Made in Hong Kong: The Reinvention and Heritage of Industrial Buildings
The Industrial Thread from Shek Kip Mei to Kwun Tong In 1954, a devastating fire in the Shek Kip Mei squatter settlement forced the colonial government to launch an era of multi-story factory building construction. These blocky, sturdy…
Hong Kong Brand vs. Made in Hong Kong: Redefining the Boundaries of Origin
Look at the bottom of a carton of Vitasoy, and you’ll spot a single character printed there: 港, 上, or 光. That character has nothing to do with flavor — it tells you where the product was made: Tuen Mun in Hong Kong, Songjiang in Shanghai, or…
Made in Hong Kong: The Transformation Narrative of Industrial Heritage
Few people remember that the story of Hong Kong’s industry actually begins with an embargo. In 1950, the United Nations imposed a trade embargo on China, and Hong Kong, as the region’s entrepôt, bore the brunt of it — forced, in a remarkably…
From Transistors to Silicon: The Rise of Hong Kong’s Electronics Industry
If plastic flowers were the most colorful chapter of Hong Kong’s industrial golden age, electronics assembly lines were the quietest — and the one whose influence carried the farthest. In 1959, a transistor radio came off an assembly line in Kwun…
Metal, Tools and Repair: One Facet of Early Hong Kong Manufacturing
What did metalworking look like in Hong Kong’s early manufacturing history? The answer is a complete technological ladder: it began with the heavy-duty casting needed for port repairs in the 19th century, moved through large-scale production of…
Hong Kong Watchmaking: From Contract Assembly to Independent Craftsmanship
The story of Hong Kong’s watchmaking industry doesn’t actually begin at the watch factory — it begins with the case and the strap. As early as the 1930s, a group of craftsmen with backgrounds in machining or metalwork were already producing…
Hong Kong Toys: From Tenement Workshops to a Global Design Empire
In 1948, a newly opened small factory in Hong Kong ran into an unexpected problem: after trade embargoes imposed in the wake of the Korean War, the company couldn’t even get hold of the imported metal molds needed to produce toys. That crisis,…
Hong Kong’s Plastics Revolution: From Plastic Flowers to Precision Engineering
From the injection-molding machines of Sham Shui Po to the computer-aided design workstations of Kwun Tong, Hong Kong’s plastics industry compressed into less than thirty years a journey that took other economies the better part of a century. That…
Early Hong Kong Manufacturing Through the Lens of Food Processing
“Looking at Hong Kong’s early manufacturing through the lens of food processing,” the answer really comes down to three key words: entrepôt, imported raw materials, and flexible adaptation. Hong Kong was never an agricultural society,…
Hong Kong’s Shipbuilding and Repair Industry: The Manufacturing Power Behind a Port City
To answer the question “When did Hong Kong’s ship repair and construction industry begin?”, we need to look back to the mid-19th century. Hong Kong’s shipbuilding and repair industry didn’t emerge at a single moment out of…
