The China History Podcast

After a bit of a break, we pick up after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. The 1950s were a stressful time for Hong Kong with Britain managing a diplomatic balancing act trying to be a good neighbor to the new PRC and to their closest ally, the USA. Thanks to the exodus of Chinese industrialists, from Shanghai mostly, Hong Kong will usher in a manufacturing boom that will transform the economy and the territory's place in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back with Part 7 of Laszlo's overview of the History of Hong Kong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this latest installment of the CHP History of Hong Kong overview, we look at the years from Governors Nathan to Peel. The modern age comes to Hong Kong along with plenty of fallout and spillover from the upheavals going on in China in the 1920s and '30s. This was a period when the great pillars of HKL Chinese society rose to fame and fortune: Shouson Chow, Robert Hotung, Kai Ho, Robert Kotewall, and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this fifth installment of our Hong Kong history overview, we look at the final couple of decades of the 19th century. Hong Kong's second generation is coming to the fore. They are a better educated and more sophisticated lot than those Chinese who came before them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We continue this overview series on the history of Hong Kong. This time we pick up right after the Treaty of Nanjing and look at the early efforts to get this colony up and running. The first couple decades of Crown Colony of Hong Kong weren't easy and many considered throwing in the towel early. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to Part 3 of Laszlo's overview of the History of Hong Kong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A brisk tour of Hong Kong’s transformation from quiet coastal outpost into the center of Canton trade. The story covers sea bans and coastal clearances that reshaped settlements. Follow the rise of merchant houses, the Canton System and its corrupt monopoly. Tensions over opium, diplomatic clashes, and the Convention of Chuenpi that provisionally ceded Hong Kong are dramatized.

A sweeping tour from Hong Kong’s deep geological origins to human settlements before 1842. Short takes on sea-level changes that carved the coast and archaeological finds that reveal prehistoric life. Stories of Yue peoples, Qin and Han-era shifts, and migrations that formed Hong Kong’s original clans. Notes on Tang–Song prosperity, Song court flight, and early European contacts before the Ming population boom.

In this episode, we introduce American Sidney Rittenberg, 李敦白，known by the title of his 1993 book as "The Man Who Stayed Behind." He arrived in China in his 20's at the end of WWII and witnessed the Chinese Revolution from a front-row seat. When the US pulled out of China after the war, Sidney Rittenberg stayed behind with his dreams of contributing to the building of a new China. He remained in his adoptive country for 35 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this longer than usual episode, we feature the three giants of the Jesuit China Mission of the 16th and 17th centuries. In addition to their work in introducing Catholicism to China, these three men, Matteo Ricci, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, and Ferdinand Verbiest made a collective contribution to the scholarship of China that has not been matched to this day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices