HONG KONG.
Hong Kong and the China Sea have come to stand not only for Europe in Asia, but for America in Asia, though of the latter, Manila is the port. The center of the world's forces changes, and it is a strange current of events that has made the China Sea, with its English port of Hong Kong, and the Luzon port of Manila, facing each other across the blue ocean way, the pivotal point of not only England in China, but of America in the East. The Anglo-Chinese community in Hong Kong represents the union of Europe and Asia in the family of nations, and America joins the world of the higher civilization at Manila, the scene of Dewey's victory.
The civilizing history of Hong Kong is largely associated with Sir John Bowring, whom a large part of the world recalls merely as a writer of popular hymns; as, "In the Cross of Christ I Glory."
The British free traders secured Hong Kong as a market for the East, and added it to the British Empire in the middle of the century. The Suez Canal increased the importance of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong, not being an integral part of Asia, became a place of refugees before its union with the British Empire. It lay in the route of the British possessions in Africa, India, and North America. Its Urasian destiny was seen in the alliance between Europe and Asia concluded at Canton (1634) between the East India Company and the Chinese Government. It then became the vantage ground of the Anglo-Saxon race. The early English Governors of Hong Kong made the port the cradle of liberty and free trade, and a civilizing influence in the East.
The island is some nine miles long and from two to six miles broad, with a population of more than one hundred and twenty thousand, most of whom are Chinese. It was ceded in perpetuity to the British by the treaty of Nankin in 1843, when its Government began to be administered by Colonial Governors, under whom it grew commercially.