORLD. It will be before the basic utility of Hongkong yields the palm to a truly national China and better all-round arrangements. Until that time is at hand, it is well enough to have Hongkong precisely where it now ; s in British hands—thanks to the defeat of Japan, and to her capitulation. There is no perfection at Hongkong Jt is even far from being up to date with a number of things. But with all that granted, and more. Hongkong is the best convenience at hand for the welfare of. South China ; and Hongkong i s no" e of those evil things that it is far too often said to be.