ABSTRACT
The emergence of a Hong Kong identity as distinct from that of a Chinese identity took a long time. In the first century of British rule, from its foundation as a Crown Colony in 1843 until the Second World War in the middle of the twentieth century, Hong Kong had two distinct communities without a common or distinct identity.1 Its Chinese residents maintained only limited contacts with the non-Chinese community and only a small number of the local Chinese elite involved themselves with the colonial government which was dominated by expatriate Britons. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the ethnic Chinese shared much more in common with their fellow countrymen living in China proper than with their non-Chinese fellow citizens of Hong Kong. They were either sojourners or economic migrants or refugees, and were not noticeably different from other Chinese living elsewhere in China.2 Except for a small group who had taken root locally, most intended to return to their home in China for their retirement or after making sufficient money in this British imperial outpost for a more comfortable life back home. The Chinese community of Hong Kong did not have an identity of its own before the Second World War, and the nonChinese community was essentially an expatriate one. This situation only began to change fundamentally after 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power.
