The Uncertain Rise of Hong Kong

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article by @Bonniecanuck here

 

[Thande]

Discuss this article by @Bonniecanuck here

Excellent idea for an article.

It does feel like one reason we don't see many what-ifs involving Hong Kong as the focus is that, as the article goes into, OTL is probably the outlier for maximal significance and development of Hong Kong given it was chosen as the British foothold, developed while China was in crisis etc. In a TL where Britain got Zhoushan instead, it would be fairly awkward for an author to organically bring up that this island in the Pearl River Delta near Canton/Guangzhou is an unknown backwater without it seeming forced. It'd be like a US politics TL trying to explain that Chester A. Arthur was never president and remained an obscure local figure in New York; well why are you bringing him up then?

Only vaguely related question: I've noticed Youtube auto-subtitles often mix up Cantonese with Vietnamese, and I've heard anecdotally that the two sound similar to speakers of them, yet linguistically they're supposed to be from completely different language families; how did that happen? Is it just like how Portuguese has an incongruous Slavic 'sound' to it, or is it genuinely caused by exchange due to them being geographically close and in contact?

 

[Coiler]

Great article, especially since my stepmother is from Hong Kong.

 

[Jared]

Only vaguely related question: I've noticed Youtube auto-subtitles often mix up Cantonese with Vietnamese, and I've heard anecdotally that the two sound similar to speakers of them, yet linguistically they're supposed to be from completely different language families; how did that happen? Is it just like how Portuguese has an incongruous Slavic 'sound' to it, or is it genuinely caused by exchange due to them being geographically close and in contact?

While from a different language family to Sino-Tibetan, Vietnamese forms part of a Sprachbund across most of mainland Southeast Asia and into neighbouring parts of southern China (including Cantonese), which has influenced features of both languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_Southeast_Asia_linguistic_area

 

[Thande]

While from a different language family to Sino-Tibetan, Vietnamese forms part of a Sprachbund across most of mainland Southeast Asia and into neighbouring parts of southern China (including Cantonese), which has influenced features of both languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_Southeast_Asia_linguistic_area

Very interesting, thanks. I think I misunderstood the term Sprachbund when I've seen it before, I was interpreting it as more 'related semi-intelligble languages' like the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe, rather than 'not necessarily related languages influenced by the same geographic area'.

 

[Jared]

Very interesting, thanks. I think I misunderstood the term Sprachbund when I've seen it before, I was interpreting it as more 'related semi-intelligble languages' like the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe, rather than 'not necessarily related languages influenced by the same geographic area'.

There's quite a few Sprachbunds around the place, and they very much can involve unrelated languages - that's more or less the point. The earliest studied one was in the Balkan Peninsula, where Romanian shares many features with South Slavic languages despite being unrelated (well, not more closely related than Proto-Indo-European). Mainland Indigenous Australian languages form a Sprachbund too, probably from being in northern Australia when (for some reason or other) the Pama-Nyungan languages spread from northern Australia across the rest of the continent (though not Tasmania).

 

[Charles EP M.]

It feels in this almost like OTL Hong Kong is a AH story, someone brainstorming an elaborate way they can make the place into an important global city. You put it all out like this and it seems really unrealistic!

 

[Time Enough]

@Bonniecanuck Great article that made me consider things about Hong Kong that I hadn’t pondered before.

The most I’ve ever pondered to do with Hong Kong was the Dutch taking Macau through reasons and therefore Hong Kong never exists and Southern China gains a small pocket of Dutch culture etc.

But other than that most of my ponderings on Hong Kong have been more recent and limited in scope which kind of shows why this article should exist in the first place.

 

[Hendryk]

It seems hard to imagine a Hong Kong without skyscrapers, but the cruel reality is that the biggest reason Hong Kong enjoyed this degree of development was because China couldn’t until relatively recently. When events closed the border and drove foreign business out of China, Hong Kong became the next best place to make your home.

Quite. I haven't quite decided yet how Hong Kong will turn out by the time WIAF is wrapped up in the post-WW2 years, but it is likely to be a much less vibrant place than OTL without the influx of people and capital that followed the mainland's fall to the Communists.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

An absolutely excellent article, @Bonniecanuck. Thanks very much for the read.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

Thanks for the kind words everyone! A lot of the thoughts that I shared here have been on my mind for the last year as a result of discussion with members of another AH community on Discord, so it was good to put them to page. There was a lot I wanted to discuss like activist movements and political organisations, but I figured what I already had was more than enough. Maybe if I revisit Hong Kong in a future article I'll address those, but I think that's better left to the forum.

The most I’ve ever pondered to do with Hong Kong was the Dutch taking Macau through reasons and therefore Hong Kong never exists and Southern China gains a small pocket of Dutch culture etc.

But other than that most of my ponderings on Hong Kong have been more recent and limited in scope which kind of shows why this article should exist in the first place.

I really appreciate that you think so. I know my mention of Macau was fairly offhand, but given the Portuguese presence was there for two centuries by the time of the First Opium War, just the possibilities opened by the Dutch invasion alone are still plenty. When I was writing one such scenario I imagined was for a Dutch Macau to fall into British hands during the Napoleonic Wars as part of Stamford Raffles's scheme to seize the Dutch East Indies, thereby putting a British presence in the Pearl River Delta nearly three decades in advance.

 

[Geordie]

Fascinating article. Just a snapshot of some of the little What Ifs that could be caused in one corner of the world. Well, I say little, but they could have large consequences, as discussed.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Discuss this article by @Bonniecanuck here

I just read it. Great article, @Bonniecanuck. BTW, is it true that most Hong Kongers are descended from post-World War II Han Chinese refugees?

 

[Max Sinister]

Yeah, what helped with HK's rise?

- It's a good place for a harbor - but it needs a government that doesn't hinder trade
- If mainland China becomes Communist or a different kind of hellhole, they can rely on a steady stream of immigrants
- And some other power has to guarantee its status.

So, definitely not inevitable. But if you want a HK similar to OTL, it's hard to imagine a different development. You might replace the Empire by the US; Japan may not allow as much trade, and the Dutch may not be able to prevent a Chinese conquest.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

I just read it. Great article, @Bonniecanuck. BTW, is it true that most Hong Kongers are descended from post-World War II Han Chinese refugees?

I'd say it's a majority, but there are complications from the status of Hong Kong residents from before the Civil War. Aside from the established Hoklo and Teochew communities and the Punti, Hakka, and Tanka villages, there was a considerable Cantonese merchant population that commuted back and forth between their hometowns in the Mainland and Hong Kong, which gave them some roots with which to plant their new homes after the 1930s and 40s. I'm not sure how this affected bookkeeping on residency, but the threefold population boom between 1945 and 1961 is a pretty telling indicator of emigre arrivals, although that number also includes prior residents who returned after voluntarily fleeing or being forcibly deported by the Japanese during the occupation.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

Also, I found excerpts of a stage adaptation of the book The Second Year of Jianfeng which I mentioned in the article. Each video is of one chapter each, with viewpoint characters being ROC Army General Sun Liren, democratic philosopher Zhang Dongsun, and the film-obsessed youth from the final chapter I mentioned.