General Emilio Aguinaldo, the first President of the Philippines, in 1897 agreed to exile in Hong Kong in exchange for 400,000 pesos from the Spanish government. Rather than ease into an early retirement, the general organized his fellow expatriates into a revolutionary government in exile known as the Hong Kong Junta. This council smuggled food, medicine and weapons to its besieged forces in the Philippines and established diplomatic relations with Australia, Japan and the U.S. Aguinaldo eventually secured his return to the Philippines on a U.S. Navy ship, shifting the center of the revolution from its temporary base in Hong Kong back to its homeland.
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