The Macao Connection

CLXVII

Despite its name, the China Clipper, ironically, did not fly to China. The reason was politics. Despite the fact that Pan American Airways had acquired a large stake in the China National Airways Corporation (CNAC) in order to provide air passenger service within China, the Chinese Nationalist government refused to allow Pan American (or any other foreign airline) to acquire landing rights in China. In large part this was due to legitimate Chinese fears that the steadily-encroaching Japanese Empire (which controlled Manchuria and growing areas on northern and coastal China) would demand landing rights and then use those rights to expand its spheres of influence within Nationalist territory. In part it was due to ancient Chinese chauvinism toward Westerners. In any case, the terminus of the route of the China Clipper was Manila.

A street in Macao circa 1935

Juan Trippe spent most of 1936 trying to change that. Although he could not budge the Chinese Nationalist government (and wouldn’t deal with the Chinese Communists), there were two available mainland ports of call in China, namely British Hong Kong and Portuguese Macao.

Macau today

The British, who had proven intractable in the Atlantic proved to be just as intractable in the Pacific. Citing the onerous Provision H, Great Britain refused to allow the China Clippers access to Hong Kong as long as Great Britain did not have an equivalent British flying boat operating in the region.

 

Hong Kong circa 1935

Provision H had kept Pan American out of the Atlantic Ferry business for years, but Trippe, with his characteristic deviousness, saw a way to open the Pacific route to Hong Kong with a slick crowbar. For one thing, Germany and Russia were already operating an overland Chinese air route (Eurasian Air) from Berlin across Central Asia and northern China to Peking. The existence of Eurasian Air gravely troubled the British leaders of Hong Kong.

Map of Hong Kong and Macau

For a second thing, although Portugal, a close ally of Great Britain, tended to follow the British lead in Asia, Portuguese politicians proved amenable to allowing Pan American Airways to establish its Chinese hub in Macao, just across the Pearl River from Hong Kong. Macao, older, shabbier and poorer than Hong Kong needed the economic stimulus that the airline would bring. Macao planned on being competitive.

Hong Kong today

And so, to the horror of Hong Kong’s business leaders, both European and Asian, the Portuguese granted the China Clippers landing rights in Macao just within teasing sight of Hong Kong.

A British Shorts flying boat and the Pan American Clipper II in the bay between Hong Kong and Macao. The Martin M-130s rarely flew to China themselves. Passengers on the Sunchasers were generally put aboard S42-Bs at Manila for the 660 mile flight to Hong Kong

Juan Trippe built an entire infrastructure in Macao at the cost of roughly a million dollars. A mooring dock went up for the flying boats, and a Pan American hotel. A huge Adcock Array way constructed. Staff was appointed to run the Macao operation. 

Jardine Matheson, founded in Hong Kong in 1832, was the largest hong or foreign trading corporation in the world at one point, dealing in all sorts of legal and illicit oriental commodities. Even today, “Jardines” is one of the 200 largest corporations in the world

As the Macao facilities rose, Hong Kong’s leadership petitioned 10 Downing Street to grant Hong Kong some kind --- any kind --- of exception to Provision H.  

This intricate jade carving represents daily life in old China

Money talked. The British Government in London suddenly --- and surprisingly --- announced that the Short flying boats of Imperial Airways, never having flown the China routes, were the effective equivalents of Pan Am’s Martin M-130s.

Macao was a popular setting for romantic adventure films

Hong Kong immediately granted landing rights to Pan American Airways.   

The Philippine Clipper landing at Hong Kong

Juan Trippe was thrilled. His expensive con had worked. In truth, he’d had no intention of using seedy Macao as a Pan American landing site if he could have at all helped it. Overnight the virtually complete Macao facilities were abandoned, only to be rebuilt in greater splendor across the bay.

Kai Tak Jetty at Hong Kong

The Portuguese, utterly cheated, were outraged. Juan Trippe didn’t care. He’d neatly outmaneuvered the British Empire --- and he’d acquired the Pearl of the Orient for Pan Am.   

In a twist of grand irony, the landing facilities at Hong Kong were incomplete when Pan American Airways first instituted its mainland China service in 1937; as a result, the first Pan Am flights to China landed at the mothballed facility at Macao. Nothing about the arrangement made anyone happy. After Hong Kong came on line Macao was ignored. Note that the cachet of the envelope shows the route to Hong Kong