How Far is Swire from Today's Hong Kong?

Against the backdrop of the Hong Kong National Security Law, the emigration wave, and the withdrawal of foreign capital, Swire still maintains its position: Cathay Pacific, Swire Properties, and Swire Coca-Cola remain important economic pillars locally. However, is Swire's connection with Hong Kong society as deep as it was in the past?

In his book, Bickers repeatedly emphasizes how Swire established a "corporate community" between the 19th and 20th centuries: employee benefits, education subsidies, medical resources, even internal publications and retirement systems, all served as the social foundation for its commercial success. These systems were a rare experiment in "modern welfare capitalism" in the Chinese society of the time.

But in today's Hong Kong, facing resource monopolies and the shrinking middle class, such systems have long lost their luster. Swire is no longer the "most desirable employer," nor is it capable of engaging in public interest debates. It is no longer a capital entity capable of shaping Hong Kong's values, but merely a multinational corporation located in Hong Kong.

Can We Still Create Our Own Swire?

Perhaps the real issue lies not with Swire itself, but with us. As seen in the book, Swire's success did not fall from the sky; from comprador cooperation to market exploration, from shipping adventures to institutional innovation, its history is full of risks and transformations. Its success lies in knowing how to find order in instability.

Today's Hong Kong, despite its solid capital and sound institutions, lacks the dynamism of daring to experiment, connecting communities, and building trust from scratch. It's not that we can't start from scratch, but that we lack the gaps that allow for creation, a culture that understands risk, and institutions that support communities.

Swire's history teaches us: enterprises are not accumulations of capital, but crystallizations of culture, strategy, and relational networks. For Hong Kong to emerge from its current predicament, it cannot rely solely on innovation, but must relearn how to connect—not just the connection of technology and capital, but also the connection of history and the future.

Conclusion: Whose City, Whose History?

After reading "The Swire Group and Modern China," we not only understand the century-long history of a company, but also see how a city constructs itself between transnational capital, colonial governance, and local communities. Swire is not just a symbol of "outsiders"; it has long permeated our language, maps, and lives. But it also reminds us: Hong Kong's subjectivity should not just be about who chooses to "stay" or "withdraw," but about how we decide to narrate, understand, and continue—the never-ending story between this city and its merchant immigrants.

Cathay, Swire, and Our Future: Can Hong Kong Still Create New Tycoons?

Was 19th-century Hong Kong really set up for China, or for the foreign firms?

Looking back at Hong Kong's economic skeleton and urban planning today, one name is almost omnipresent—Swire. From Taikoo Shing, Pacific Place to Taikoo Station, from Cathay Pacific, Swire Properties to Taikoo Sugar Refinery and Dockyard, how did this small trading house from Liverpool, UK, build a vast corporate empire in a colony and embed itself into the city's developmental imagination? Robert Bickers' "The Swire Group and Modern China" is precisely a corporate biography that responds to this historical question, as well as a modern history of the entanglement of city, capital, and identity.

But is Swire just an outsider? Does it really have no intersection with us, the local Hong Kong people?

The British Came, and So Did the Compradors: Who Was Whose Middleman?

What is most touching in the book is not just Swire's identity as a colonial enterprise, but how it "learned" to do business in China. When it entered the Chinese market in 1866, Swire was a complete outsider. Its contemporaries, such as Jardine Matheson, Hutchison Whampoa, and Dent & Co., already had experience in Chinese trade, but Swire had to start from scratch, gradually opening trade routes in South China and the Yangtze River basin through cooperation with Chinese compradors.

The book meticulously depicts how Swire transformed from a clueless foreign merchant into a business expert, with the key figures being those middlemen between two worlds—the compradors. They were familiar with China's local political and economic culture and understood the operational logic of foreign firms, serving as the real bridge between Swire and Chinese society. These compradors were not just Swire's translators or brokers, but the core strategic resource that allowed the Swire Group to stand firm during the turbulent late Qing and early Republic periods.

But was the compradors' status that of colonial collaborators? Or were they also part of the early immigrant merchant figures in Hong Kong? Bickers does not directly answer this question, but leaves readers with enough material to ponder the ambiguous role of compradors in the imperial order.

Why Did Swire Choose Hong Kong?

In the 1880s, Swire shifted its corporate focus from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Behind this decision was not just a strategic choice, but also a judgment on China's political situation. On the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, the risks in the mainland market increased dramatically, and the stability of the Hong Kong British government in legal, financial, and trade infrastructure became the core advantage attracting foreign capital. Swire's development trajectory is not just a business decision, but also reflects how Hong Kong transformed from a peripheral port in South China into a node of East Asian capital flows.

But did Swire's choice of Hong Kong also create the singularity of Hong Kong's urban layout? From dockyards to real estate, from logistics to aviation, Swire deeply participated in the reshaping of urban space, becoming one of the very few "hereditary capitals" in Hong Kong that could span the colonial era and continue to this day. In other words, the "Taikoo Station" we see today is not just a transportation node, but also a symbol of capital landscape.

Between Swire and Hong Kong Merchants: Cooperation or Monopoly?

The book mentions that although Swire is of British capital background, it did not completely reject cooperation with Chinese merchants. In the early days, local capital or manpower participated in the sugar refinery and dockyard, and when Cathay Pacific was first established, Hong Kong merchants like Lee Shau Kee also took shares. However, as the company became institutionalized and internationalized, these cooperative relationships were gradually replaced by British-style management systems such as "corporate governance" and "shareholder responsibility."

Does this reflect the fault lines in Hong Kong's capitalist society? Under the colonial order, local Chinese merchants often had to rely on foreign capital to operate in order to have a modern corporate structure. And once they entered the institutionalization and internationalization phase, local merchants were easily excluded. Swire is not an exception, but a template of colonial capitalism.

Therefore, although there have been countless successful immigrant merchants in Hong Kong's history who started from scratch, whether they could enter a hereditary capital system like Swire's has always been questionable. Swire succeeded, but it also shaped an almost closed economic wall.