This article was written by Contributor for Northeast Asian Studies, Brian Tsz Ho Wong, and Guest Contributor, Curtis Sai Hung Chan. Curtis Chan Sai Hung is a Master of Philosophy student at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include the history of the Middle-period China (Song and Yuan Dynasties), modern China (late imperial period and Republican era) and Hong Kong history.
From the late 19th century onwards, the Hong Kong Chinese merchants were instrumental in shaping the social, political, and business landscapes of Hong Kong, South China, and the overseas Chinese communities around the world. Their commercial practices and business networks have long captivated both public and academic interest. Existing research, however, rarely incorporates firm-level data or merchants’ personal papers. The Hong Kong Chinese Merchants Collection 香港華商特藏 (Jyutping: hoeng1 gong2 waa4 soeng1 dak6 cong4) at the University of Hong Kong Libraries (HKUL), which encompasses ledgers and correspondence of more than 200 Chinese firms across sectors, is therefore indispensable for augmenting our understanding of Hong Kong Chinese merchants and reconstructing their kinship and business networks across Asia and the Pacific.
This post is divided into two parts. The first delineates the formation of the collection, its utilisation in current research, and the digitalisation project that commenced in 2022. The second turns to the digitalised materials in the collection and their potential applications.
The Hong Kong Chinese Merchants Collection
The collection is currently the largest repository at the Hung On To Memorial Library, HKUL. Its formation began in the 1980s under James Hayes and Peter Yeung Kwok-hung 楊國雄. Hayes was the retired Regional Secretary of the New Territories and a former president of the Royal Asiatic Society’s Hong Kong Branch. He catalogued and studied business documents belonging to Hong Kong Chinese merchants, procuring them from hawkers, second-hand bookshops, and small shops in the New Territories. A substantial part of the Hong Kong Chinese Merchants Collection was acquired by Peter Yeung, librarian of Hung On To Memorial Library, from the second-hand curio dealers in Lascar Row on behalf of the HKUL. The remaining materials in the collection were donated by Chinese enterprises following their closure (Hayes 1984; Fok 2019, 155-164).
Since the 1990s, a few Hong Kong scholars have incorporated the collection into their research. For instance, Stephanie Chung Po-yin 鍾寶賢 (2001, 2002, 2004, 2005) deployed the materials to study the transregional business network of Eu Yan Sang Ltd. 余仁生 in South China and Southeast Asia. Lee Pui Tak 李培德 (2015, 2016), moreover, examined the global remittance networks of businessman Ma Tsui Chiu 馬敘朝 and the bookkeeping practices in early 20th century Hong Kong drawn from his ledgers. The materials, however, could only be viewed by visiting the archives in person, which impeded wider utilisation of the collection, particularly among those based outside Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Chinese Merchants Collection reached a pivotal turning point in 2022. With the support of the HKU Teaching Development Grant and in collaboration with HKUL, Dr. Yeung Man Shun 楊文信 from the School of Chinese initiated a project to design a course entitled “Document Collation, Historical Studies, and Knowledge Sharing: Internship Experience for Undergraduate Researchers.”[1] Meanwhile, the HKUL and the School of Chinese began a large-scale digitisation project with the support of HKU Knowledge Exchange Funding. This project selected and digitised 40 per cent of the Hong Kong Chinese Merchants Collection’s holdings. The catalogue of the complete collection and the 1,759 digitised items are publicly accessible on the HKUL website.
Digitisation renders the collection more accessible and facilitates research into Hong Kong’s business history. For example, the search system on the HKUL website displays the cover and several pages of the sources in the collection, enabling users to quickly evaluate their content. Digitisation also serves to preserve the collection. Most of the materials in the collection are subject to varying degrees of damage, including insect infestation, mould growth, paper degradation, and structural separation. This is particularly evident in the ledger collection, as evidenced by Ma Tsui Chiu’s 馬敘朝 Income and Expenditure Draft Book and Cash Flow Book (1913), the Register of Cash Flow (1924), and his Miscellaneous Income and Expenditure Record (1933). The digitisation of the collection also mitigates further damage to the archives as researchers can consult high-resolution images of the collection online instead of frequently handling the original fragile documents.
The Merchants Collection and Research into Hong Kong’s Business History
Hong Kong was occupied by Japan from Christmas 1941 until August 1945. During the final phase of the Pacific War, the city experienced widespread hunger and hyperinflation. Its production capacity, moreover, was limited to a few sectors, such as shipping and warehousing, which were dominated by Japanese enterprises. The sea blockade also entailed that there was no substantial export trade with Japan’s home islands. This impression coupled with the lack of firm-level data, has left the study of business activities in occupied Hong Kong an uncharted field. Current literature often dismisses this period in a line or two as the “darkest era” of Hong Kong’s business history. The rest of this blog post uses the 1945 sales and tax records of the Chung Kwong Weaving Factory 中光布廠 (Jyutping: zung1 gwong1 bou3 cong2) as a case study to illustrate how the Hong Kong Chinese Merchants Collection’s digital repository could shed new light on the study of Japan’s war economy and Hong Kong’s business history.
Figure 1. The “Monthly Record of the Daily Sales of Fabric, Price, and Excise Tax,” in the Hong Kong Chinese Merchants Collection.
The collection includes a 13-page document entitled “Monthly Record of the Daily Sales of Fabric, Price, and Excise Tax.” This record was written in Chinese and employed Suzhou numerals to represent the figures (Fig. 1). Excise tax, also known as commodity tax (buppinzei 物品税), was one of the new taxes levied by the Japanese government during WWII to suppress domestic consumption. Initially introduced in Japan’s home islands in March 1938, the tax applied to goods such as cars, cameras, cosmetics, and fans. In 1941, it was extended to many other goods, including paper, light bulbs, and sewing machines. However, tax rates varied across Japan. For instance, the commodity tax on cotton and textile products stood at 10 per cent between 1938 and 1940. This was then increased to 20 per cent between 1941 and 1942, before rising again to 30 per cent in 1943 and 60 per cent in 1944 (Sekino 2021, 116-119). On 1 January 1945, the Japanese occupation authorities introduced a commodity tax in Hong Kong. The tax was levied at a rate of 10 per cent on the retail price of all goods except food, books, fertiliser, and medical equipment (Dōmei tsūshinsha 1945, 90). Table 1 shows the sales of cotton fabric and the commodity tax levied on sales at the Chung Kwong Weaving Factory between January and July 1945. Since the sales likely comprised cotton fabrics of different qualities and retail prices, I also calculated the retail price per yard of cotton fabric. Table 1 reveals that the sales were depressed between January and May but significantly increased in the following two months. While the reasons for this rise remain unclear, the records suggest that domestic consumption in Hong Kong was effectively suppressed by the introduction of a commodity tax during the first four months, at least. The sales and tax records of the Chung Kwong Weaving Factory therefore provide a rare example of the impact of Japan’s wartime taxation on the economy and domestic consumption in its occupied territories.
| Month | Sales | Commodity Tax | Retail Price/Yard |
| Jan-45 | 76744 | 7674 | 235 |
| Feb-45 | 43406 | 4341 | 208 |
| Mar-45 | 41411 | 4009 | 209 |
| Apr-45 | 22352 | 2235 | 160 |
| May-45 | 32998 | 3096 | 160 |
| Jun-45 | 51881 | 5076 | 280 |
| Jul-45 | 136552 | 13664 | 358 |
Table 1: The sales and tax records of the Chung Kwong Weaving Factory (1945.1–1945.7).
The example of the Chung Kwong Weaving Factory underscores the potential application of miscellaneous digital repositories within the Hong Kong Chinese Merchants Collection for researching economic and business history in Hong Kong and beyond. We look forward to the digital collection being augmented and deployed more extensively in academia.
Footnotes
[1] Dr. Yeung and his pilot research team presented their findings at the International Symposium ‘Engaging the past, with the future, for the future: Emerging Roles of East Asian Libraries’ in 2022. For details, see Man Shun Yeung, Jacky Li, Chak Hei Ng, Sai Hung Chan, Wai Chung Cheung, Kwan Lam Huang, and Ho Yan Ngai, “Collecting Books for Public Use: HKU Libraries’ Projects to Collate and Share the Chinese Special Collections 藏以致用——香港大學圖書館中文特藏之整理與共享計劃,” November 11, 2022, https://youtu.be/qyu5OdgcZ_o?si=5CQ0-wNRksi4RVUa.
References
Stephanie Po-yin Chung, “Doing Business in Southeast Asia and Southern China: Booms and Busts of the Eu Yan Sang Business Conglomerates, 1876-1941,” in Rethinking Chinese Transnational Enterprises: Cultural Affinity and Business Strategies, eds. Leo Douw et al. (Richmond: IIAS/Curzon, 2001), 159-183.
Stephanie Po-Yin, “Surviving Economic Crises in Southeast Asia and Southern China: The History of Eu Yan Sang Business Conglomerates in Penang, Singapore and Hong Kong.” Modern Asian Studies 36, No.3 (2002): 579-617.
Stephanie Po-yin Chung, Migration and Enterprises: Three Generations of the Eu Tong Sen Family in Southern China and Southeast Asia, 1822-1941 (Hong Kong: Centre for China Urban and Regional Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, 2004).
Stephanie Po-yin Chung. “The Transformation of an Overseas Chinese Family—Three Generations of the Eu Tong Sen Family, 1822–1941.” Modern Asian Studies 39, No.3 (2005): 599-630.
Dōmei tsūshinsha 同盟通信社. 1945. Dōmei jiji geppō 同盟時事月報 9, no. 1.
Kai Cheong Fok 霍啟昌, Xianggang yu jindai Zhongguo: Huo Qichang Xianggang shilun 香港與近代中國：霍啟昌香港史論 (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (Hong Kong), 2019).
James Hayes, “Collecting Business Papers of Chinese Enterprises in Hong Kong,” in Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies, eds. Alan Birch et al. (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1984), 47-55.
Pui Tak Lee, “Linking Global and Local Networks of Credit and Remittances: Ma Tsui Chiu’s Financial Operations in Hong Kong, 1900s–1950s,” in Commodities, Ports and Asian Maritime Trade since 1750, eds. Ulbe Bosma et al. (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 165–178.
Pui Tak Lee, “Yimin, huikuan, touzi — Xianggang huashang Ma Xuchao de shangye wangluo (1900 niandai-1940 niandai) 移民、匯款、投資—香港華商馬敘朝的商業網絡（1900年代-1940年代）,” In Li lai li wang: Jinrong jiazu de kaituo yu chuangxin 利來利往：金融家族的開拓與創新, eds. Victor Wan-tai Zheng 鄭宏泰 et al. (Hong Kong: Chung Hwa Book Company (Hong Kong), 2016).
Mitsuo Sekino 関野満夫, Nihon no sensō zaisei – Nichi Chū sensō, Ajia Taiheiyō sensō no zaisei bunseki 日本の戦争財政―日中戦争・アジア太平洋戦争の財政分析 (Tōkyō: Chūō daigaku shuppanbu, 2021).
