GIS Through The Years

Chapter 1: Some Fatal Pestilence, Some Doubtful War

Throughout the first century of its existence, Hong Kong persevered through flood, fire, typhoon and the occasional outburst of civic unrest without any kind of formalised liaison between the British colonial administration and the news media. So long as it responded to the demands of the powerful mercantile companies that dominated its commercial life, and refrained from interfering in their business, the government was left considerable freedom to pursue its mysterious affairs.

The bulk of the community, from the outset mainly immigrants from neighbouring provinces in the Mainland, was generally too driven by their own ambitions, or too preoccupied with the mere process of survival, to take much notice. They held to an attitude, acquired through long isolation in the southern periphery of the Chinese Empire, that the mountains were high and the emperor was far away.

Nevertheless they steadily acquired a taste for newspapers, which began to thrive and prosper in the closing years of the 19th century. In 1895 there were 19 Chinese-language newspapers in Hong Kong. Three years later the number had increased fourfold.

English newspapers established an even earlier foothold on the South China coast. The Canton Register, launched as a weekly in 1827, supplied whatever validated reports or unsubstantiated gossip might inform or titillate foreign traders trapped in the ghetto-like isolation of their factories' on the banks of the Pearl River.

Hong Kong's earliest English-language newspapers were of indifferent quality. A Government Gazette was first published in March 1841, just two months after the British flag was raised at Possession Point. Within a year other publications made their appearance - notably The Friend of China.

The latter made a determined stand against the evils of opium, the prohibition of which by Chinese authorities had precipitated the first of two infamous Opium Wars and led to the ceding of Hong Kong to Britain. Despite its euphemistic title, one of its two editors, American Baptist minister Lewis Shuck, proclaimed on May 26, 1842:

"We believe that Hong Kong is destined, by the uncontrollable force of circumstances, to become the base of naval and military operations, which sooner or later must revolutionise or subvert the existing state of things in China."

Another editorial in this typically unfriendly newspaper described the first governor, Sir Henry Pottinger, as 'a man who appears either to have been utterly devoid of the sense of the moral obligations imposed on him, his heart being perfectly seared to the impression of suffering humanity, or deliberately living in seclusion among a few adoring parasites whose limited intellects were devoted to pandering to the great man's vanity'.

With fewer axes to grind and little hard news to report in an embryonic colony of limited population, where everyone knew just about everyone else, rival editors resorted to plagiarism, parochial gossip, smear and innuendo.

Government legislated in 1844 to regulate the publication of newspapers, but generally failed to curb the rampant exercise of what one commentator described as 'the widest freedom', pointing out that 'there were no clauses to safeguard against libel, and the expression of opinion of press writers was couched in what would nowadays be counted criminally libellous language'.

The Friend of China later merged with the Hongkong Gazette, but was overtaken by the more popular China Mail, established in 1845. Its editor, Shortrede, saw himself as guardian of the public conscience and scourge of incompetent administrators. In his first year at the desk he alleged underhand dealings by Colonial Secretary William Caine in regard to the banishment of prostitutes.

Not all editors escaped retribution. An irate Irish officer, objecting to his description as an 'informer' in the columns of the Hongkong Register, attacked its editor, John Cairns, with fists and an umbrella. William Tarrant, a former Registrar of Deeds, bought out The Friend of China and used it as a weapon of revenge for his dismissal from government service - only to be charged with libel, sentenced to a year's imprisonment and fined 50 pounds. Shortrede himself fell foul of Ordinance No 2 of 1844 by failing to communicate to the authorities the removal of his printing establishment.

Yorrick Murrow, of the Daily Press, was sentenced to six months jail and fined 100 pounds for libelling Governor Sir John Bowring, whose conduct over the Arrow incident had led to the infamous destruction of the Summer Palace in Beijing. Murrow had accused Bowring of showing favour to Jardine Matheson & Co over the award of charter contracts.

Undaunted by his punishment, Murrow continued to contribute 'editorial effusions within prison walls', thanks to the fact that Bowring had asked for him to be treated with every indulgence and to give him every facility for carrying on his paper. As a result of Bowring's intercedence, Murrow was transferred to a far more comfortable debtor's prison, but this did nothing to curb his attacks on the deservedly unpopular governor.

Observing these insular bickerings from its hallowed fastness in London's Fleet Street, The Times commented that Hong Kong 'is always connected with some fatal pestilence, some doubtful war, or some discreditable internal squabble. So much so that the name of this noisy, bustling, quarrelsome, discontented and insalubrious little island may not inaptly be used for an euphonious synonym for a place not mentionable in polite society'.

The Duke of Newcastle declared, in the House of Lords on January 26, 1860, that 'in no part of Her Majesty's dominions is libel so rife and flagrant as in Hong Kong'. When Sir Hercules Robinson arrived as Bowring's replacement, entrusted with the task of restoring order in the colony, the Duke cautioned him 'against stirring up again all the mass of mud which appears to have encumbered society in Hong Kong'.

Sun Yat-sen, founder of China's Nationalist movement to depose a floundering and enfeebled Manchu Dynasty, had been educated in Hong Kong and initially chose it as his base of operations. This was to cause acute embarrassment to a colonial administration that had elected to remain seemingly indifferent to his revolutionary aspirations.

More alert to the potential damage to Britain's own dubiously-founded imperial footholds on the China coast, and as ever placing mercantile interests above all else, the local media were vehemently opposed to Sun's machinations. 'Sun must go' thundered the Hong Kong Telegraph, following the defeat of the Canton Merchant Volunteer Corps by Sun's Kuomintang in 1924. Alarmed by the KMT's collaboration with communist advisers, Hong Kong's Chinese media were equally critical.

Labour disputes became the principal threat to commercial complacency in the years between the two world wars. A prolonged seamen's strike, for example, almost brought the city to a standstill before it ended in 1926.

In 1941, at the close of its first century as a trading port on the South China coast, Hong Kong emerged largely unscathed from its occasional alarms and excursions, its strikes and boycotts. It had even escaped the brunt of the astonishing upheavals overtaking the neighbouring Mainland, where central authority had been eroded by the rising power of the warlords and a falling out between communist and KMT forces.

All this was to change dramatically on December 8 that year when, coinciding with their raid on Pearl Harbour, Japanese forces launched an invasion across the border, circumventing a system of defence based on the mistaken premise that any such onslaught must come by sea.


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