The city of Hong Kong ("Fragrant Harbor") is a city in southern China, incorporated within the province of Guandong, situated at the edge of the Pearl River estuary. Due to its modern history, Hong Kong can be noted as one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Communist China with significant European expat communities left behind from the Civil War as well as African expat communities from China close relationship with the Pan-African Empire.
Hong Kong entered Chinese rule after the Chinese revolution, during which the Japanese invaded during the Second Sino-Japanese War and seizing the territories from the politically and militarily weakened British. The Kuomintang government eventually drove the Japanese from Hong Kong island, incorporating it within Republican rule. When the Kuomintang government failed in Nanking and was replaced by the new Chinese government in Beijing in 1960 Hong Kong too passed into communist rule. With the British having had no strength or power to protest, the city has remained within Chinese borders as one of Guandong's largest cities.
Though due to China's isolationist policies the local economy of Hong Kong stagnated with international shipping crawling to a stand-still or disappearing entirely. Trade began to return to the city however as international shipping to Asian nations was reopened during the rise of the ASB and then to Mexico with the formation of the Third International.
Hong Kong also occupies an important part of Chinese society and politics as being the origins of Hou Sai Tang's revolution and message that later reformed the Communist Party of China into the New People's China party.
Background[]
The island of Hong Kong was originally ceded to the British during the First Opium War in 1842. The transfer of the vital harbor area was signed to be in perpetuity to the British after the Qing defeat. To the British, Hong Kong became a vital trading post in East Asia and a vital strategic, military asset as European powers began to establish their own spheres of control in China (Portugese at Macau, the Germans in Tsingtao, the French in Guangzhouwan/Zhanjiang).
At the time of British take-over the island was home to only 7,450, mostly local fishermen and charcoal burners. But rebellions in mainland China and natural disasters spurned an explosive growth of population in the island colony. Following the Second Opium War the Chinese were again forced to make concessions to the French and British, awarding Britain Kowloon (Kowloon peninsula south of what is Boundary Street). The territory also acquired Lantau Island and over 200 additional islands around it.
Hong Kong maintained a powerful status of being a Free Port, attracting large-scale immigration from China and Europe alike with the benefits of its rising wealth and accessibility. Educated by the British, a rising Chinese upper-class was able to come to fruition, however they were segregated from the ruling British aristocracy and other Europeans by British colonial policy.
Hong Kong again expanded with the Convention for the Expansion of Hong Kong, which added the New Territories. Then largely rural mountainous territories cut-off from Mainland China by the Sam Chun River, the intention was to alleviate the intensive squalor on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon and giving the rapidly expanding colony room to grow. Even today the New Territories still comprise of largely rural territory balanced between minor agricultural activity and effective urban wooded park land.
Second Sino-Japanese War and Revolution[]
On November 14th, 1939 Japanese troops landed in Hong Kong, engaging the meager British defense (comprising of British regulars and a city militia). The unprovoked attack, made without deceleration of war was a great offense to the British Empire, but they were in all incapable of then mounting any form of counter-action to the Japanese aggression. Japanese forces overwhelmed and drove out the defenders who were forced to disperse into the mainland, many of which became foreign volunteers to the Republican Kuomintang army. Far overwhelming the city's defense the expansive Japanese military took the city in under two-weeks before marching onto the mainland.
The Japanese were able to hold Hong Kong for five years, during which the Kowloon Walled City was the only section of the city that could manage to withstand or deny Japanese occupation.
In 1944 an army from the Chinese mainland were able to successfully repulse the Japanese army and liberated the city in June of that year. Over the course of the war the Japanese made several attempts at re-taking Hong Kong and the former European colonies of southern China but were repulsed.
Hou Sai Tang[]
On December 15th, 1955 a student and worker uprising within the Hong Kong threw out the Kuomintang leadership. In conjunction with the former Portuguese colony at Macau a two-city commune was established under the leadership of Wen Chu and Hou Sai Tang. The commune existed until the sixth of March when the communist insurgents were forced to flea the city by boat on a KMT counter-attack of the city.
With a meager defense left to guard the rear and provide a simple distraction and cover for the communist's flight, the city fell into KMT hands again in two days of combat.
Post-Revolution[]
With the withdrawal of Japanese troops from mainland China and the surrender and integration of the Republican government in Nanking, Hong Kong once again found itself as a member of a unified Chinese mainland in over a hundred years. However with the isolationist policies of Beijing the economy of Hong Kong suffered.
Scarred by the war the city was the list of national repairation. Addressing the squalor of Hong Kong island and Kowloon the Beijing government granted resources and greater authority to spill the city further out into the New Territories with extensive programs to raise tenement apartments to alleviate the social and health concerns of the densely populated Hong Kong island.
However with the weakening of its economy many city-dwellers emigrated from the city to the mainland where there were job opportunities. Hong Kong joined Macau as a fishing port while in the background the old Triads plied a desperate life-style to survive in post-Revolution China, which had become incredibly hostile to them; their influence in China slowly eroded to that of the Walled City and the immediate areas of Kowloon.
Life returned to Hong Kong however when the ASB was founded and international shipping again returned slowly to the territory. Additionally, with the addition of Taiwan to the nation after being liberated from Japanese control imports from the island province began to arrive and help fill Hong Kong's harbor.
The local industry again began to return with the evolution of the ASB into the Third International bringing trade from Mexico into the city and produce from Africa with the opening of close bi-lateral relationships with Ethiopia.