Then & now: Home and away
For mainland warlords in need of refuge, the crowds and comforts of our city have constituted a discreet retreat, writes Jason Wordie
Hong Kong has a long (and mostly honorable) record of providing refuge for fugitives from the mainland's intermittent political disorder. Sun Yat-sen, Kang Youwei and other national figures all sought sanctuary here. Less well remembered is that Hong Kong was - and to an extent, remains - a safe haven for the mainland's warlords and their modern-day equivalents.
If there had been no bolt-holes, the warlord era, which lasted in its main period of intensity from 1916 to 1928, and in a different form from then until 1949, would have been far shorter; few warlords could have survived and regrouped without the "back office support" provided by China's foreign settlements. Shanghai's concession areas were the destination of choice for those from central and west China, Tientsin (modern-day Tianjin) served those from the north and Dalian the northeast, while Hong Kong served those from the south and southwest.
Very few warlords made it through an entire career without needing to make a strategic withdrawal at some point, one that allowed them a dignified semi-retirement while planning their next political move. Separate political jurisdictions in close proximity to a place where public chaos was the usual state of affairs helped prolong the influence of warlords.
Hong Kong's attractions were obvious - opposing factions could meet on neutral ground and conduct negotiations among the safety of crowds. In mainland cities, by contrast, law enforcement and personal security - then as now - could be readily bought and sold. The political deals made between Yunnan and Sichuan warlords that first brought Sun to power, in 1912, were all quietly "fixed" in Hong Kong.
When, in 1929, the Guangxi Clique, as they became known to history, dramatically collapsed and their great plan to control most of central China evaporated, its leaders decamped by prearranged plan to Hong Kong. Other warlords, such as the powerful Guangdong leader Chen Jiongming, had moved here some years earlier.
Wang Jingwei, the mercurial political figure who established a puppet government in Nanking after the Japanese invasion of the country in 1937, remains an enduring historical hate figure due to his wartime collaboration. This ghastly man had shown early form; in 1929, after Chiang Kai-shek came to power, Wang set up and ran an "alternative" Nationalist government from his Happy Valley home.
