Review of Mark L. Clifford’s 𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝐵𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡: 𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝐸𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑀𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑛 𝐻𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝐾𝑜𝑛𝑔

If “flux” can be applied as a descriptor to any place, it would be Hong Kong. Few places have changed so much, so quickly or continue to do so. But “flux”, of course, also has a meaning in electromagnetism, key to power generation.

Electrification is likely not the first thing that comes to mind when reflecting, as it were, on Hong Kong. But in Let There Be Light, a history of China Light & Power (CLP), Mark Clifford convincingly makes the case for the centrality of electricity in the Hong Kong story. Electricity not only made Hong Kong’s success possible, but it also serves as an illuminating prism through which to look at and rethink much conventional wisdom about Hong Kong. Intertwined with this narrative of political and economic development is the larger-than-life persona of Lawrence Kadoorie, who headed CLP for five decades.

Clifford positions this mostly as a Hong Kong story and takes aim at some hoary old myths such as the one about Hong Kong, this place with socialized medicine, about half the population in some form of public housing, and excellent and highly regulated public transport, as being the exemplar of, as Milton Friedman had it, “free markets and limited government.” The ironies are concisely summarized by Clifford in a single paragraph.

Lawrence Kadoorie was vociferously opposed to government actions in many areas. Moreover, one of his most primary interlocutors in the colonial government, Financial Secretary John Cowperthwaite, is known as the most important proponent of Hong Kong’s laissez-faire capitalism. Yet the two men worked closely to jointly develop a system that subjected CLP to new and unprecedented government control. Far from stifling economic growth, these controls made it possible for CLP to secure Hong Kong’s largest-ever foreign investment, from US oil giant Esso […] in 1964 […]. Those investments in turn provided the electricity that enabled Hong Kong to record one of the world’s highest periods of sustained economic growth.

What comes across here, as it does throughout the book, even in the dark days of Japanese occupation, is the combination of pragmatism, opportunism, confidence, and optimism, with no small touch of hubris, that made Hong Kong such a success.

Mark L. Clifford, Let There Be Light. How Electricity Made Modern Hong Kong (New York: Columbia University Press, 2023)

But Hong Kong is here, as it is elsewhere, an excellent place to look at broader principles: a sophisticated modern economy, but tight and compact enough to study closely and completely. 

Electricity systems are also complex assemblages that reflect different agendas, both private and public. Technologies like electricity are embedded in a collectively held vision of how a society ought to be ordered, with attention to the dynamics of power and control that are inherent in these relationships.

Clifford remarks that Hong Kong was unusual in that it (or rather its two electricity companies) headed off the nationalization that was so common elsewhere (as did its bus and ferry companies); also unusual in that the small territory was divided between two companies (Hong Kong Electric on Hong Kong Island and CLP across the Harbour), each with different tariffs and policies: one territory, two natural monopolies, to coin a phrase.

Hong Kong is also a useful testbed for theories about technology. Not much of an innovator itself, it has a long history of innovative uses and applications of technology.

Hong Kong was never a center of innovation. Although CLP was not responsible for technological invention, in the sense that it is usually understood (the development of a new device or process), it was a technology-rich company due to its significant technological recombination. Recombination involves the use of existing equipment and techniques in novel ways. The difficulty of operating often unstable electricity supply technology in a colony halfway around the world from equipment manufacturers (and operating in difficult weather conditions) posed continuing technical challenges that required adaptation, innovation, and applied expertise on the part of CLP technical staff, managers, and executives. The challenges of providing reliable electricity supplies in CLP’s service area, comprising both some of the world’s densest urban settings and remote mountain villages in a subtropical environment prone to typhoons, were significant.

There’s a lot to take away from Let There Be Light, the most obvious, perhaps, being an engineering and technocratic riff on the traditional Hong Kong story featuring well-known places, people, and events. Electric power isn’t, of course, the only lens through which one can look at Hong Kong, but it’s a pretty good one. It takes one beyond the realm of the colonial government, British officials, and expat society, and even beyond the world of big business: electricity, as ubiquitous as rice, reached into the smallest village.

It helps immensely that Clifford knows how to tell a good story. Hong Kong is always a good story, of course, and this one starts back in 1900, ropes in Shanghai, one of Asia’s great business families (whether Jewish or not), World War II and the Japanese occupation, rebuilding after the war, and then Hong Kong’s great race to prosperity, featuring colonial mandarins and business tycoons, a lot of engineering and high finance: Taipan and Noble House in one. Clifford had a lot to work with.

But, still, electricity and power generation could have been as dull as ditchwater. While Clifford is nothing but rigorous, he’s a good writer. Statistics, facts, and history are embedded seamlessly, providing stepping stones that guide the reader through the larger issues. Enlightening, yes, but enjoyable too.

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Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books.