HONGKONG.
Two British landmarks -- Chinese customs and Hongkong --
Choice of the island -- Vitality of colony -- Asylum for
malefactors -- Chinese official hostility -- Commanding
commercial position -- Crown Colony government --
Management of Chinese population -- Their improvement --
English education -- Material progress -- Industrial
institutions -- Accession of territory.
The past sixty years of war and peace in China have left two landmarks
as concrete embodiments of British policy--the Chinese maritime
customs and the colony of Hongkong. These are documents which testify
in indelible characters both to the motives and to the methods of
British expansion throughout the world. For good and for evil their
record cannot be explained away. Both institutions are typically
English, inasmuch as they are not the fulfilment of a dream or the
working out of preconcerted schemes, but growths spontaneously
generated out of the local conditions, much like that of the British
empire itself, and with scarcely more conscious foresight on the part
of those who helped to rear the edifice.
The relation of the British empire to the world, which defies
definition, is only revealed in scattered object-lessons. India throws
some light upon it--the colonies much more; and though in some
respects unique in its character, Hongkong in its degree stands
before the world as a realisation of the British ideal, with its
faults and blunders as well as with its excellences and successes.
The want of a British station on the China coast had long been felt,
and during the ten years which preceded the cession innumerable
proposals were thrown out, some of which distinctly indicated Hongkong
itself as supplying the desideratum. But as to the status of the new
port the various suggestions made neutralised each other, until the
course of events removed the question out of the region of discussion
and placed it in the lap of destiny.
The earliest English visitors to the island described it as inhabited
by a few weather-beaten fishermen, who were seen spreading their nets
and drying their catch on the rocks. Cultivation was restricted to
small patches of rice, sweet-potatoes, and buckwheat. The abundance of
fern gave it in places an appearance of verdure, but it was on the
whole a treeless, rugged, barren block of granite. The gentlemen of
Lord Amherst's suite in 1816, who have left this record, made another
significant observation. The precipitous island, twelve miles long,
with its deep-water inlets, formed one side of a land-locked harbour,
which they called Hongkong Sound, capable of sheltering any number of
ships of the largest size. Into this commodious haven the English
fugitives, driven first from Canton and then from Macao, by the
drastic decree of the Chinese authorities in 1839, found a refuge for
their ships, and afterwards a footing on shore for themselves. Stern
necessity and not their wills sent them thither. The same necessity
ordained that the little band, once lodged there, should take root,
and growth followed as the natural result of the inherent vitality of
the organism. As Dr Eitel well points out, this small social body did
not originate in Hongkong: it had had a long preparatory history in
Macao, and in the Canton factories, and may be considered, therefore,
in the light of a healthy swarm from the older hives.
During the first few years of the occupation the selection of the
station was the subject of a good deal of cheap criticism in the
press. A commercial disappointment and a political failure, it was
suggested by some that the place should be abandoned. It was
contrasted unfavourably with the island of Chusan, which had been
receded to China under the same treaty which had ceded Hongkong to
Great Britain; and even as late as 1858 Lord Elgin exclaimed, "How
anybody in their senses could have preferred Hongkong to Chusan seems
incredible."
But, in point of fact, there had been little or no conscious choice in
the matter. The position may be said to have chosen itself, since no
alternative was left to the first British settlers. As for Chusan, it
had been occupied and abandoned several times. The East India Company
had an establishment there in the beginning of the eighteenth century,
and if that station was finally given up either on its merits or in
favour of Hongkong, it was certainly not without experience of the
value of the more northerly position. Whatever hypothetical
advantages, commercial or otherwise, might have accrued from the
retention of Chusan, the actual position attained by Hongkong as an
emporium of trade, a centre of industry, and one of the great shipping
ports in the world, furnishes an unanswerable defence both of the
choice of the site and the political structure which has been erected
on it. Canton being at once the centre of foreign trade and the focus
of Chinese hostility, vicinity to that city was an indispensable
condition of the location of the British entrepot, and the place of
arms from which commerce could be defended. And it would be hard even
now to point to any spot on the Chinese coast which fulfilled the
conditions so well as Hongkong.
The course of its development did not run smooth. It was not to be
expected. The experiment of planting a British station in contact with
the most energetic as well as the most turbulent section of the
population of China was not likely to be carried out without mistakes,
and many have been committed. Indeed, from the day of its birth down
to the present time domestic dissensions and recriminations respecting
the management of its affairs have never ceased.
This was inevitable in a political microcosm having neither diversity
of interest nor atmospheric space to soften the perspective. The
entire interests of the colony were comprised within the focal
distance of myopic vision. Molehills thus became mountains, and the
mote in each brother's eye assumed the dimensions of animalcula seen
through a microscope. The bitter feuds between the heads of the
several departments of the lilliputian Government which prevailed
during the first twenty years must have been fatal to any young colony
if its progress had depended on the wisdom of its rulers. Happily a
higher law governs all these things.
Freedom carried with it the necessary consequences, and for many years
the new colony was a tempting Alsatia for Chinese malefactors, an
asylum for pirates, who put on and off that character with wonderful
facility, and could hatch their plots there fearless of surveillance.
When the Taiping rebellion was at its height, piracy became so mixed
with insurrection that the two were not distinguishable, and it
required both firmness and vigilance on the part of the authorities to
prevent the harbour of Hongkong becoming the scene of naval
engagements between the belligerents. During the hostilities of
1857-58 a species of dacoity was practised with impunity by Chinese,
who were tempted by rewards for the heads of Englishmen offered by the
authorities of Canton.
It cannot, therefore, be denied that the immigrants from the mainland
in the first and even the second decade of its existence were leavened
with an undesirable element, causing anxiety to the responsible
rulers.
The Chinese authorities, as was natural, waged relentless war on the
colony from its birth. Though compelled formally to admit that the
island and its dependencies were a British possession, they still
maintained a secret authority over the Chinese who settled there, and
even attempted to levy taxes. As they could not lay hands on its
trade, except the valuable portion of it which was carried on by
native craft, they left no stone unturned to destroy that. By skilful
diplomacy, for which they are entitled to the highest credit, they
obtained control over the merchant junks trading to Hongkong, and
imposed restrictions on them calculated to render their traffic
impossible. By the same treaty they obtained the appointment of a
British officer as Chinese revenue agent in Hongkong--a concession,
however, disallowed by the good sense of the British Government. But
the Chinese were very tenacious of the idea of making Hongkong a
customs station, never relaxing their efforts for forty years, until
the convention of 1886 at last rewarded their perseverance by a
partial fulfilment of their hopes.
For reasons which, if not very lofty, are yet very human, the
diplomatic and consular agents of Great Britain have never looked
sympathetically on the colony--indeed have often sided with the
Chinese in their attempts to curtail its rights.
Nor has the Home Government itself always treated the small colony
with parental consideration. Before it was out of swaddling-clothes
the Treasury ogre began to open his mouth and, like the East India
Company, demand remittances. A military establishment was maintained
on the island, not for the benefit of the residents, but for the
security of a strategical position in the imperial system. The
colonists were mulcted in a substantial share of the cost, which the
governor was instructed to wring out of them. The defences themselves,
however, were neglected, and allowed to grow obsolete and useless,
and, if we mistake not, it was the civil community, and not the
Government, that insisted on their being modernised. The compromise
eventually arrived at was, that the colonists provided the guns and
the imperial Government the forts. An interesting parallel to this was
the case of Gibraltar, which possessed no dock until the civil
community by sheer persistence, extending over many years, at length
overcame the reluctance of the British Government to provide so
essential an adjunct to its naval establishment. The colony had
suffered much from the war with China, but the Home Government refused
it any participation in the indemnity extorted from the Chinese.
But these and other drawbacks were counterbalanced, and eventually
remedied, by the advantages offered by a free port and a safe harbour.
Standing in the fair way of all Eastern commerce, which pays willing
tribute to the colony, Hongkong attracted trade from all quarters in a
steadily increasing volume, and became the pivot for the whole ocean
traffic of the Far East.[35] The tide of prosperity could not be
stayed--it invaded every section of the community. The character of
the Chinese population was continuously raised. The best of them
accumulated wealth: the poorest found remunerative employment for
their labour. Crime, with which the colony had been tainted,
diminished as much through the expulsive power of material prosperity
as from the judicious measures of the executive Government, for the
credit must not be denied to successive administrators for the
improvement in the condition of the colony. Among those none was more
deserving of praise than Sir Richard MacDonnell (1865-72), who on
catching sight, as he entered the harbour, of an enormous building,
which he was told was the jail, remarked, "I will not fill that, but
stop the crime;" and he was nearly as good as his word,--a terror to
evil-doers.
A Crown colony is the form of government which challenges the most
pungent criticism. The elected members of its legislature, being a
minority, can only in the last resort acquiesce in the decisions of
the official majority who constitute the executive Government. Such a
minority, however, is by no means wanting in influence, for it is,
after all, publicity which is the safeguard of popular liberty. The
freedom of speech enjoyed by an Opposition which has no fear of the
responsibility of office before its eyes widens the scope of its
criticisms, and imparts a refreshing vigour to the invective of those
of its members who possess the courage of their convictions. It
reaches the popular ear, and the apprehension of an adverse public
opinion so stimulated can never fail to have its effect on the acts of
the Administration. Under such a _régime_ it seems natural that, other
things being equal, each governor in turn should be esteemed the worst
who has borne rule in the colony, and in any case his merits are never
likely to be fairly gauged by any local contemporary estimate. King
Stork, though fair and far-seeing, may be more obnoxious to criticism
than King Log, who makes things pleasant during his official term.
Hongkong being established as a free port, the functions of Government
were practically limited to internal administration, and the question
of greatest importance was the control of the Chinese population which
poured in. This was a new problem. Chinese communities had, indeed,
settled under foreign rule before, as in the Straits Settlements, in
Java, and in Manila, but at such distances from their home as rendered
the settlers amenable to any local regulations which might be imposed
on them. Distance even acted as a strainer, keeping back the dregs.
But Hongkong was nearer to China than the Isle of Wight is to
Hampshire. Evil-doers could come and go at will. It could be overrun
in the night and evacuated in the morning. Spies were as
uncontrollable as house-flies, and whenever it suited the Chinese
Government to be hostile, they proved their power to establish such a
reign of terror in the colony that it was dangerous to stray beyond
the beat of the armed policeman. Clearly it was of primary importance
to come to terms with the native community, to reduce them to
discipline, to encourage the good and discourage the bad among the
Chinese settlers. As their numbers increased the public health
demanded a yet stricter supervision of their habits. Sanitary science
had scarcely dawned when the colony was founded, and its teachings had
to be applied, as they came to light, to conditions of life which had
been allowed to grow up in independence of its requirements. To
tolerate native customs, domestic habits, and manner of living, while
providing for the general wellbeing of a community in a climate which
at its best is debilitating, taxed the resources of the British
executive, and of course gave rise to perpetual recrimination. But the
thing has been accomplished. Successive conflagrations have
co-operated with the march of sanitary reform and the advance in their
worldly circumstances in so improving the dwellings of the population,
that their housing now compares not unfavourably with that of the
native cities of India. The Southern Chinese are naturally cleanly,
and appreciative of good order when it is judiciously introduced
among them, even from a foreign source.
A more complex question was that of bringing an alien population such
as the Chinese within the moral pale of English law, for law is vain
unless it appeals to the public conscience. The imposition of foreign
statutes on a race nursed on oral tradition and restrained from
misdoing by bonds invisible to their masters was not an undertaking
for which success could be safely foretold. The effect of a similar
proceeding on the subtle natives of India has been described as
"substituting for a recognised morality a mere game of skill, at which
the natives can give us long odds and beat us." "The mercantile and
money-lending classes in India," says Mr S. S. Thorburn, "delight in
the intricacy and surprises of a good case in court." With the Chinese
it has been otherwise. The population of Hongkong have so far
assimilated the foreign law that, whether or not it satisfies their
innate sense of right, it at least governs their external conduct, and
crime has been reduced very low: as for litigation, it is
comparatively rare; it is disreputable, and has no place in the
Chinese commercial economy.
The best proofs of their acceptance of colonial rule is the constantly
increasing numbers of the Chinese residents; the concentration of
their trading capital there; their investments in real estate and in
local industries; their identification with the general interests of
the colony, and their adopting it as a home instead of a place of
temporary exile. The means employed to conciliate the Chinese must be
deemed on the whole to have been successful. There was first police
supervision, then official protection under a succession of qualified
officers, then representation in the Colonial Legislature and on the
commission of the peace. The colonial executive has wisely left to the
Chinese a large measure of a kind of self-government which is far more
effective than anything that could find its expression in votes of the
Legislature. The administration of purely Chinese affairs by native
committees, with a firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to
fulfil every purpose of government. The aim has been throughout to
ascertain and to gratify, when practicable, the reasonable wants of
the Chinese, who have responded to these advances by an exhibition of
public spirit which no society could excel. It is doubtful whether in
the wide dominion of the Queen there are 250,000 souls more
appreciative of orderly government than the denizens of the whilom
nest of pirates and cut-throats--Hongkong.
As an educational centre Hongkong fulfils a function whose value is
difficult to estimate. From the foundation of the colony the subject
engaged the attention of the executive Government, as well as of
different sections of the civil community. The missionary bodies were
naturally very early in the field, and there was for a good many years
frank co-operation between them and the mercantile community in
promoting schools both for natives and Europeans. In time, however,
either their aims were found to diverge or else their estimate of
achievement differed, and many of the missionary teaching
establishments were left without support.
After an interval of languor, however, new life was infused into the
educational schemes of the colony. The emulation of religious sects
and the common desire to bring the lambs of the flock into their
respective folds inspired the efforts of the propagandists, their zeal
reacting on the colonial Government itself with the most gratifying
results, so far at least as the extension of the field of their common
efforts was concerned.
The Chinese had imported their own school systems, while taking full
advantage of the educational facilities provided by the Government and
the Christian bodies. Being an intellectual race, they are well able
to assimilate the best that Christendom has to offer them. But the
colonial system contents itself with a sound practical commercial
education, which has equipped vast numbers of Chinese for the work of
clerks, interpreters, and so forth, and has thus been the means of
spreading the knowledge of the English language over the coast of
China, and of providing a medium of communication between the native
and European mind.
The material progress of Hongkong speaks volumes for the energy of its
community. The precipitous character of the island left scarcely a
foothold for business or residential settlement. The strip which
formed the strand front of the city of Victoria afforded room for but
one street, forcing extensions up the rugged face of the hill which
soon was laid out in zig-zag terraces: foundations for the houses are
scarped out of the rock, giving them the appearance of citadels. The
locality being subject to torrential rains, streets and roads had to
be made with a finished solidity which is perhaps unmatched. Bridges,
culverts, and gutters all being constructed of hewn granite and fitted
with impervious cement, the storm-waters are carried off as clean as
from a ship's deck. These municipal works were not achieved without
great expense and skilfully directed labour, of which an unlimited
supply can always be depended on. And the credit of their achievement
must be equally divided between the Government and the civil
community.
The island is badly situated as regards its water-supply, which has
necessitated the excavation of immense reservoirs on the side farthest
from the town, the aqueduct being tunnelled for over a mile through a
solid granite mass. These and other engineering works have rendered
Hongkong the envy of the older colonies in the Far East. No less so
the palatial architecture in which the one natural product of the
island has been turned to the most effective account. The quarrying of
granite blocks, in which the Chinese are as great adepts as they are
in dressing the stones for building, has been so extensive as visibly
to alter the profile of the island.
A great deficiency of the island as a commercial site being the
absence of level ground, the enterprise of the colonists has been
incessantly directed towards supplying the want. Successive
reclamations on the sea-front, costing of course large sums of money,
have so enlarged the building area that the great thoroughfare called
Queen's Road now runs along the back instead of the front of a new
city, the finest buildings of all being the most recent, standing upon
the newly reclaimed land. It is characteristic of such improvements,
that, while in course of execution, they should be deemed senseless
extravagance, due to the ambition of some speculator or the caprice of
some idealist, thus perpetually illustrating the truth of the Scottish
saying, "Fules and bairns should never see a thing half done."
Hongkong has been no exception to so universal a rule.
The industrial enterprise of the colony has fully kept pace with its
progress in other respects. The Chinese quarter resembles nothing so
much as a colony of busy ants, where every kind of handicraft is plied
with such diligence, day in and day out, as the Chinese alone seem
capable of. The more imposing works conducted by foreigners occupy a
prominent place in the whole economy of the Far East. Engineering and
shipbuilding have always been carried on in the colony. Graving-docks
capable of accommodating modern battleships, and of executing any
repairs or renewals required by them as efficiently as could be done
in any part of the world, constitute Hongkong a rendezvous for the
navies of all nations. Manufactures of various kinds flourish on the
island. Besides cotton-mills, some of the largest sugar-refineries in
the world, fitted with the most modern improvements, work up the raw
material from Southern China, Formosa, the Philippines, and other
sugar-growing countries in the Eastern Archipelago, thus furnishing a
substantial item of export to the Australian colonies and other parts
of the world. The colony has thereby created for itself a commerce of
its own, while its strategical situation has enabled it to retain the
character of a pivot on which all Far Eastern commerce turns.
This pivotal position alone, and not the local resources of the place,
enabled the colony to found one of the most successful financial
organisations of the modern world. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank has
had a history not dissimilar from that of the colony as a whole, one
of success followed by periods of alternate depression and elation.
Now in the trough of the wave and now on its crest, the bank has
worked its way by inherent vitality through all vicissitudes of good
or bad fortune, until it has gone near to monopolising the exchange
business of the Far East, and has become the recognised medium between
the money-market of London and the financial needs of the Imperial
Chinese administration.
It should not be overlooked as a condition of its success that the
great Hongkong Bank, like all other successful joint-stock
enterprises, whether in Hongkong or in China, has from its origin
borne a broad international character. Though legally domiciled in a
British possession, representative men of all nationalities sit on its
board and take their turn in the chairmanship as it comes round. The
international character, indeed, may be cited as one of the elements
of the success of the colony itself. No disability of any kind
attaches to alien settlers, not even exclusion from the jury panel.
They are free to acquire property, to carry on business, to indulge
their whims, and to avail themselves of all the resources of the
colony, and enjoy the full protection of person and property which
natural-born British subjects possess. They come and go at their
pleasure, no questions asked, no luggage examined, no permits required
for any purpose whatever coming within the scope of ordinary life. Nor
are they even asked whether they appreciate these advantages or not;
in fact they are as free to criticise the institutions under which
they live as if they had borne their part in creating them, which, in
fact, they have done, and this it is which marks the vitality of the
British system, whether in the mother country or in its distant
dependencies.
The exceedingly cramped conditions of life on the island having proved
such an obstacle to its development, the acquisition of a portion of
the mainland forming one side of the harbour was at an early period
spoken of as a desideratum for the colony. The idea took no practical
shape, however, until the occupation of Canton by the Allied forces
under the administration of Consul Parkes; and it is one of the most
noteworthy achievements of that indefatigable man that, during the
time when Great Britain was in fact at war with the Government of
China, he should have succeeded, on his own initiative, in obtaining
from the governor of the city a lease of a portion of land at Kowloon,
which was subsequently confirmed by the convention of Peking in 1860.
The improvement of artillery and other means of attack on sea-forts
left the island very vulnerable, and the measures taken by the various
European Powers to establish naval stations on the Chinese coast,
together with the efforts which the country itself was making to
become a modern military Power, rendered it a matter of absolute
necessity, for the preservation of the island, that a sufficient area
of the adjacent territory should be included within its defences.
Following the example set by Germany and Russia, the British
Government concluded an arrangement with the Government of China by
which the needed extension was secured to Great Britain under a
ninety-nine years lease. A convention embodying this agreement was
signed at Peking in June 1898.
FOOTNOTE:
[35] The tonnage entered and cleared for the year 1898 amounted to
17,265,780, of which one-half was under the British flag.