oa Village Policing in Early Colonial Hong Kong: Adopting Baojia System

This paper examines the attempts to adopt ‘native’ institution, baojia system in this case, to the practices of village police administration in early colonial Hong Kong. Adoption of baojia in the post-cessation situation in Hong Kong was premised on the proposition of ‘preservation’ of Chinese institutions and by extension an embodiment of British imperial ‘good governance’ and ‘non-intervention’. In contrast, the paper by situating adoption of baojia within the larger concern of asserting British jurisdiction views it as a colonial institutional strategy that was informed by anxiety about China and need to bring Chinese inhabitants under direct scope of colonial administration.