530 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 reading. The volume has many selections on these topics that will be useful in the study ofMao's peasant campaigns and China's peasant nationalism. In spite of the recent damning indictment ofMao by his personal physician, it is still a source of great literary satisfaction and pyschocultural challenge to read these earlier works ofMao, not to mention that they are historically important: they are crucial to full understanding ofMao, Maoism, and the Chinese revolution. C. L. Chiou University of Queensland, Australia C. L. Chiou is a reader in politics at the University ofQueensland. He has recently published a book, Democratizing Oriental Despotism. Ronald Skeldon, editor. Emigrationfrom Hong Kong: Tendencies and Impacts . Sha Tin, N.T., Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1995. xiv, 304 pp. Paperback $23.00, isbn 962-201-684-7. Hong Kong is, literally and figuratively, at a crossroad. In 1841, Britain assumed control over a portion of Chinese territory, the island ofHong Kong. By degrees, the British possession was expanded to include first the tip of the Kowloon peninsula and then the rural backdrop, called the New Territories, which was to be leased for a term of ninety-nine years. It was the occasion of the expiration of the lease that prompted China to seek the return not merely of the leased territories, but also those that were ceded "in perpetuity." June 30, 1997, marks the end of British rule and the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignly. Hong Kong has changed dramatically since Britain first assumed control over it. The China from which it was detached, the colonial power ofthe British, and the global system ofwhich they are part, have all evolved in extraordinary ways over the past century and a half. Hong Kong's history did not begin in 1841, but the British colony that was established there, however, did change the historical role that the Hong Kong region could play in the 150 years leading up to 1997. The British used Hong Kong as an important station in their China trade. For the first one hundred years after its establishment it was just one part of a y niversi y Droa¿er SyStem that included other foreign-dominated settlements in China; these were established through a series oftreaties concluded with the government of the declining Qing dynasty. These treaties were considered to be "unequal" by the Chinese governments that followed the collapse ofthe Qing, and they were revoked ofHawai'i Press Reviews 531 in 1943—but British Hong Kong did not revert to China. Even after the establishment ofthe People's Republic ofChina, Hong Kong remained a British colony. By 1949. however, British domination ofworld trade had ebbed. By the early 1950s, the entrepôt trade, which had been the raison d'être for the colony at Hong Kong, ceased when Hong Kong "lost" its China hinterland. Instead, it developed a vibrant industrial economy and became the first "NIC" (Newly Industrialized Country), experiencing consistently high rates ofeconomic growth from the mid1950s . China's "open door" policy ofthe late 1970s allowed Hong Kong's economic growth to proceed even faster, and the entrepôt trade was reborn, even as the Chinese government's plan to resume its sovereignty over Hong Kong and yet maintain Hong Kong's distinctiveness gave rise to some uncertainty. The population of Hong Kong grew steadily in the one hundred years up to the Japanese occupation. Hong Kong was linked to the global economy by trading patterns dominated by the British, at least through 1914. In Southeast Asia, the Americas, and even Africa, Oceania, and Australasia, the expansion ofthe capitalist system created a worldwide demand for unskilled labor. China met that demand in part, and Hong Kong was the major point from which Chinese labor fanned out to build the railways ofNorth America, dig the Panama canal, and work in the tin mines ofMalaya and the plantations ofCuba. In the post-World War II period, the population of Hong Kong grew rapidly, as a consequence ofmigration from a China deeply affected by civil war and revolution. Hong Kong industrialized and prospered, and established distinct new links with the...
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Mar 3, 2010
Man Sing Wong + 3
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