A different story presents itself when you observe the numbers and statistics. From the colonial historiography there appears to be a consistent underestimation of Hong Kong’s industrial sector while it was actually very powerful. Indeed “based on the entries in the Hong Kong and Macao Business Classified Directory, Leeming found 3,000 factories and workshops in 1927 and about 7,500 in 1940, while official records only registered 1,523 and 1,142 factories in those same years” (Ngo 122).