picturing hong kong - HKU Libraries

often in solidarity with compatriots on the mainland. In
1905 Hong Kong took part in a widespread boycott of
American goods. American treatment of Chinese in the
United States had been steadily worsening. Chinese
emigrants sent home a stream of tales of the mistreatment
and even massacre of Chinese in America. The
U.S. Exclusion Acts of 1882—94 prohibited Chinese
workers from entering the United States, and after
Hawaii and the Philippines fell under American control
in 1898 and 1900 respectively, these prohibitions
extended to them. Aroused by the accumulation of outrages,
the Qing government came under considerable
pressure not to renew the treaty limiting the number of
Chinese immigrants, and finally declined to do so. In
order to back the government's stand with the force of
popular sentiment, merchants and others called a total
boycott of American goods. Workers and merchants in
Hong Kong joined their fellows in half a dozen treaty
ports in refusing to deal with American interests. All
kinds of people unexpectedly found themselves the
object of the boycott. A Chinese dentist in Hong Kong,
for instance, lost many patients because of his American
education. Yet Chinese solidarity was incomplete. Some
declined to participate because they were reluctant to
jeopardize their business interests for the sake of patriotism.
But the boycott continued for several months and
served notice that, regardless of their governments
weakness, Chinese resented American behavior. Like
the anti-French strikes of 1884, it underscored the fact
that the special position of Hong Kong residents as
colonial subjects placed them in the front line of the
development of Chinese nationalism.
Yet, on the mainland, patriotic Chinese reformers
struggling to resist foreign pressure were at best equivocal
about nationalist activities in Hong Kong. In a startling
foretaste of Beijing's ambivalence in the 19905
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HONG KONG TO I 9 I O
about the anti-Japanese activism of Chinese from Hong
Kong and Taiwan over the disputed Diaoyu Islands, they
feared the spread of antiforeign activism to the mainland
via Canton that, should it get out of control, might turn
against the rulers of China themselves. Moreover, having
secured a measure of British cooperation in their quest
to revitalize China, the Qing reformers were highly
reluctant to risk letting nationalist fervor in Hong Kong
provoke British hostility, for fear that China could find
itself once more internationally isolated.
Hong Kong as a Refuge for Reformers and
Revolutionaries
The network of connections between Hong Kong and
Canton ensured that Hong Kong occupied a special
position in the unfolding events of late-nineteenth-century
Chinese history. Of special significance was the fact
that a number of important Chinese intellectuals and
statesmen, including some future leaders, had their first
direct encounter with Western society in the colony. In
Hong Kong, for instance, the future Taiping rebel leader
Hong Ren'gan (1822—1864) was baptized into the
Christian faith. As a relative of the original Taiping
leader, Hong Xiuquan, Hong had been captured by
Qing officials, but he managed to escape and flee to
Hong Kong in 1853.There he studied Christian doctrine
with a missionary to whom he recounted some of
the details of Taiping ideology, which had a strong
Christian element drawn from Hong Xiuquan's visions
of God and Jesus. Hong Ren'gan's account was a principal
source of Western knowledge of theTaipings.
Over the next few years Hong went back and forth
between China and Hong Kong. In the colony he
worked for some time as a catechist and preacher for
the London Missionary Society, where employers and
Chinese colleagues alike formed a high opinion of his