In the aftermath of the typhoon, all elements of the population cooperated to raise a relief fund. The money collected was used to repair wrecked boats, recover and bury the dead, feed and house the homeless and provide for the widows and orphans of storm victims. (The horror of this catastrophe was reenacted on September 2, 1937, when a typhoon and tidal wave engulfed a New Territories fishing village, drowning thousands.)
The dawn of the twentieth century marked the final collapse of the Celestial Empire. Dr. Sun Yat Sen, who had been banished from Hong Kong in 1896 for plotting against the Chinese government, steadily intensified his revolutionary activities until, in 1911, he led the revolution which overthrew the tottering monarchy and replaced it with the Republic of China. The unrest that accompanied this violent change-over caused more than 50,000 refugees to cross the Chinese border into British territory.
The transition from empire to republic did not end China’s internal turmoil, and for many years afterward its political disturbances were felt in Hong Kong. Piracy flourished in the waters around the colony; one band of corsairs set fire to a steamship, causing the deaths of 300 passengers. Brigands and warlords preyed on southern China, sometimes making forays across the colony’s border to pounce on villages in the New Territories. China was torn by political struggles during the 1920s, and these provoked strikes within the colony and Chinese boycotts of Hong Kong goods. All through this period, refugees poured across the border in unending lines.
The worldwide depression of the 1930s brought a sharp drop in colony trade, but the government created jobs for thousands with road-building and other public works.
Japan opened its war against China in 1937, and within a year Hong Kong was bursting with the addition of 600,000 refugees. Poverty and overcrowded housing offered ideal conditions for epidemics of smallpox and beriberi which killed 4,500 persons in 1938. Still, the total population climbed to 1,600,000. Government refugee camps housed about 5,000 people; another 27,000 regularly slept in the streets.
Emboldened by victories in China and an alliance with Nazi Germany, the Japanese militarists launched their “Greater Far Eastern Co-Prosperity Sphere” by attacking Hong Kong, Pearl Harbor and the Philippines on December 7-8, 1941. Crossing the Chinese border at Lo Wu in the New Territories, two Japanese divisions supported by overwhelming air power invaded and conquered the colony within three weeks. They proceeded without pause to loot its warehouses and strip its factories of machinery for shipment to Japan.