A Communist grab for Hong Kong would almost inevitably involve Red China in a major war. Great Britain has shown no disposition to surrender this profitable possession without a fight, and although the United States has made no specific pledge to defend the colony, it is not likely to let the Chinese Communists snatch it from her principal ally.
Red China’s instinctive belligerence may be tempered by the fate of its first outright aggression, which did not keep the United Nations out of Korea, but did a great deal to keep Red China out of the United Nations for years thereafter.
Aided in part by these considerations, Hong Kong has sat since 1949 on the doorstep of a country dedicated to its destruction. In the late 1940s, it was felt that a substantial cut in the colony’s trade with China would ruin the British enclave by purely peaceful methods. Most of the trade has been lost since then, but Hong Kong has perversely grown more prosperous than ever before.
The overriding reason why Hong Kong continues to thrive in the shadow of its hostile neighbor is economic. Ideologies apart, they need each other.
Despite the drop in their total trade, Hong Kong remains Red China’s chief non-Communist trading partner. In recent years it has become a lop-sided arrangement, with the Chinese Communists shipping ten times more goods to the colony than they purchase from her. Yet the imbalance appears to suit the purposes of both sides.
Hong Kong, which cannot produce enough food to sustain its population for more than a few months of the year, has imported an average of $200,000,000 worth of goods from Red China in each of the last three years, and food represents more than a third of the total. In the same years, Red China imported about $20,000,000 annually from the colony. Thus the Reds earned a favorable trade balance of $180,000,000 a year, giving them the foreign exchange they need as critically as Hong Kong needs food.
It may be wondered why the Chinese Communists, with three successive crop failures, are willing to export any of their food. But they must earn foreign exchange to pay for grain, flour, powdered milk and sugar to save themselves from starvation, and their food purchases in the world market during 1960 and 1961 ran up a bill of $360,000,000.