Transnational Gold Smuggling and the Making of Hong Kong’s Financial Hub, 1944–1973

Abstract: This article reinterprets Hong Kong’s postwar ascent by placing gold smuggling at the heart of its political economy. Challenging the narratives that credit only formal financial institutions, it shows how unregulated gold flows supplied the liquidity that propelled the colony from an entrepôt to a regional financial hub. Drawing on 1944–1968 court transcripts, police files, colonial correspondence, and newspapers, the study reconstructs the transnational corridors that ferried gold from Australia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia through Hong Kong to high-premium destinations such as Singapore and Calcutta. The Hong Kong colonial authorities’ policy of calculated underenforcement effectively transformed bullion into a stateless reserve asset. These shadow credit pools broadened Hong Kong’s foreign-exchange expertise and reshaped its postwar political economy. By foregrounding the networks that made this possible, the article offers a bottom-up perspective on state power, legality, and financial agency in Cold War Hong Kong.