Let there be light : how electricity made modern Hong Kong

"Electricity was key to Hong Kong's success. Hong Kong had one of the world's highest economic growth rates from the 1940s through the 1980s, due in large part to an ample supply of electricity at a time when most of Asia struggled to power factories, let alone light homes, giving it a ten-year head start on its East Asian rivals. This macro-invention made possible Hong Kong's development from a colonial port of middling importance to one of the world's most important exporters; it played a role in the handover of Hong Kong by Britain to China; and it was central to Hong Kong's emergence as an explicitly anti-Communist Cold War capitalist powerhouse. Let There Be Light is the first history of electrification in Hong Kong and one of the first in East or Southeast Asia. Focusing on China Light & Power (CLP) and its longtime chairman Lawrence Kadoorie, the project follows the company's evolution against the backdrop of Hong Kong's shifting relations with China and Britain through the twentieth century. Mark L. Clifford explores the avowedly laissez-faire Hong Kong's attempt to nationalize electricity companies, as well as the development of civil society in Hong Kong-which took place as the colony struggled to absorb refugees from China's 1949 revolution. Tracing the history of electricity in Hong Kong across tens of thousands of pages of newly available archives, Let There Be Light looks at how electricity shaped various postwar developments in Hong Kong in business, in society, and in politics."