Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The colony's population has always fluctuated according to events beyond its borders. In
1911, when the Chinese revolution overthrew the Manchus, refugees flocked to the safety of
Hong Kong. Many arrived with nothing but the shirts on their backs, but they brought their
philosophy of working hard and seizing opportunity. Hundreds of thousands more arrived in
the 1930s when Japan invaded China. By the eve of World War II, the population was more
than one and a half million.
A few hours after Japan's attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in December
1941, a dozen Japanese battalions began an assault on Hong Kong; Hong Kong's minimal
air force was destroyed on the airfield at Kai Tak within five minutes. Abandoning the New
Territories and Kowloon, the defenders retreated to Hong Kong island, hoping for relief
which never came. They finally surrendered on Christmas Day in 1941. Survivors recall
three and a half years of hunger and hardship under the occupation forces, who deported
many Hong Kong Chinese to the mainland.
A number of Hong Kong's monuments were damaged: St John's Cathedral became a
military club, the old governor's lodge on the Peak was burned down, and the commandant
of the occupation forces rebuilt the colonial governor's mansion in Japanese style. At the
end of World War II, Hong Kong's population was down to half a million, there was no in-
dustry, no fishing fleet, and few houses and public services remaining.
Post-war Hong Kong
China's civil war sent distressing echoes to Hong Kong. While the Chinese Communist
armies drove towards the south, the flow of refugees into Hong Kong gathered force, and by
the time the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949, the total population of
Hong Kong had grown to more than two million people. The fall of Shanghai in 1949
brought another flood of refugees, among them many wealthy people and skilled artisans,
including the Shanghai industrialists who became the founders of Hong Kong's textile in-
dustry. Housing was now in desperately short supply. The problem became an outright dis-
aster on Christmas Day in 1953. An uncontrollable fire devoured a whole city of squatters'
shacks in Kowloon; 50,000 refugees were deprived of shelter.
