Achievement in Hong Kong was made in 1958 by the production company Leander Films for the British government’s Central Office of Information. This latter organisation was founded in 1946 as a peacetime successor to the Ministry of Information, its purpose being to provide information campaigns for government departments, both at home and overseas. The footage was selected from library material shot by Julius Evans for his films ‘Hong Kong’ and ‘Miracle in Hong Kong’, which the COI purchased for £250 (‘Achievement in Hong Kong’). Joan Duff of Leander Films provided the script, and Jack Holmes spoke the commentary. However, these names are absent from the credits, which the COI advised ‘be kept to the minimum length’ (‘Achievement in Hong Kong’). The National Archives files on this film provide no indication of where the film was shown, other than to state that the US has a copy.

Hong Kong, located on the southern coast of China, became a dependent territory of the United Kingdom in 1842. Frank Welsh has described its position in the mid-1950s as being that of a ‘precariously stable boat’ (Welsh, 1993, 458). Following initial alarm and refortification of the territory in response to the coming to power of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party in China in 1949, the British had resumed their laissez-faireattitude towards Hong Kong of ‘benign neglect’ (Welsh, 1993, 453; see also Ngo, 1999, 119-40). Although the Communist Party considered Hong Kong to be a rightful part of China, it had transpired that they had no immediate plans to invade. Moreover, by the mid-1950s the British had few strategic interests in the Far East. Military presence in Hong Kong was therefore reduced.

There were further consequences of the Communist triumph in China, however. After Mao’s party assumed power there was a large influx of refugees into Hong Kong. In 1950 alone nearly three quarters of a million crossed the border. Many of the incomers lived in makeshift accommodation; Alan Smart estimates that by 1953 this sector of the population numbered 300,000 (Smart, 2006, 171). According to Frank Welsh the colonial authorities regarded these incomers as ‘squatters’ who ‘were there on sufferance’. He states that ‘little obligation to provide anything more than the essential minimum for them was accepted by the Hong Kong authorities’ (Welsh, 1993, 444).

There has been debate over when and why policy began to change. The ‘achievement’ referred to in this film’s title is the development of a public housing programme, centred on a series of high-rise buildings, soon to become characteristic of Hong Kong. The main prompt for this initiative is commonly regarded as being the fire in the refugee area of Shek Kep Mei on Christmas Day 1953, which left 53,000 people homeless. However, Alan Smart has argued that it was a series of fires, both before and after this event, that shaped the authorities’ housing policy (Smart, 2006). It has also been suggested that this rethink was a response to the potential for Chinese agitation and civil disturbance sparked by colonial neglect of the homeless (Welsh, 1993, 3).

By the end of 1956 some 23,300 tenement rooms had been built, largely financed by the colony’s own resources, but with some support from America and China. It was only when the United States provided a grant that the Colonial Office was ‘shamed into matching it’ (Welsh, 1993, 454). Previously, Governor Alexander Grantham’s pleas had fallen on deaf ears: ‘I requested financial assistance from H.M.G. I begged, I pleaded, I wrote despatches, I wrote letters, I spoke to officials, I spoke to ministers. But all in vain, we got nothing’ (Welsh, 1993, 455).