The Miss Ping On competition (1959-62) was a health education and inspection campaign undertaken in the late 1950s that reflected a new era of public health strategy in Hong Kong, focused on preventing disease through health education and more cautious health inspections. 10 years later, the Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign was a public health campaign centered on hygiene as a symbol of civic responsibility and modernity. The character of these campaigns contrasts the Colonial Administration’s history of negligent, aggressively paternalistic public health policy and the city’s respondent history of protest and resistance. Through a case study of these two campaigns, this project argues that the development and reception of public health campaigns in the post-war era resulted from parallel developments in Hong Kong's colonial and national identity. Specifically, the new importance of Hong Kong to British colonial interests and American Cold War interests incentivized public health and welfare investments. Growing prosperity also facilitated the emergence of a unique ‘Hong Kong’ identity encouraging Hong Kong citizens to adopt hygienic practices as a means of self-strengthening. In turn, the relative success of these public health campaigns reinforced nationalist and colonialist commitments to the city, aiding in the formation of a unique ‘Hong Kong’ identity.