British Hong Kong during the Weltkrieg (1914-21)

British Hong Kong, governed by Irishman Sir Francis May, was not put under the direct threat of war during the Weltkrieg. Hong Kong citizens saw no conscription, and the population boomed during the war despite some migrations of Chinese labourers, who feared an attack on the colony, into neutral China. However, Hong Kong’s economy suffered because of the war. In 1919, as the war situation became dire, the British Empire and France banned the export of rice from India and Indochina. The Japanese government, having suffered a series of “rice riots” in 1918, has urgently requested rice to be bought from the remaining exporters. Rice suddenly became a scarcity in Hong Kong, and rice dealers inflated the price of their goods. Riots broke out in July 1919 during the typhoon season, when Chinese labourers, displaced from their places of work (piers and harbour-fronts were closed down) and lacking their daily salaries, decided to take up arms and seize rice from the dealers.

British Rule (1921-5)

After the Peace with Honour in 1921, Francis May was replaced by Reginald Edward Stubbs, who had been active in Ceylon and Malaya. In his tenure, Stubbs was forced to deal with a series of strikes and labour demands. At the heart of the issue was the unequal treatment between Chinese and British labourers.

In January 1922, Chinese seamen went on a strike to protest the higher wages enjoyed by British seamen. The British government was adamant in refusing their demands of increased wages. In February, Hong Kong began to suffer from food shortages. At its peak, over 30,000 seamen went on the strike. Many returned to China during the strike to seek new jobs. By February, the colonial government decided to close the Hong Kong-Chinese border and shut down the railways. On March 3, policemen opened fire on a group of 2,000 workers attempting to cross the border, killing 3. Domestic pressure mounted on the colonial government, and the city was approaching anarchy. On March 8, the government capitulated to the workers, promising higher wages, releasing all arrested workers and paying indemnity to those killed in the shooting. The successful strike was applauded by the Kuomintang, Soviet Russia and the Communard French government. Fears of a syndicalist plot began to brew in Hong Kong.

The British Empire fell to a syndicalist revolution in March 1925. Stubbs was staunch in remaining loyal to the British government-in-exile in Ottawa, as does most members of the colonial government, who were professional colonial servants with little ideological sympathy to the syndicalists. However, Hong Kong no longer enjoyed the backing of the British economy, which now remained in shambles. Coinciding with the British Revolution was the Chinese Civil War, led by the left-leaning warlord Feng Yuxiang against the pro-German government of Xu Sichang. The Xu government halted food export into Hong Kong for his war effort. Between March 1925 and October 1926, Hong Kong was virtually an isolated enclave that must survive without the support of both China and Canada. Chinese citizens began migrating en masse to neutral Portuguese Macau or Japanese Taiwan. Strikes and riots were common in the city, and the city was put under extended periods of martial law.

Following the German intervention in the Chinese Civil War in March, 1926 and the capture of Peking in October, the fate of Hong Kong was put in the forefront of the Second Treaty of Nanking. The Canadian government was effectively powerless in administrating Hong Kong, and has agreed to put the city under the rule of an international legation. Hong Kong joined other coastal cities such as Tianjin and Shanghai into the Union of Legation Cities. The treaty was signed on October 27, 1926, by Hans von Seeckt (German Empire), Aisin-Gioro Zaifeng (Qing Empire), Cecil Clementi (Canada) and other minor signatories.

Politics in Hong Kong (1926 - )

On November 1, 1926, a detachment of German military led by Max Bauer and a British delegation led by Cecil Clementi entered Hong Kong and pacified the city. The legations have agreed to loan three million British pounds to the Hong Kong government, to revitalize the dying economy. Cecil Clementi took over the role of the Governor of Hong Kong from Stubbs, who continued his career in Shanghai. Clementi also succeeded Max Bauer as the Governor-General of the Legation Cities following his death in 1929.

The Legation Cities were de facto administrated by the Prime Minister of the Legation. In December 1926, Harry Edward Arnhold was elected by the Legation, and he began his duties on January 1, 1927. Initially, Hong Kong flourished under heavy foreign investments and trades. The effects of the 1925-6 unrest were mostly undone and forgotten, as population and commerce boomed once again. Despite stability in the Legation Cities, China remained fragmentized, with capitalists of the AOG and warlords of the League of the Eight Province ruling in south China.

The law-making apparatus in Hong Kong was made up of the Governor, Commander Legation Forces in Hong Kong (CLF), Chief Secretary, Chief of Justice, Chief Treasurer, 3 ex officio member and 6 unofficial members. The former 5 were selected by the Legation, and the remaining 9 were in turn selected by the Governor. All legation citizens were theoretically eligible for the roles, but for practical reasons the posts were dominated by British, American and occasionally German civil servants. Ethnic Chinese were regularly excluded, and the Qing Empire was too far away to exercise their influence in policy-making in Hong Kong. Distinguished Chinese politicians could, and had been, selected as an unofficial member.

The Hong Kong Drug Trade (1927 - )

Following peace in Xinan after 1927, Hong Kong also became a hub for illicit drug trade and smuggling. In order for opium produced in Yunnan and Szechuan to reach other coastal cities, opium was smuggled into Hong Kong via land or through Haiphong and to Hong Kong via sea, where they can be shipped to the other legation cities with little trouble, as there were no customs control between the cities which were amalgamated into a single political entity. Criminal organisations began to gain influence in Hong Kong, most notably the triads. The triads were evolved from revolutionary or labour organisations in the early 20th century and they had grown considerable during the 1925-6 unrest. The influx of Chinese immigrants into Hong Kong, who joined the triad in order to gain access to accommodations and employment, along with the influx of former Chinese military officers who spent much of their lives fighting in anarchy, helped to further ferment the rise of the triads. By the 1930s, the criminal underground in Hong Kong was dominated either by the Wo’s (Hakka and Punti clans) or the Hung’s (Hokkien and Teochew clans). These fraternities usually help siphon opium to drug barons in Shanghai. There, Tu Yueh-sen, Huang Jinrong and Zhang Siaolin established the Sanxin Corporation, an ostensibly-legal security and shipping firm whose real function was to help securely transport opium from the beaches of Shanghai to the Qing and Fengtian heartlands (which also has a semi-state sanctioned opium production program led by Zhang Xueliang and Kenji Diohara).

Since 1895, the German pharmaceutical company Bayer has been selling diacetylmorphine, an opium extract, under the trade name of heroin. Marketed as a cough suppressant, heroin was distributed in both Europe and south China. After the German ban on opium in 1925, Bayer stopped the production of heroin. In 1927, following peace in Xinan and the resumption of smuggling routes, underground production in Burma and Indochina began. Heroin variants and alternates begin to make their way into Yunnan or Haiphong, where they share the same route of Hong Kong-Shanghai to permeate the Chinese mainland. In response to this new market, in 1931, Tu established an enormous complex of ancestral temples in Shanghai, which was really a front for the largest heroin processing plant in the city. The government’s efforts were hampered by the rampant corruption caused by the drug trade.

Major personalities of the opium-heroin drug trade in Hong Kong included Kot Siu-wong, a former Kuomintang Lieutenant-General, and a leader of the Hung organisation, Heung Chin, leader of labour organisation in Hong Kong, and a leader of the Hung organisation and “Red Bone” Yan, a leader of the Wo organisation who unified the many fractured Wo fraternities and Lee Hysan, who made his fortune before the opium ban in 1923 and continued to do so illegally until his assassination in 1928 by his rival Pedro Lobo.

Opium was outlawed by various conventions during the 1910s (most notably the 1912 International Opium Convention) and through national laws in the 1920s (UK in 1923, USA in 1924 and Germany in 1925). However, the government was unable to curb the drug trade. The drug barons amassed wealth and influence so great that they were virtually untouchable. Many drug barons were anti-syndicalists, which meant that their political influence was indispensable. Furthermore, the police and juridical system was rife with corruption – for example, Huang was the Commissioner of Police in Shanghai and held his own court where he would sentence criminals or rivals.