ABSTRACT
Up to 1949 and the establishment of the present Communist régime in China, the movement of population between Hong Kong and the neighbouring Kwangtung Province was rather free, and many of the urban Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong were only temporary residents and maintained their ties with their ancestral homes in China. Each new major disturbance in Southern China would bring with it a wave of immigrants; some joined the ranks of the Overseas Chinese mainly in the countries of south-east Asia, some would return home as soon as conditions had become more favourable, and only a few became permanent residents and British citizens. There grew up, however, a community of Hong-Kong-based Chinese merchant and banking families—some of them extremely prosperous, and they became the traditional spokesmen of the Hong Kong Chinese population.
