zony
29-10-2007, 06:04 PM
The Promise
WHEN LI KA-SHING AND HIS FAMILY arrived in Hong Kong
in 1940 -just one small clan among 600,ooo refugees escaping
Guangdong province and Japan's reign of terror- the colony was
very much a place for celebrating royal jubilees, imperial accessions
and birthdays. Entertainment at Government House, on
Upper Albert Road, still centered around dances for a racially segregated,
political and social class of chauffeur- and rickshaw-driven
British colonials.
Next to India, Hong Kong was the second most prominent
jewel in Britain's star-studded imperial crown. Though it was
not officially a British colony until June 26, 1843, Hong Kong
was, for all practical purposes, already under the flag of the British
empire; the declaration of British sovereignty was made on January
26, 1841, as a result of a joint agreement between Charles
Eliot, Britain's superintendent of foreign trade, and Qishan, the
governor-general of Guangdong.
To British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston, however, to
appropriate Hong Kong without any other Chinese territories
was tantamount to seizing a mere "barren island with hardly a
house on it."2 Palmerston wanted more. And so, by replacing Eliot
with Henry Pottinger in 1841, Palmerston found someone who
would be prepared to use all military might to coerce the Chinese
into granting guarantees. Eventually, of course, the colony would
include more than just a thirty-two-square-mile island. By 1860,
Hong Kong would absorb the three and half square miles comprising
a peninsula called Kowloon, as well as Stonecutters Island.
And by 1898, the Qing government would lease, for a period of
ninety-nine years, a 355-square-mile area north of Hong Kong
Island known as the New Territories.3 In 1842, however, Palmerston
simply wanted to ensure that Hong Kong belonged to the
British, free of any obligations or encumbrances. Sure enough, in
the end, and to the dismay of the Qing court, Article 3 of the
Treaty of Nanjing would read: "The Island of Hong Kong to be
possessed in perpetuity by Victoria and her successors and ruled as
they shall see fit."*
Not that the British had ever previously doubted they could
do with Hong Kong as they saw fit. Hong Kong was the twin
product of western opium dealers and the British addictive predilection
for tea. As the British demand for tea increased in the
late seventeenth century, British traders were prompted to pay
for the aromatic concoction and such other Chinese products as
silk and rhubarb with silver. These silver transactions not only
caused an enormous deficit in favor of the Qing court in Bei- . .
jing, but also consternation in British merchant and diplomatic
circles. But the loss of British silver was short-lived. Discovering
through Portuguese merchants that some Chinese officials craved
"foreign mud," better known as opium, the British East India
Company, which had a trade monopoly in Asia and was therefore
allowed to trade in Guangzhou, just northwest of Hong
Kong, started to smuggle illegal opium into China. Of all the drug
dealers, the wealthiest were William Jardine and James Matheson,
who later formed Jardine Matheson & Co., which for a long time
was the largest commercial house in Hong Kong- that is, until
Li Ka-shing displaced it from its number-one spot with his own
company.
While illegal importation of drugs into China made for some
heady profits, the drug dealers knew that China, with its popula-
- -
tion of 400 million, was a potential monetary colossus if opium
could ever be made legal. Even if only a fraction of the Chinese
took one pipe, the profits could be dizzying and unfathomable. In
1838, with addiction widespread and growing, a Chinese official
sized up the rising popularity of opium this way: "Opium smoking
was [once] confined to the fops of wealthy families who took up
the habit as a form of conspicuous consumption. Later, people of
all social strata- from government officials and members of the
gentry, to craftsmakers, merchants, entertainers and servants and
even women, Buddhist monks and nuns and Daoist priests- took
up the habit."'
To maximize their profits, the British needed a war. Citing the
recalcitrant nature of the Qing court as an impediment to their
entrepreneurial ambitions, British merchants enlisted their powerful
navy to smash open the dynastic doors to the China market,
and with the sinking of three Chinese gunboats on November 3,
1839, the Opium War commenced. The war would not only alter
the fate of China and Britain forever, by ultimately forcing a transfer
of ownership in Hong Kong, they would also affect the fate of
the whole of Asia, as well as its relationship with the West.6
China certainly lost the war because its woefully inadequate sea
power was pitted against Britain's mighty navy. But in the end,
what won the war for Britain was that it really "wanted" China. It
had that fire in the belly, that intangible conviction that it alone
was right in all its thoughts and actions. For its part, the Qing
court made the mistake of seeing the British as uncouth barbarians
from an obscure, insignificant and inferior vassal state
occupying some small European island. Unfortunately for China,
its officials paid little attention to the might of these men from a
faraway place. The consequence of such Chinese arrogance was not
just a loss of their empire, but also the beginning of the end for an
imperial way of life that was eventually extinguished with the fall
of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of
China in 1912.
To the British, meanwhile, Hong Kong was more than a leisurely
Asian backwater in their colonial empire, and profit was not
the only item on the minds of its British masters. Hong Kong was
more a state of mind for Britain because it was the ~ritish whd first
thought of it as a living organism envisioned, created and developed
within the imperial ideal of western superiority and Chinese
savagery and decadence. The British believed they would raise the
level of civilization for the "sub-standard" Chinese. Indeed, they
reasoned that Hong Kong could become a kind of human laboratory
in a world governed by British men schooled in the Darwinian
theory of the survival of the fittest, the concepts of free
enterprise, western enlightenment, liberalism, democracy, rationality,
linear thinking and scientific inquiry. Hong Kong's success as a
colony within British imperial designs would legitimize the very
existence of colonial rule. The idea was simple: create a prosperous
colony that would provide not only large profits for ~ritishfirms,
but also jobs for Britain's unemployed. A well-governed colony
would then parcel out its benefits to the colonized Chinese so that
they could partake of the "magnificence" of colonial life. It would
have an immensely civilizing effect on the Chinese.
plz try to translate this graph. and post into here. we'll talk about mistake happen and correct them..
WHEN LI KA-SHING AND HIS FAMILY arrived in Hong Kong
in 1940 -just one small clan among 600,ooo refugees escaping
Guangdong province and Japan's reign of terror- the colony was
very much a place for celebrating royal jubilees, imperial accessions
and birthdays. Entertainment at Government House, on
Upper Albert Road, still centered around dances for a racially segregated,
political and social class of chauffeur- and rickshaw-driven
British colonials.
Next to India, Hong Kong was the second most prominent
jewel in Britain's star-studded imperial crown. Though it was
not officially a British colony until June 26, 1843, Hong Kong
was, for all practical purposes, already under the flag of the British
empire; the declaration of British sovereignty was made on January
26, 1841, as a result of a joint agreement between Charles
Eliot, Britain's superintendent of foreign trade, and Qishan, the
governor-general of Guangdong.
To British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston, however, to
appropriate Hong Kong without any other Chinese territories
was tantamount to seizing a mere "barren island with hardly a
house on it."2 Palmerston wanted more. And so, by replacing Eliot
with Henry Pottinger in 1841, Palmerston found someone who
would be prepared to use all military might to coerce the Chinese
into granting guarantees. Eventually, of course, the colony would
include more than just a thirty-two-square-mile island. By 1860,
Hong Kong would absorb the three and half square miles comprising
a peninsula called Kowloon, as well as Stonecutters Island.
And by 1898, the Qing government would lease, for a period of
ninety-nine years, a 355-square-mile area north of Hong Kong
Island known as the New Territories.3 In 1842, however, Palmerston
simply wanted to ensure that Hong Kong belonged to the
British, free of any obligations or encumbrances. Sure enough, in
the end, and to the dismay of the Qing court, Article 3 of the
Treaty of Nanjing would read: "The Island of Hong Kong to be
possessed in perpetuity by Victoria and her successors and ruled as
they shall see fit."*
Not that the British had ever previously doubted they could
do with Hong Kong as they saw fit. Hong Kong was the twin
product of western opium dealers and the British addictive predilection
for tea. As the British demand for tea increased in the
late seventeenth century, British traders were prompted to pay
for the aromatic concoction and such other Chinese products as
silk and rhubarb with silver. These silver transactions not only
caused an enormous deficit in favor of the Qing court in Bei- . .
jing, but also consternation in British merchant and diplomatic
circles. But the loss of British silver was short-lived. Discovering
through Portuguese merchants that some Chinese officials craved
"foreign mud," better known as opium, the British East India
Company, which had a trade monopoly in Asia and was therefore
allowed to trade in Guangzhou, just northwest of Hong
Kong, started to smuggle illegal opium into China. Of all the drug
dealers, the wealthiest were William Jardine and James Matheson,
who later formed Jardine Matheson & Co., which for a long time
was the largest commercial house in Hong Kong- that is, until
Li Ka-shing displaced it from its number-one spot with his own
company.
While illegal importation of drugs into China made for some
heady profits, the drug dealers knew that China, with its popula-
- -
tion of 400 million, was a potential monetary colossus if opium
could ever be made legal. Even if only a fraction of the Chinese
took one pipe, the profits could be dizzying and unfathomable. In
1838, with addiction widespread and growing, a Chinese official
sized up the rising popularity of opium this way: "Opium smoking
was [once] confined to the fops of wealthy families who took up
the habit as a form of conspicuous consumption. Later, people of
all social strata- from government officials and members of the
gentry, to craftsmakers, merchants, entertainers and servants and
even women, Buddhist monks and nuns and Daoist priests- took
up the habit."'
To maximize their profits, the British needed a war. Citing the
recalcitrant nature of the Qing court as an impediment to their
entrepreneurial ambitions, British merchants enlisted their powerful
navy to smash open the dynastic doors to the China market,
and with the sinking of three Chinese gunboats on November 3,
1839, the Opium War commenced. The war would not only alter
the fate of China and Britain forever, by ultimately forcing a transfer
of ownership in Hong Kong, they would also affect the fate of
the whole of Asia, as well as its relationship with the West.6
China certainly lost the war because its woefully inadequate sea
power was pitted against Britain's mighty navy. But in the end,
what won the war for Britain was that it really "wanted" China. It
had that fire in the belly, that intangible conviction that it alone
was right in all its thoughts and actions. For its part, the Qing
court made the mistake of seeing the British as uncouth barbarians
from an obscure, insignificant and inferior vassal state
occupying some small European island. Unfortunately for China,
its officials paid little attention to the might of these men from a
faraway place. The consequence of such Chinese arrogance was not
just a loss of their empire, but also the beginning of the end for an
imperial way of life that was eventually extinguished with the fall
of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of
China in 1912.
To the British, meanwhile, Hong Kong was more than a leisurely
Asian backwater in their colonial empire, and profit was not
the only item on the minds of its British masters. Hong Kong was
more a state of mind for Britain because it was the ~ritish whd first
thought of it as a living organism envisioned, created and developed
within the imperial ideal of western superiority and Chinese
savagery and decadence. The British believed they would raise the
level of civilization for the "sub-standard" Chinese. Indeed, they
reasoned that Hong Kong could become a kind of human laboratory
in a world governed by British men schooled in the Darwinian
theory of the survival of the fittest, the concepts of free
enterprise, western enlightenment, liberalism, democracy, rationality,
linear thinking and scientific inquiry. Hong Kong's success as a
colony within British imperial designs would legitimize the very
existence of colonial rule. The idea was simple: create a prosperous
colony that would provide not only large profits for ~ritishfirms,
but also jobs for Britain's unemployed. A well-governed colony
would then parcel out its benefits to the colonized Chinese so that
they could partake of the "magnificence" of colonial life. It would
have an immensely civilizing effect on the Chinese.
plz try to translate this graph. and post into here. we'll talk about mistake happen and correct them..