The Last Citadel

From Hong Kong, TIME Correspondent Wilson Fielder cabled:

His Excellency the Governor, scanning the sunny skies over Hong Kong, rested his eyes on a reassuring spectacle. A squadron of Spitfires screamed down in mock attack over the blue-green waters of Victoria Harbor. Their target: an aircraft carrier lying at anchor amid a great clutter of cargo junks, sampans and merchant ships from all parts of the world. "If they know we're strong," said Sir Alexander Grantham, referring to Hong Kong's 1,800,000 Chinese, "they're for us."

The maneuvering Spitfires were not the only show of strength which Great Britain had staged to impress China's Communists, whose armies had swept up to Hong Kong's borders. Across the harbor from Hong Kong island, on the flinty, weatherworn mountain of South China's Kowloon peninsula (which the British rule under a 99-year lease), men of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry and the King's Own Scottish Borderers were training to the peak of battle efficiency. Said a brisk regimental commander: "We know our enemy, and we are ready for him."

Delicacy & Common Sense. This did not mean that the British, who are determined at all cost to carry on trade with Red China, wanted to pick a fight with the Communists if they could possibly avoid it. "We don't want to provoke the Communists," said a political adviser to the Hong Kong government. "We are delicately balancing many factors and trying to exercise common sense."

In the 108 years since Britain wrested Hong Kong from the Chinese during the Opium War, the rocky island which the Chinese contemptuously called a "penguin's nest" has become a traders' and tourists' delight. Despite civil war on the mainland and the Nationalist blockade of China's coast, Hong Kong's trade this year may reach an alltime high. Daily, British and American ships slip into Hong Kong's harbor; nightly, huge motor junks, heavy with Western merchandise, weigh anchor for the ports of Red China.

Hong Kong's population is swollen by refugees from Red China, most of them rich men. Their dollars buy them anything in Hong Kong--Cadillacs, apartments (for which "key money" frequently runs as high as $2,000 U.S.) and even Hong Kong birth certificates ($1,000 and up), which would entitle them to British passports and visas to the U.S.

Sweethearts & Five Stars. Communist troops have been as anxious as the British to avoid incidents along the border between the British enclave and Red China, which runs along the main street of Sha-taokok village (see cut). But Communist influence daily makes itself felt in the colony. Through labor unions, the Communists already have a grip on Hong Kong's light & power, transportation, docks and its telephone system. A typical crisis arose last week when a young Chinese telephone worker claimed he had been slapped by a British supervisor. The worker's union threatened to strike unless the supervisor apologized and was fired. After five days' negotiations, the Briton apologized, was transferred to another post. "A most damnable time for something like this to happen," said a British labor adviser, "most damnable." Jittery Britons sighed with relief when the damnable incident passed without major trouble.

The Communists have even penetrated the colony's British-built schools. One day last week a group of dockyard laborers' children gave an evening entertainment to raise funds for the Communist armies. A girl teacher with pigtails and hornrimmed glasses exhorted her audience shrilly: ". . . A bright new future is ours . . . let's give cheers to Chairman Mao and the new People's Republic . . ." When the applause was over, a mixed glee club took over with propaganda-packed songs: Sending off Sweethearts to the Front, Chiang's Reign Is All a Mess, and The Glorious New Five-Starred National Flag.

Short Term & Long Term. Less emotional Chinese businessmen have learned to appreciate the advantages of Britain's stable rule in Hong Kong, but this does not keep even anti-Communist Chinese from resenting the traditional discrimination between the ruling class and the ruled. Said one Chinese businessman: "The government policy has mellowed a little recently. Now it may be too late."

Hong Kong holds on doggedly as one of the British Empire's (and all the West's) last citadels in Asia.

In the plush Hong Kong Hotel, British ladies & gentlemen in dinner jackets and evening gowns dance nightly to the strains of Strauss and U.S. jazz. But, said a colonial Colonel Blimp: "Before the war it was different. Now your No. 1 boy might be sitting next to you in the reserved section of one of Hong Kong's best theaters."

This week, six more British Navy ships were under way from Singapore to Hong Kong. They would give the colony its mightiest array of sea power since war's end. The British are resigned to the fact that Hong Kong, if they hold on to it, will be a British fortress for years--they only hope that it can be a trading post at the same time. So far, the Chinese Communists have respected British power--and Hong Kong's usefulness to them as a source of supplies from the outside world. But in his mansion up on "The Peak," overlooking the colony, Sir Alexander admitted that the Reds might change their attitude. "They're working on a short-term basis now," said His Excellency. "When short term becomes long term, no one but China's Communists know."

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