Clipper cargo horizons, Vol. 1, No. 11, November 1961

              HORIZONS
A Pan Am Publication About Worldwide Air Distribution • Vol. I, No. 11 • November, 1961
Hong Kong Welcomes the Jet Age
The “good port” creates classic example of modern air distribution; Pan Am world flights, special services, a boon to garment exporting
Photo courtesy Hong Kong Government Information Service
DAILY CLIPPER flights on round-the-world runs keep this mile and one-half runway stretching into Hong Kong’s Kowloon Bay humming with cargo activity. Jets are dramatically changing the port’s distribution patterns.
As a free port, Hong Kong seems as indestructible as the serrated hills that are its landmarks. It hums along with the rhythm of the jets, which are significantly changing its trade patterns.
A crisis in Hong Kong is a ferment out of which some new advance materializes. The latest was the drive to industrialization following the great 1949 upheaval on the Chinese mainland. Out of it came the new Hong Kong, no longer merely a port through which raw materials and finished products pass, but an industrial entity of its own. It has a throbbing populace of over 3,000,000 with some 5,000 businesses newly-registered in the short span of the last decade.
Where once local products accounted for 15 percent of exports, now such products represent 70 percent. And the mile and a half modern airstrip which stretches out into Kowloon Bay plays an ever-increasing role in the distribution of Hong Kong’s products to world trade centers.
In 1959, for instance, some 4,416 tons of cargo moved in and out of Hong Kong by air. Last year this increased by an additional 364 tons, and judging from the pace of air shipments through August, 1961, this year should end with another significant leap forward.
With round-the-world services in and out of Hong Kong for over 12 years, Pan Am has played a major role in the growth of this air cargo business, accounting for about 50 percent of all
JUNKS AND GODOWNS are synonymous with busy Hong Kong harbor. But the impact of the jets means old concepts of warehousing and shipping are giving way to modern distribution ideas.
Trademark, Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.
long-haul traffic to Europe (exclusive of the United Kingdom) and to the United States. This represents air transport of textile products out of Hong Kong— finished garments, tailored clothing, woolen knitted cardigans—nylon and cotton gloves, plastic flowers, toys, watch bands, livestock, wild animals, birds and tropical fish, primarily to the U. S., Europe and Japan. In-bound
THIRTY-FIVE CRATES of monkeys are
on their way to San Francisco. Finished garments, gloves, toys, watch bands, livestock—a limitless variety of cargo moves in and out on the jets.
cargo covers virtually every type of merchandise, since Hong Kong is a major distribution point for the Far East.
Blend of Change
Part of Hong Kong’s indestructible quality derives from its ability to adapt to change.
In the 18th century the Manchus, opposed to free trade, bottled up Canton, created monoply hongs, or trading agencies, and sought to strangle Hong Kong as a free port. Before the mid-20th, it had to contend with the Japanese invasion. And then the great Chinese mainland upheaval of 1949 threatened it with extinction as a bastion of the free trade movement—a port where there were no tariffs or quotas.
Yet today Hong Kong, Cantonese for good port or fragrant harbor, is a vigorous monument to British skill in administering a colonial outpost. And to this has now been blended the resilience and inventiveness of a besieged Chinese merchant class.
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