Global Connections and Local Realities: Hong Kong Prostitution, 1904–35

During Hong Kong’s early colonial period, a severe gender imbalance led to a rapid influx of prostitutes. By the early 20th century, the prostitution industry flourished. Shek Tong Tsui emerged as one of the most renowned red-light districts in the East, attracting prostitutes from Canton, Shanghai, Europe, and Japan. However, by the 1930s, growing feminist activism in Britain and the League of Nations’ global campaign against the “white slave trade” pressured Hong Kong to dismantle its legalized brothel system.

Existing scholarship predominantly examines prostitution through the lens of British colonial regulation, with much of the focus placed on the period before the 20th century. This study, however, shifts attention to the internal dynamics and external influences shaping Chinese prostitution between the 1900s and 1930s, drawing on extensive archival sources—including Po Leung Kuk records, tabloid newspapers, CO129 files, League of Nations reports, government documents, and memoirs.

Rooted in traditional brothel culture, Chinese society cultivated an internal space of romanticized, historically inspired brothels, with sensationalized tales and rigorous Established Customs. In contrast, the British colonial government incorporated Hong Kong’s prostitution industry into the broader regulatory framework of the British Empire, though it later came under increasing pressure from the global anti–white slavery movement. This interplay between internal expansion and external opposition created a paradoxical social landscape between 1900 and the 1930s—while the prostitution industry thrived domestically, international condemnation of the practice intensified. This tension ultimately culminated in 1935, when the Hong Kong government issued an official order to abolish the legalized prostitution system. By adopting a global, social, and spatial history approach, this research situates Hong Kong’s prostitution industry within broader transnational dynamics, offering new insights into the intersection of gender and colonial modernity.