"Foundation Hong Kong" and "SCP Hong Kong" redirect here. This article is about the colony of the SCP Foundation. For Hong Kong under British rule, see British Hong Kong.
Hong Kong
香港
1875–1997
Motto: Secure, Contain, Protect
Location of Hong Kong in East Asia
| Status | Colony of the SCP Foundation |
| Capital | Victoria (de facto) |
| Official languages | English Russian Chinese (Cantonese) |
| Demonym | Hongkonger |
| Government | Presidential republic under oversight by the SCP Foundation |
| Legislature | SCP Foundation Department of Hong Kong Affairs |
| Historical era | Victorian era to 20th century |
| • Purchase of Hong Kong | 17 February 1875 |
| • Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory | 9 June 1898 |
| • Handover of Hong Kong | 1 July 1997 |
| Population | |
| • 1996 estimate | 5,489,031 |
| Currency | Hong Kong dollar United States dollar British pound |
| ISO 3166 code | HK |
| Internet TLD | .hk, .scp |
SCP Foundation Hong Kong, officially Hong Kong, was a colony of the SCP Foundation from 1875 to 1997 after its purchase from the United Kingdom. The territory was invaluable to Foundation affairs, granting the organization a foothold in the region after being previously relegated to limited operations within Portuguese Macau, a concession in Tianjin, and British Hong Kong. Through strategic actions by its colonial overlords, particularly looser enforcement of the Veil Protocol, Hong Kong became one of the most important areas in global politics, functioning as the diplomatic and economic capital of the anomalous world throughout much of its existence.
The SCP Foundation initially expressed interest in Hong Kong due to the 1845 Daevite refugee crisis, during which much of the remaining Daevite population were forcibly displaced from their homeland in Siberia by the creation of what would later become the Adytite Soviet Socialist Republic. Believing an area like Hong Kong to be the ideal location to relocate them, the SCP Foundation and Her Majesty's Foundation for the Secure Containment of the Paranormal (HMFSCP) jointly oversaw their integration into the colony. SCP Foundation interest in the territory grew, with the United Kingdom agreeing to sell it to them in 1875 after lengthy negotiations.
Creating laws which would attract anomalous commerce, the territory enticed numerous anomalous organizations to establish what would be considered their legal headquarters within the territory, most notably among them being the SCP Foundation and Global Occult Coalition. Corporate entities with a significant stake in the anomalous world, such as Doctor Wondertainment, Marshall, Carter, and Dark Limited, and the Walt Disney Company, were also headquartered within the colony at its peak. Various regional and state-specific anomalous organizations also possessed diplomatic missions within Hong Kong, enabling communication and political dealings. The height of the colony's influence is generally considered the point at which the anomalous world was the most united in history, especially after the fall of the Veil Protocol in 1943. However, political issues and competition would eventually fracture the anomalous world into being divided amongst several regional Esoteric Capitals, leaving Hong Kong weakened by the time of its handover to China in 1997.
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Terminology
See also: Name of Hong Kong
The most common term for the territory in modern historography, used within both official SCP Foundation and Global Occult Coalition documentation, is SCP Foundation Hong Kong, though Foundation Hong Kong and SCP Hong Kong are often used shorthandedly. Additionally, Skipper Hong Kong is occasionally used informally. Within contemporary culture, the territory was often referred to as the "capital of the SCP Foundation" or the World Esoteric Capital due to its wider relationship with the anomalous world, as the colony functioned as its diplomatic and economic capital throughout much of its existence. While it no longer holds much of the prestige in the anomalous world that it once did, the modern Hong Kong Special Administrative Region often uses "World Esoteric Capital" as an epithet. During the peak of its influence on global affairs, "Hong Kong" was often used as a metonym to refer to the totality of the anomalous financial market. Since the territory's decline, its usage as a metonym has been mostly relegated to within the SCP Foundation, who instead use it to refer to the leadership of the organization's Chinese Branch.
History
Main article: History of Hong Kong
Early Parahistory
Statue of Xu Fu located in Weihai, Shandong.
The earliest known account of anomalous activity which would later influence the creation of SCP Foundation Hong Kong are the voyages of Chinese sorcerer Xu Fu, who served under Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of China and founder of the Qin dynasty. Xu was an accomplished thaumaturge who, through his extensive knowledge, was able to create a bamboo scroll which would alert him to the presence of anomalies, later designated SCP-CN-001 by the SCP Foundation’s Chinese Branch. Aware of his abilities, the emperor tasked him with discovering the secret of immortality, providing him resources to travel to the mythical Mount Penglai, which supposedly housed a community of immortals. After the first attempt to reach the mountain was thwarted by a supposed sea monster, he and the children left for the second voyage, during which Xu Fu made his true intentions known: immortality for himself and the creation of his own kingdom. SCP-CN-001 alerted Xu to the presence of a group of extradimensional spaces present in the modern day New Territories of Hong Kong, with him proclaiming one to be a kingdom known as "Danzhou" (亶州). Alongside communities of locals and other individuals in the Chinese anomalous world onboarded to his cause, he settled the extradimensional space and had the children educated and raised to be proficient in studying the anomalous. This led to the founding of what would later be known as the Abnormality Institute (異學會).
With his kingdom established, Xu began to resume his quest. While Mount Penglai continued to elude him, he began to research alternative methods of achieving the immortality he so desperately craved, leading him eventually to travel to Siberia, where Daevite communities persisted within the Adytite Empire. In his travels, he happened upon a particularly large one, which possessed what would later be designated as SCP-006, a spring which contained water that granted everlasting life. According to Xu's accounts of the region at the time, local Daevite priestesses claimed the spring to have been blessed by blood of the Scarlet King. However, it was fiercely guarded and only high-ranking members of the community could drink from it, initially leaving Xu out of luck. By happenstance, he encountered a Roman who had traveled to the community for the same reason named Methuselah, later classified by the SCP Foundation as SCP-343. While Methuselah had been unable to drink from the spring for the same reasons as Xu, he had put himself in the good graces of enough of the current Daevite matriarchs that they agreed to teach him blood magic which let him prolong his life so long as he continued using it. As part of a poorly-recorded bargain, Methuselah agreed to teach Xu what he knew, essentially granting him immortality. Returning to Danzhou, Xu continued to oversee his kingdom and the Abnormality Institute’s rise in the wider region, with it eventually growing to become China’s dominant anomalous organization for the majority of its imperial history.
SCP-006.
Eventually, in 1684, Xu grew tired of having to use the Daevite blood magic, once again desiring the power of true immortality he had only been able to glimpse in Siberia. With a small army of his most powerful and trusted underlings, he traveled once more to Siberia, where the Daevite communities had continued to decentralize and were now shells of their former selves. SCP-006 had lost all known religious significance, being considered by the locals to be nothing more than a regular spring. As such, Xu was able to secure a large supply of the water for himself and his advisors. However, he did see value in the Daevites for their anomalous knowledge, as little as it was. He offered many he encountered a chance to return with him to Denzhou, with a fair amount, estimated to be roughly 1500, agreeing. Through use of Ways, the travel back was intended to be guised from the rest of the world, as Xu valued secrecy. However, disaster struck, with Adytite authorities realizing what was going on. Still bitter towards the Daevites for their years in slavery within the ancient Daevite Empire, the Adytites had kept the few who remained in the lower rungs of society for thousands of years and wanted to keep them there. A bitter fight began, with all of the Daevites and most of Xu’s companions from Denzhou being killed. Though he was upset, Xu and what was left of his party returned to his kingdom.
To the remaining contemporary Daevites, the ones who left went down in legend, known as the “Aoar” (roughly translated as “pilgrims”), and they remained ignorant to the fact their fellows had been killed. This eventually led to the development of beliefs focused on the rest of the Daevites eventually traveling to where the others had supposedly gone, romanized in modern times as “Aoaria” (or “land of the pilgrims”). After years of modernization and ethnoreligious persecution from the Adytite Empire, most Daevites had long stopped worship of the Scarlet King. However, most refused to convert to the Nalkan faith, leading to an underlying religious confusion among the people. The stories regarding Aoaria had it function as a “promised land” of sorts, from which many derived different meanings. Adherents to the ancient times and traditions believed it would be a place where the Daevite Empire could rise once again and actively had been building up strength, while less traditional Daevites simply believed it was a place where they could live in peace without their current oppression from the Adytites. Regardless of how they interpreted it, it was a unifying moment for the Daevites, who began to lie in wait for the day they could join those who had left.
Qing Anomalous Crisis
Territorial losses of the Qing dynasty.
During the era dubbed the "century of humiliation", the Qing dynasty was plagued by various issues, famously including territorial losses and interference from colonial powers. In the anomalous world, things were no different, with the Chinese state being affected by various anomalous crises in rapid succession. As they had already been for centuries, China's anomalous affairs were managed by the Abnormality Institute, though this was more of a nominal position at this point in history. Previously a prominant organization on the world stage considered a major rival of the once supreme Portuguese Council of the Paranormal, the Institute had long since decayed into a shell of its former self. While the organization's loss of influence could previously be attributed to natural elements, the tension within the Institute came to a head during the Taiping Rebellion. Some within the Abnormality Institute chose to align themselves with the Heavenly Kingdom, starting an Occult Civil War which ripped apart the once-prosperous anomalous community. The hidden Kingdom of Danzhou was torn apart and Xu Fu was killed by insurgents armed with anomalous artifacts.
Though the Heavenly Kingdom and its arm of the Institute were eventually beaten, the internal conflict left the organization and its home ripped apart. Fractured and directionless, it was barely able to function beyond serving as an advisory body for the government. Historians agree it likely would have eventually been able to recover if not for the Daevite refugee crisis of 1845, in which a sudden convergence of Nalka managed to push out the remaining Daevites in Siberia and expel them from their ancestral homelands. Still devoted to stories of Aoaria, the Daevites compelled the Russian Empire's principal anomalous authority, the Tsars' Seers, to send them to China under the protection of the Institute. Already stretched incredibly thin, but bound by multiple treaties with the Tsars' Seers to do so, the Institute attempted to house the Daevites in refugee camps with government funding until they could come up with a more permenant solution.
Various Mekhanite assemblies, descendents from the original Xia Anomalous Culture Group, were displeased with the idea of Daevites entering China, and demanded the Institute expel them somewhere else. The Institute always remained at considerable odds with the assemblies, with direct religious persecution being common at the organization's height. Relations had cooled somewhat in the past few decades, with the Institute attempting to foster policies of peaceful coexistence through granting Mekhanite communities self-governing communities to live in. The Abnormality Institute refused to expel the Daevites, reigniting conflict between the two sides. Several weeks later, fed up with the Institute's inaction, Mekhanites raided the refugee camps and began to ransack many of the organization's safehouses. As their technology was superior than anything either the Institute or the government could throw at them, they were forced to rely on European powers to solve the problem. The SCP Foundation was alerted to the crisis and sent several Mobile Task Forces to China to handle the Mekhanites and diplomats to determine what should be done with the Daevites. The Mekhanites continued targetting Institute facilities across the Qing Empire, was eventually decided that the Daevites would be granted housing in British Hong Kong in exchange for monthly payments from the Foundation.
Modern territories of Hong Kong and Macau.
Adding to the existing strife in the Chinese anomalous world, the two Opium Wars invited anomalous organizations of European powers, primarily operating from the enclaves of Hong Kong and Macau to easily take the remaining anomalies from the Institute that the Mekhanites couldn’t. Some members of the Institute, believing their organization was unsalvageable, defected to the colonial powers who operated the aforementioned territories, forming the basis of what would eventually become the Zero Team of the Royal Hong Kong Police (later reorganized into the Abnormal Constituency Police Department) and the Abnormal Bookmakers Association (later reorganized as an arm of the Macau Gambling Inspection and Coordination Bureau). For all intents and purposes, the Qing dynasty had lost the ability to manage its own anomalous affairs, rendering them subject to the whims of the organizations aligned with the invading powers. This came with two major issues: the invading powers made little effort to organize their practices, leaving the preservation of normalcy in the region incredibly sloppy, and the risk of increasing the already extreme tension between China and its opposition.
Later, following the Boxer Rebellion,
Early Foundation Colonialism
See also: SCP Foundation concession in Tianjin
Nondescript flag which acted as the naval ensign for the Shipping Consultations and Provisions front company.
From the issues in China, the SCP Foundation sensed an opportunity to make itself an invaluable asset. While it exerted soft power and influence in various countries, most notably the United States, it had yet to expand significantly beyond the Western world. Additionally, seeing the various leased territories, concessions, and even sovereign colonies being carved out of China made the Foundation desire something within the country of its own. The organization had yet to ignite its own colonial empire, finding itself dependent on siphoning from the empires of states. O5-1 approved the creation of the Department of Colonial Affairs, the leadership of whom was sent to China to engage with negotiations as the Foundation’s representative. While present anomalous contemporaries were aware of their identity, the department posed publicly as members of “Shipping Consultations and Provisions”, a front organization posing as a prominent American shipping company. The company served as the Foundation's main vessel for its attempts at Chinese colonialism and the transfer of assets in and out of the country.
Agreement between the Foundation and the Qing dynasty took a large amount of negotiations. The disorganization between the other powers’ anomalous groups and the rising tension of them being the de facto anomalous authority in China continued to be issues of great importance that China was eager to solve. The Foundation claimed it had the resources to become the authority that China needed, but demanded exclusive control over the anomalous within the nation. The Qing dynasty was not happy with the idea of depending on an outside organization for something so important, especially an international one that may not consider China worth delegating many resources to. The Foundation claimed the work would be delegated to a new foreign branch with a large degree of autonomy, similar to the one established a decade earlier within the Russian Empire. This idea was begrudgingly accepted by the former leadership of the Abnormality Institute, who negotiated on behalf of the Qing emperor, with the two sides finally signing the separate anomalous articles of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1875, which also granted the Foundation its concession in Tianjin. Due to its geographic location and harbors, the city of Tianjin was considered one of the most important cities in all of northern China, perhaps China as a whole. This made it an ideal location for the invading powers to gain land. While they were founded at different points across a period spanning five decades, ten concessions in total were all eventually created in Tianjin, belonging to the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the United States, Russia, the Empire of Japan, and the SCP Foundation. The Foundation’s was the fourth, as the original concessions, the British and French, were established in 1860 following the Convention of Peking, with the de facto American concession following soon after in 1869 within nominally British land. While there is no universal framework for a concession and its legal system defined under international law, the ones within Tianjin enjoyed extraterritoriality, though possessed varying degrees of autonomy from their parent states.
Concessions in the Chinese city of Tianjin. The Foundation's is marked in purple at the top right.
The SCP Foundation's concession was considered a great step forward by the organization’s leadership, effectively representing the first time the Foundation had some form of full colonial possession. Despite the sway the organization held over certain countries in the international community, most major powers were against the Foundation developing a colonial empire, believing that the traditional divide between mundane and anomalous affairs which had been respected by all major Western countries meant the organization should be forbidden in partaking in colonialism, which was seen as an exclusively mundane activity. It was only after promising the United Kingdom, France, and the United States that the concession would be used to oversee anomalous affairs that the states supported the Foundation obtaining it. For much of the organization’s existence, the O5 Council felt its inability to have colonial aspirations be seen as legitimate on the international stage severely limited it politically and economically, meaning it was imperative the concession in Tianjin serve as a model territory which proved the Foundation capable of being a colonial power. Fortunately for the organization, its concession in Tianjin soon found itself indispensable in local anomalous affairs, seeing that the Foundation now held responsibility over Chinese paranormalcy. The Foundation made use of strategies in the region formerly used by the Abnormality Institute and partnerships with Her Majesty’s Foundation for the Secure Containment of the Paranormal, France’s Estate Noir, and Portugal’s Council of the Anomalous, who lent resources and personnel to the effort. The concession bustled with consulates for European anomalous organizations who wanted to get involved, with China’s anomalous world gradually beginning to be stabilized.
The Foundation, in its effort to be seen as more of a conventional political power that deserved its common reputation as leader of the anomalous world, engaged in a strategy of guising the true extent of its capabilities from its contemporaries and letting its aforementioned reputation make it seem far more capable than it actually was. Historians believe that, without assistance from the European powers, the Foundation would have had no way to stabilize its influence in China. However, the organization managed to trick most of these powers and their respective anomalous groups into believing they simply wanted to foster collaboration within the newly-formed Chinese colonial community, portraying themselves as theoretically able to manage all of China on their own but allowing others a stake for their benefit. Through this successful deception, European powers came to see the Foundation as less of a distinctly anomalous power that should not have been involved in conventional politics into something more akin to a bridge between the mundane and paranatural worlds. In particular, the SCP Foundation and HMFSCP grew significantly closer, especially due to their continued collaboration on ensuring the integration of the Daevites into British Hong Kong. The SCP Foundation, having been formed from the American Secure Containment Initiative, a breakaway organization from the HMFSCP that clashed against its parent in the American Revolutionary War, had always had a rocky relationship with the British paranormal authority. Additionally, the Foundation’s rapid expansion to overtake the HMFSCP in the early 19th century, dethroning its once dominant spot in the anomalous world, was still a fresh wound in the minds of many.
Flag of Her Majesty's Foundation for the Secure Containment of the Paranormal.
However, regardless of past greviences, neither side could deny that working together was mutually beneficial. The HMFSCP allowed for the Foundation to officially establish its first permanent base of operations within Hong Kong, Site-117. The complex that would become Site-117 had already been the Foundation’s unofficial headquarters in the region while managing the Daevite resettlement, though the organization’s primary Chinese administration initially still stemmed from the concession in Tianjin. Gradually, the Foundation began to focus more of its time on Hong Kong, eventually officially relocating its Chinese administration to Site-117 a year after its establishment. By 1873, the concession had lost all of its relevance to the Foundation, who felt that their current collaboration with the European powers was doing more for its reputation as a hypothetical colonial power than maintaining the concession. By 1923, the Foundation fully relocated all of its important assets from its concession and gifted it back to China as a token gesture.
Establishment
"Company rule in Hong Kong" redirects here.
In the budding relationship between the SCP Foundation and HMFSCP, the former found itself emboldened by the new recognition it had gained on the world stage as something that could act as an intermediary between conventional and anomalous powers, and decided to try and use this position and see if it could carve a chunk out of the British Empire for itself. With its prior colonial efforts via its concession in Tianjin and overwhelming new influence in the anomalous aspect of the Sinosphere, and its prior collaboration with the HMFSCP having taken place within the territory, the Foundation was particularly drawn to acquiring British Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a relatively recent addition to the British Empire, having only been acquired in 1841, so the Foundation had hoped they would be receptive to selling it. While the Crown had high ambitions for Hong Kong and was not initially pleased with the idea, the Foundation was able to offer lenient terms that still allowed for major British use of the territory, a more significant stake in the Chinese anomalous world, and a large amount of conventional capital. As a result, Hong Kong was ceded to the Foundation under Qing approval.
In order to disguise its presence in Hong Kong from the Veiled world, the Foundation simply elected to continue to use the Shipping Consultations and Provisions as its primary front company in the region, with those not in the anomalous world contemporarily believing Hong Kong to be another sovereign colony under company rule. From this point on, the company changed its official name to “Shipping Consultations and Provisions of Hong Kong”, though was more popularly known colloquially as the “Hong Kong Company”. Due to the Foundation initially ruling through this company, this era in Hongkongese history was occasionally known contemporarily as Company rule in Hong Kong from 1875 to 1944. It was at this point that the Foundation began to move its resources from Tianjin and direct its navy to instead operate in the colony’s ports. Now that Hong Kong was fully a Foundation territory, the organization began to construct more facilities alongside the original Site-117. Notable additions at this point include Site-121 and Area-13. In 1877, the O5 Council approved the creation of the semi-autonomous Chinese Branch of the Foundation. Due to the importance of maintaining the organization’s control over the anomalous side of the Sinosphere, the Chinese Branch was the largest branch in terms of already-devoted resources at time of conception at the time of its founding, and the second-largest branch overall behind the primary English Branch.
While the initial motives for colonial expansion within the Foundation’s O5 Council were gaining capital and resources, with Hong Kong having been envisioned as a mundane financial hub, it gradually became clear to them that the colony had become far more of a valuable asset than they had initially thought it would be; the unity and dominion it had brought them over their contemporaries was an advantage many felt was too great to pass up on. During a meeting in 1878, O5-6 was the first to suggest taking their current relationship with the territory to its logical conclusion: making it an area specifically allowing for anomalous diplomacy and commerce. This suggestion proved controversial, with the Council equally divided on going forward with this radical idea. Most in the opposition felt it was too risky to do something so unprecedented after they had just worked so hard to prove to the rest of the world they were deserving of a sovereign colony or that it had too high a chance of disrupting the Veil. The issue eventually reached Administrator Fritz Williams, who was required by the Council to be their tiebreaker vote. Williams felt that the dominance the Foundation had established through Hong Kong was too important to give up, and voted in favor of opening it up to the anomalous world.
For being the one to suggest the idea in the first place, O5-6 was given control over the project, thus becoming the de facto head of the Department of Colonial Affairs. The department felt that the most important issue for them to solve was how to prevent disruption of the Veil, as Hong Kong already had too many citizens only within the mundane world to simply declare the entire territory a Free Port. While multiple strategies were conceived, it was eventually decided that the Hong Kong government would continue the model it had started with its early integrations of anomalous affairs and establish various private Free Commerce Zones (FCZ) across the colony, entrance into which would require special documentation proving your allegiance to an anomalous organization, business, or other group. As they were already intimately familiar with the anomalous world, the Hongkongese Daevites became the first test subjects for this system and were provided the first of what would become known as free entry documentation. This allowed some of them to run small businesses selling minor anomalous products, usually of a horticultural nature, which could then be purchased by their contemporaries. This system was entirely monitored by the Hong Kong Police Department, who took extra care to ensure proper adherence to the Veil was followed upon exit from any FCZ.
Some in the O5 Council raised concerns about the FCZ system being more trouble than it was worth, leading to a compromise where the Department of Colonial Affairs would close off citizenship in Hong Kong from those not already involved in the anomalous world and attempt to onboard any existing citizens into the Foundation as best as they could, with the goal of eventually allowing the entirety of Hong Kong to be a singular Free Port. As a result of this policy, local Cantonese individuals in the nearby Guangdong region who had once been part of the Abnormality Institute began flocking to the territory, feeling that their skills could finally be of use again. Some refused to work with the Foundation, finding their current control over China’s anomalous affairs insulting to the Institute’s legacy, joining others who had been onboarded to other national paranormal organizations instead. From this population boom, FCZs gradually expanded from small, self-contained areas into major subdivisions of the colony, outgrowing the regular neighborhoods in the area.
After several months of tearing the FCZ system, it was found to work in the way the Foundation had hoped, with the added benefit of increasing Daevite morale. The Foundation began advertising the system to
Economic Rise
World War II
The Seventh Occult War was a global conflict which occured alongside World War II involving a majority of the existing anomalous organizations, including the Foundation. Many of the world's major occult groups took place in the conflict, forging alliances and new organizations which would shape much of modern anomalous history. Fighting within the conflict primarily took place in stable pocket dimensions/universes, some of which were considered Nexuses or Free Ports, of which several were destroyed or rendered otherwise uninhabitable due to the effects of the war. New, sophisticated variants of thaumaturgy and anomalous weaponry were specifically created for use in the Seventh Occult War, including the earliest predecessors to what would become modern antimemetic technology.
The SCP Foundation dominated the North American theatre, successfully capturing Three Portlands in 1941 after a long series of conflicts between them and the local anomalous communities. The Eastern Front saw little combat outside of various skirmishes between Nalkan groups, most prominently the Hunter’s Black Lodge, and the Soviet Union’s GRU Division “P”. Eventually, a terrorist attack in Moscow by the Lodge prompted GRU-P to abandon the war effort, withdrawing in 1942 and staying neutral for the remainder of the conflict. Europe was by far the most active area of conflict, taking up a considerable portion of resources from all involved groups on either side. The Foundation, due to its close ties to the U.S. and agreements with the federal government, was largely charged with ensuring the country was safe during the war and were unable to participate a significant amount in the European theatre.
As part of the war effort, the Foundation needed a centralized area from which they could handle the conflict without disrupting their existing operations. As their previous hub of activity, Site-19 in Nevada, was already being spread thin due to overseeing Nx-19 and other miscellaneous containment efforts, the Overseer Council decided that a new area of focus was required and elected to construct what would eventually be known as Site-222. It was one of the largest Foundation facilities ever constructed, though still not to the scale of Site-19.
In 1942, the 001-Apotheosis Event in northern Korea took place, unleashing SCP-001 in the country and causing devestation. Normalcy enforcement organizations were quick to react, but little was able to be done about stopping the spread of information in the chaos. By the time it had fully been stopped, information regarding the existence of an anomaly had already spread worldwide, and preservation of the Veil would require worldwide use of an experimental, possibly dangerous, amnestic. Following the results of a vote within the Overseer Council, it was decided that nothing more could be done to fully keep the anomalous entirely hidden from the public, leading to the fall of the Veil.
Post-Veil
Maritime flag used by vessels affiliated with the SCP Foundation, considered Hong Kong's de facto state ensign.
Official civil ensign of SCP Foundation Hong Kong.
With the 001-Apotheosis Event at the end of 1943 concluding the era of the Veil Protocol, the paranormal was suddenly on center stage in the post-World War II world. Hong Kong, in particular, as the already-defined hub of the anomalous world, attracted a significant portion of the attention. The Foundation, with its policy of slow reintegration of the anomalous world into the mundane,
Decline
Much scholarly debate continues regarding the decline of SCP Foundation Hong Kong. It is generally accepted that the period began in 1978 and lasted until the territory’s handover to China in 1997. A widely-accepted factor of the decline was the separation of the Global Occult Coalition from the territory. The GOC, desiring connection to the anomalous world in the post-WWII world, was quick to establish itself in what was considered the world esoteric capital: Hong Kong. Its headquarters was constructed within, alongside those of many member organizations of the Coalition’s Council of 108. The many crimes of its predecessor, the Allied Occult Initiative, were infamous among the anomalous world, meaning it was desperate to gain the influence it required to be the leading organization that the United Nations wanted it to be. However, as the years went on, the GOC managed to separate itself from its predecessor in the eyes of many, especially with its post-Veil programs to educate the world on the anomalous. The Foundation, seeing the GOC as its primary rival for leadership over the anomalous world, used espionage programs to try and continue to ensure the Coalition maintained a negative reputation, but none were particularly successful.
Eventually, the Coalition, no longer desiring its dependence on the Foundation for centralizing the anomalous world, announced a project it had been working on in secret in collaboration with the European Union: the European Technological Esoteric Capital, or Eurtec. It forced all of its member organizations and major allies to move their primary operations to the new city instead, leaving little more than consulates or secondary locations in Hong Kong, if anything at all. The Coalition also created a secondary home for its Far East Division with the East Asian Technological Esoteric Capital, or Eastech, but this was largely interpreted as an endeavor intended to spite the Foundation rather than an actual strategic development like with the creation of Eurtec. The Republic of Singapore, whose economic development led it to try and take anomalous influence in the East Asian world away from Hong Kong, served as the primary entrance for the extradimensional Eastech, with its Ministry of Paranormal Affairs being the main administration. With Foundation Hong Kong having been made into a center of worldwide affairs, Eastech carved out a niche by being fully dedicated to handling oversight of East Asia and collaborating exclusively with local organizations.
Other esoteric capitals began to pop up sporadically throughout the world, ripping into Hong Kong’s influence in the region each time. The first was the Australian Esoteric Territory in the Commonwealth of Australia, which became the localized hub for anomalous affairs throughout Oceania. In the years since the initial conflict between the two major factions of the Foundation’s Portuguese Branch, tensions lessened significantly. Alongside the factor of Portugal losing control of Macau in 1966, the Branch felt there was little reason to remain within the political enclave. Despite pressure from the O5 Council to stay nearby Hong Kong, the Branch relocated its primary offices to Brazil and Portugal. As the Foundation was still the dominant power in South America, the local industry rapidly spread to Brasília, where the Portuguese Branch’s Brazilian side relocated. This effectively made Brasília the new esoteric capital of South America, even with continued Foundation efforts to try and centralize in Hong Kong. Soon after, New Alagadda opened as South Africa’s fourth capital city, specifically of its paranormal affairs. While the Foundation still had much influence in Africa, New Alagadda quickly rose to become the continent’s esoteric capital. In modern years, Botswana’s Gaborone has also been steadily rising in influence. Many cities in West Asia vied to be the region’s economic capital, including Qatar’s Doha, Bahrain’s Manama, and Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh, but the Dubai Abnormal City economic zone in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai beat them out and continues to dominate as of 2025. Central Asian anomalous affairs remained largely decentralized and still focused on Hong Kong, though Astana in Kazakhstan is considered the de facto esoteric capital of the region due to its large amount of local anomalous businesses and organizations.
As what exactly constitutes an esoteric capital remains subject to debate, some other major cities in the anomalous world were often dubbed “esoteric capital” without worldwide consensus. Popular examples of this phenomenon include Dual Saint Petersburgs, a federal city of the Russian Federation, India’s capital of New Delhi, Alexandria in Egypt, and the United Kingdom’s subterranean metropolis of UnLondon following the start of official settlement efforts in the territory by the British Occult Service in 1988. Regardless of whether or not these cities truly should be considered esoteric capitals, analysis has shown they did take what was once critical share of the anomalous world from SCP Foundation Hong Kong. Even beyond the rise of other esoteric capitals was the widespread adoption of decentralization. While every capital city on Earth had always been a localized hub for its own country’s anomalous affairs, influence started leaking out of Hong Kong and back into their home countries’ capitals. In the new age of digital connectivity and globalization, being together in a single location was seen as less valuable as it once was. Rather than within Hong Kong, innovation was now happening locally in its country of origin and staying in its birthplace, and existing institutions were shifting to where the innovation was. Hong Kong was still seen as an important meeting ground and place of diplomacy, but only on a lesser, purely global scale, similarly to the United Nations offices in New York City.
The final nail in the coffin for the loss of Hong Kong’s global influence is considered to be the loss of the Foundation’s own industry within. Despite its importance to the anomalous world and the organization itself, the Foundation had never made Hong Kong the exact center of its administration. Having always been ahead of the rest of world when it came to innovation, it had already experienced what the rest of the world was with the rise of technology leading to separation from singular administrative locations; nearly all important aspects of the Foundation’s administration had already been physically separate for decades prior. However, when it could, it tried to influence its localized financial industry to remain in Hong Kong when possible. This changed when the United States established its second federal district in its entire history, the District of Fritzwillie. The goal of this district was to be its own esoteric capital, as the U.S. government had been tired of its innovation being focused in Hong Kong and not locally. While the SCP Foundation has never nominally been the state anomalous organization of the United States, the two have been considered intrinsically linked for both of their histories. After much conflict within internal Foundation politics and pressure from the United States government, the organization was forced to move its official headquarters from Hong Kong to the new district. The Foundation’s Chinese Branch still remained headquartered within, but the loss of the primary branch’s influence was evident.
Foundation Hong Kong continued to play a major role in world affairs since its decline, but never again near the extent of its peak. While its extensive funding and ventures of generating capital meant that the Foundation did not experience any issues resulting from economic hardship, it did lose a gigantic amount of funding generated by the territory, necessitating its widely-known company acquisitions in the early 2000s. Even outside of Foundation control and as a Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong continues to remain an important hub of global diplomacy and business within the anomalous world in the modern day.
Handover to China
Politics
Diplomatic Relations
Macau
The Foundation, much like with British Hong Kong, initially used Portuguese Macau as a base for itself when establishing control over China’s anomalous affairs. However, the organization’s interests, much like the rest of the western world’s in the era, moved more towards Hong Kong. To keep the decaying colony solvent, gambling was legalized within in 1849, leading to the establishment of various casinos and the slow development of its industry into a local gambling juggernaut. Throughout their history, the anomalous communities in Foundation Hong Kong were interested in this new ecosystem, but were unable to leave their anomalous enclaves during the FCZ era. To get around this, the Government of Macau, in partnership with the Foundation, established the Abnormal Bookkeepers Association, made up of former members of the Abnormality Institute. This group was designed to take remote bets from anomalous groups and, if authorized, escort them to Macau to enjoy the industry in person. The government and the Foundation each received a stake in the Association’s profits, but it was considered an official part of Macau’s government.
The relationship between Macau and the SCP Foundation grew closer during the Portuguese Branch Crisis of 1938, in which the Brazilian departments of the Branch began voicing longstanding discontent with the current branch’s administration being almost entirely localized within and favoring Portugal. The Brazilians outnumbered the Portuguese significantly and began to voice plans of becoming their own branch or even a separate organization entirely. The primary Foundation administration began to mediate the issue, with the eventual compromise being that the administration would be moved to Macau in hopes no one would be favored over the other. This would also have the added possible benefit of a hypothetical increase in influence with their headquarters being located so close to Hong Kong. Both sides of the Portuguese Branch agreed to the compromise, leading to Area-25 being established in Macau. The Abnormal Bookkeepers Association accepted an invitation to be headquartered within the new facility.
The ABA, with this new functional closeness to the Foundation, began to facilitate betting on distinctly anomalous affairs and soon began tinkering with limited paratechnology to create new games. This eventually led to the Area-25 Casino being opened, with an extradimensional bridge forming a link between it and Foundation Hong Kong. This allowed members of the anomalous communities who previously found themselves unable to travel to Macau proper a chance to gamble and members of Foundation a chance to gamble on more esoteric things they wouldn’t be able to in a normal casino. Following the eventual relocation of the Portuguese Branch’s administration from Macau, Area-25 was entirely converted into a modern casino: The Foundation Macau. In the modern day, various paracasinos ran in cooperation with the ABA, now a department of the Macau Gambling Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
United States of America
People's Republic of China
Economy
Due to the close relationship between the Foundation and the United States of America, Hong Kong also acted as a way through which America could trade with various incarnations of the Chinese state.
Culture
SCP Foundation Hong Kong was a unique cultural melting pot. Already impacted by the legacy of British Hong Kong, it was further influenced by the Daevite migration, the settling of many Americans employed by the Foundation, former members of the Abnormality Institute, and other anomalous culture groups. While it was the headquarters of the Foundation’s Chinese Branch, it was under the control of the English Branch, which is primarily American. As a result, American influences became prominent throughout the colony. De jure, Hong Kong’s political system was based on the government of the United States, but direct Foundation rule was the de facto method of overseeing the territory, with the government mattering little in the colony’s actual affairs for the majority of its existence. American culture, however, did bleed into much of the colony, with its citizens placing a large emphasis on freedoms and guaranteed rights. Foundation Hong Kong largely followed the United States’ laws regarding freedom of speech and expression. Protestantism was the dominant religion, spread both from the era of British rule and the American culture brought from the Foundation.
Historically, a unique aspect of Foundation Hong Kong’s culture was its more favorable treatment of women in contrast to the contemporary Western and Eastern worlds for much of the 20th century. The Daevite culture was traditionally matriarchal, seeing men as savage and unfit to rule. Their cultural veneration of the Scarlet King was, unlike modern depictions of representing cruelty and male dominance, depicted him as a figure above all man within the Daevite Empire who kept them in line, but still under all women within the social hierarchy. These ideals clashed with the patriarchal tendencies of both Western settlers and local Eastern citizens. This initially led to a significant social divide, but slow integration between the communities eventually led to many within the previously-isolated Daevites seeing that men were not inherently savages, while some other civilians from China and abroad began to see women as more capable than they previously had. Both in reflection of this cultural shift and to appease the Daevites, strict laws guaranteeing women’s rights were put into place throughout Hong Kong. Integration was not without conflict, though order was generally maintained by the HKPD.
The nuclear family, prevalent in both Eastern and Western cultures, was dominant in Hong Kong. The traditional division between men and women in Daevite culture led to a prevalence of homosexuality among both. This was met with social backlash from many civilians within the colony, though the Foundation’s typical institutional progressivism led to its internal provisions for protection based on sexual identity to be adopted into the law of Hong Kong, giving any homosexual relationship the same legal protections as heterosexual ones. While the conflicts against homosexuality were more prevalent than those against women’s rights during the Foundation era, the same cultural integration did lead to Hong Kong having an unusually high social acceptance of homosexuality in comparison to much of the Eastern and Western worlds in the 20th century. Polygamy, which remained legal in British Hong Kong, continued to also be legal under SCP Foundation rule.
English, Cantonese, and Russian were the most spoken languages within Hong Kong while under Foundation rule. Education within the colony generally taught English, making it the territory’s lingua franca. Russian, while initially prevalent among the Hongkongese Daevites, slowly fizzled out as most began to favor English. Some signs in Daevite communities featured all three languages, though were gradually phased out throughout the territory’s history, with none left featuring Russian in the modern day. Despite no official recognition, some Russian is still spoken in the modern Hong Kong SAR, though its speakers number likely in the hundreds. Cantonese, in contrast, remained prevalent within SCP Foundation Hong Kong and is the most-spoken language of the present SAR.
Due to the latter half of Foundation rule explicitly defining Hong Kong as a Free Port, anomalous culture and education skyrocketed throughout the city. While the SCP Foundation is unpopular among many anomalous groups for their historically poor treatment of their people in the name of upholding the Veil Protocol, some of the communities within Hong Kong attained a more positive view. Many of these groups had grown culturally isolationist due to historical persecution and exploitation, meaning the fact the Foundation provided them with a place closed off from the rest of the world with a generally high amount of guaranteed rights led to some seeing the Foundation as benevolent guardians who provided a haven for their people. Besides the Daevites, members of other anomalous culture groups heard of Hong Kong’s reputation as a non-extradimensional Free Port and relocated within under Foundation approval. In particular, a large minority of fae who escaped from the Allied Occult Initiative’s genocide of their people in the Second Polish Republic made the colony their home. Some humanoid anomalies previously contained by the Foundation were also offered a chance to attain citizenship in Hong Kong in place of standard containment.
Anomalous education was primarily dominated by two institutions: St. Christina College and the Hong Kong campus of the International Center for the Study of Unified Thaumatology (ICSUT). St. Christina College, initially formed within a small extradimensional space accessible from the Kowloon Peninsula, was sponsored by the Foundation and allowed to spread its campus into consensus reality. The existence of the ISCUT Hong Kong campus was negotiated with the Foundation by the Global Occult Coalition, who also sponsored its construction.
Abnormal Constituencies
Throughout the history of SCP Foundation Hong Kong, there were reports of individuals unexpectedly finding themselves within the extradimensional location known as Hong Shing, a location formed from an overlap between multiple parallel universes. Initial reports declassified by the Foundation remark on the existence of an anomalous location which supposedly shared the same geography as Hong Kong. For unconfirmed reasons, the Foundation was not able to stabilize a reliable method to travel to Hong Shing until after the handover of Hong Kong and the establishment of Chinese sovereignty in the region. In the modern day, the Chinese Branch of the Foundation has begun diplomatic proceedings with Hong Shing and has begun accepting applications for settlers.
Foundation Hong Kong is world-renowned for its preservation of Daevite culture. Upon the authorship of SCP-140 in 1788 and the repression of the Daevite culture from consensus reality, the Foundation’s precursor organizations and their contemporaries were not yet prepared to detect widespread reality-altering anomalies, meaning such an event initially went unnoticed by the broader anomalous community. For reasons still unknown, the Hongkongese Daevites remained unaffected by the curse that had afflicted their people, with their settlement in Hong Kong existing in the timeline despite the anomaly. The Foundation’s Department of Multiversal Studies theorizes that the Adytite Soviet Socialist Republic, known to be a multiversal improbability not meant to exist, directly influenced the creation of SCP Foundation Hong Kong through the Daevite expulsion from Siberia, making it another improbability. The universe, unsure how to react to these improbabilities, is often unable to process certain reality- and timeline-altering events, making them a sort of “dead zone”. This would further explain why it was unable to access Hong Shing until the creation of the Hong Kong SAR, which is considered by the multiverse to be a normal political entity.
Legacy
Foundation Colonialism
In the context of the SCP Foundation as a colonial power, Foundation Hong Kong is often considered to be the only truly sovereign territory that the Foundation ever maintained. While some other anomalous organizations in modern history have also had sovereign territory, such as the Marshall, Carter, and Dark Colony in New Imperialism-era Africa, the Foundation’s acquisition of Hong Kong is what enabled them to do so, opening up the mundane world to be more accepting of the anomalous world intermingling with its affairs.
The SCP Colonial Empire is/was a colonial empire consisting of areas under the direct or indirect rule of the SCP Foundation. This includes colonies and other territorial holdings under its ownership, puppet states with regimes under its command, and states with temporary governments put into place by it. The height of the empire's power is generally considered to have been the post-World War I period, wherein the Foundation maintained control over various key portions of Eurasia and heavily influenced the politics of the region up until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Most territories under its command were for very brief periods, on average a decade, with the only particular outlier having been Germany, whose rule by the Foundation lasted for the better part of the 20th century.
While historians generally agree that it, in some manner, existed, the exact nature of the SCP Colonial Empire has been hard to define, partially due to the unique status of the Foundation; its influence continues to remain arguably absolute and global, with some calling them a de facto ruling party of the entire Earth. Additionally, in most cases, territories overseen by the Foundation weren't used as traditional colonies, usually consisting of a short period as a puppet state used by the organization to reinforce its influence in the region before simply granting rule back to a local party. Another factor is the fact that many regions have, at some point in history, been in a position where the Foundation effectively had power comparable to their traditional government, but never went out of its way to get them to this point, nor actually used this influence for anything practical beyond loose political dealings. Arguments such as whether or not the SCP Colonial Empire even constitutes a traditional colonial empire, the exact extent of its territories, and if it still exists today, remain matters of intense debate within the historical community and an important part of modern political theory.
In the modern day, the Foundation itself publicly rejects the idea of the SCP Colonial Empire as a concept, though leaked documents have shown they do in fact reference its existence under that name. The organization has apologized for many atrocities committed in various regions under its rule, though continues to profess that, in most cases, its motivations for maintaining control over a territory were primarily for the good of both the local area and the world at large, with any benefits it received actually working towards the former.
Influence