From a British to a Chinese Colony? Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover 1557291764, 9781557291769

Table of contents :
Cover
Notes to this edition
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Contributors
Note on the Romanization of Names
Introduction. Straddling the Handover: Colonialism and Decolonization in British and PRC Hong Kong
Part I. British Colonial Legacies
1. The Comprador System in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong
2. Government and Language in Hong Kong
3. A Ruling Idea of the Time? The Rule of Law in Pre- and Post-1997 Hong Kong
Part II. Hong Kong, Britain, and China(s)
4. From Cold War Warrior to Moral Guardian: Film Censorship in British Hong Kong
5. The Roots of Regionalism: Water Management in Postwar Hong Kong
6. Economic Relations between the Mainland and Hong Kong, an “Irreplaceable” Financial Center
Part III. Decolonization, Retrocession, and Recolonization: New Perspectives
7. At the Edge of Empire: The Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jewish Communities in British Hong Kong
8. Reunification Discourse and Chinese Nationalisms
9. From Citizens Back to Subjects: Constructing National Belonging in Hong Kong’s National Education Centre
Index
Back Cover

Citation preview

Notes to this edition This is an electronic edition of the printed book. Minor corrections may have been made within the text; new information and any errata appear on the current page only. China Research Monograph 75 From a British to a Chinese Colony? Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover Gary Chi-hung Luk, editor ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-177-6 (electronic) ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-176-9 (print) ISBN-10: 1-55729-176-4 (print)

Please visit the IEAS Publications website at http://ieas.berkeley.edu/publications/ for more information and to see our catalogue. Send correspondence and manuscripts to Katherine Lawn Chouta, Managing Editor Institute of East Asian Studies 1995 University Avenue, Suite 510H Berkeley, CA 94704-2318 USA [email protected]

December 2017

From a British to a Chinese Colony?

CHINA RESEARCH MONOGRAPH 75 CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES

From a British to a Chinese Colony?

Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover

Edited by Gary Chi-hung Luk

A publication of the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Although the institute is responsible for the selection and acceptance of manuscripts in this series, responsibility for the opinions expressed and for the accuracy of statements rests with their authors. The China Research Monograph series is one of several publication series sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies in conjunction with its constituent units. The others include the Japan Research Monograph series, the Korea Research Monograph series, the Research Papers and Policy Studies series, and the Transnational Korea series. Send correspondence and manuscripts to Katherine Lawn Chouta, Managing Editor Institute of East Asian Studies 1995 University Avenue, Suite 510H Berkeley, CA 94704-2318 [email protected] Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Luk, Gary Chi-hung, 1985–  editor. Title: From a British to a Chinese colony? Hong Kong before and after the 1997 handover / edited by Gary Chi-hung Luk. Description: Berkeley, CA : Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2017. | Series: China research monograph ; 75 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017035428 (print) | LCCN 2017035207 (ebook) | ISBN 9781557291776 (ebook) | ISBN 1557291772 (ebook) | ISBN 9781557291769 (alk. paper) | ISBN 1557291764 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Hong Kong (China)—History. | Hong Kong (China)—Social conditions. | Hong Kong (China)—History—Transfer of Sovereignty from Great Britain, 1997. Classification: LCC DS796.H757 (print) | LCC DS796.H757 F75 2017 (ebook) | DDC 951.25—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035428 Copyright © 2017 by the Regents of the University of California. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Cover image: The Tai Po Lookout Tower. Named the “Commemorative Tower for Hong Kong’s Return” in Chinese (Xianggang huigui jinianta 香港回歸紀念塔), it was dedicated in 1997 to commemorate the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Great Britain to the People’s Republic of China. According to the attached inscription, the tower is located where the British authorities landed to take over the New Territories one century before the Handover. (Photograph by Gary Chi­­ hung Luk.) Cover design by Mindy Chen.

Contents

Contributors vii Note on the Romanization of Names x Introduction.  Straddling the Handover: Colonialism and Decolonization in British and PRC Hong Kong Gary Chi-hung Luk

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PART I. BRITISH COLONIAL LEGACIES 1. The Comprador System in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong Kaori Abe 2. Government and Language in Hong Kong Sonia Lam-Knott 3. A Ruling Idea of the Time? The Rule of Law in Pre- and Post-1997 Hong Kong Carol A. G. Jones

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PART II. HONG KONG, BRITAIN, AND CHINA(S) 4. From Cold War Warrior to Moral Guardian: Film Censorship in British Hong Kong 143 Zardas Shuk-man Lee 5. The Roots of Regionalism: Water Management in Postwar Hong Kong 166 David Clayton 6. Economic Relations between the Mainland and Hong Kong, an “Irreplaceable” Financial Center 186 Leo F. Goodstadt

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PART III. DECOLONIZATION, RETROCESSION, AND RECOLONIZATION: NEW PERSPECTIVES 7. At the Edge of Empire: The Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jewish Communities in British Hong Kong Felicia Yap 8. Reunification Discourse and Chinese Nationalisms Law Wing Sang 9. From Citizens Back to Subjects: Constructing National Belonging in Hong Kong’s National Education Centre Kevin Carrico

217 236

259

Index 285

Contributors

Kaori Abe holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Bristol and is a former postdoctoral fellow at Nanyang Technological University. Her main research areas are the history of Hong Kong, modern China, and the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of Chinese Middlemen in Hong Kong’s Colonial Economy, 1830–1890 (London: Routledge, 2017). Kevin Carrico is a lecturer in Chinese studies in the Department of International Studies (Modern Languages and Cultures) at Macquarie University. His research examines nationalism and racial thought in China and Hong Kong. He is the author of The Great Han: Race, Nationalism, and Tradition in China Today (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017) and the translator of Tsering Woeser’s Tibet on Fire: Self-­Immolations against Chinese Rule (London: Verso Press, 2016). David Clayton, senior lecturer in the Department of History, University of York, has published extensively on the economic and political history of Hong Kong, including most recently: “A Withdrawal from Empire: Hong Kong–UK Relations during the European Economic Community Enlargement Negotiations, 1960–63,” in Anthony Best, ed., Britain’s Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905–1980 (London: Routledge, 2017). Leo F. Goodstadt is an economist, an honorary fellow of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong, and an adjunct professor in the School of Business Studies at Trinity College, University of Dublin. He has held five research fellowships at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. His service with the Central Policy Unit as the Hong Kong government’s principal policy adviser (1989–1997) gave him invaluable insight into Hong Kong–China relations. Among his publications are Profits, Politics and Panics: Hong Kong’s Banks and the Making of a Miracle Economy, 1935– 1985 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007) and Reluctant

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Regulators: How the West Created and China Survived the Global Financial Crisis (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011). Carol A. G. Jones is a reader of law at the University of Birmingham. Her areas of expertise are the law and society in Hong Kong and China; sociolegal studies; the history of United Kingdom criminal justice; and law and colonialism. Her latest  monograph,  Law in the Cold War: Detention without Trial in Hong Kong,  is due to be published in 2018 or 2019. Her publications include Lost in China? Law, Culture and Identity in Post-1997 Hong Kong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Criminal Justice in China: An Empirical Inquiry (with Mike McConville and others; Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2012); and Criminal Justice in Hong Kong (with Jon Vagg; London: Routledge, 2007).  She has previously worked at the University of Hong Kong, the University of Cardiff, the City University Hong Kong, the Australian National University, and the American Bar Foundation. Sonia Lam-Knott is a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and a postdoctoral associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Her doctoral research dealt with the manifestations of youth activism and the reimagining of politics in Hong Kong. Building upon this work, she is now looking at the interplay of heritage and nostalgia within acts of remembrance in contemporary Hong Kong, and how i­ maginings of the past influence demotic projects of self-fashioning and contestations over urban space. Her forthcoming publications include “Defining Politics in an ‘Apolitical City’: An Ethnographic Study of Hong Kong” and “Understanding Protest ‘Violence’ in Hong Kong from the Youth Perspective.” Law Wing Sang is an associate professor of cultural studies at Lingnan University. His research interests include the colonial history and cultural formation of Hong Kong; Hong Kong cinema; comparative social thought; Christian fundamentalism; and cultural theory. He is the author of Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese, and has had articles published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, positions: east asia cultures critique, Router: A Journal of Cultural Studies, Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies, Reflexion, and Renjian Thought Review. Zardas Shuk-man Lee is pursuing a history Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her major research area is global history of anticolonialism, with a focus on British Malaya, Singapore, India, and Hong Kong. She is also interested in the history of nation building, cultural exchanges, and intercolonial relations. Gary Chi-hung Luk is the Kent Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Britain and the British World at the University of Saskatchewan. Receiving

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his doctorate from the University of Oxford, he was the Economic History Society Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research of the School of Advanced Study, University of London, an affiliated researcher in the Department of East Asian Studies as well as a Wolfson College research associate at the University of Cambridge, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Chinese Studies in Taiwan. Luk works on late imperial Chinese history, the British Empire in China, modern Hong Kong, and the Manchu language, with particular attention to the maritime and river world, borderlands, imperialism and colonialism, and ethnicity. Luk is completing a book manuscript tentatively titled “Water Borders: Empires, Trades, and Communities in Mid-Nineteenth-Century China’s Littorals.” His publications include “Occupied Space, Occupied Time: Food Hawking and the Central Market in Hong Kong’s Victoria City during the Opium War” and “Heritage in Translation: ‘A Dagur Story’ as Historical Fiction and Sample Text for Learning Manchu—Part Two” (co-authored). Felicia Yap is an associate of the London School of Economics Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. Her research focuses on the effects of the Japanese occupation of East and Southeast Asia during World War II. Her recent publications include “International Laws of War and Civilian Internees of the Japanese in British Asia” and “Between Silence and Narration: European and Asian Women on War Brutalities in JapaneseOccupied Territories.”

Note on the Romanization of Names

In this volume, convention prevails in romanizing names of Hong Kong Chinese people, most being Cantonese. In the romanized form, their Chinese surname usually precedes their Chinese given name, which is combined into one word (e.g., “KWONG Acheong”), linked by hyphens (e.g., “TUNG Chee-hwa” and “LAW Wing-Wah”), or separate (e.g., “MOK Tsz Yeung” and “LAW Wing Sang”). If the Hong Kong Chinese people concerned have an English given name, the English given name goes first, then their Chinese surname, and lastly their Chinese given name (e.g., “Robert HO Tung” and “Donald TSANG Yam-kuen”). When mentioned again, their Chinese given name may be skipped (e.g., “Donald TSANG”). Exceptions to these rules are the names of some of this volume’s Chinese contributors and some other Chinese scholars and journalists originating in Hong Kong, such as Zardas Shuk-man LEE, Stephanie Po-yin CHUNG, and Y. C. YAO. As for the Chinese people not originating in Hong Kong, their names are usually romanized in pinyin, with the surname preceding the Chinese given name (e.g., “MAO Zedong” and “LIU Xiang”). As a matter of convention, “SUN Yat-sen” and “CHIANG Kai-shek” will be used in this volume.

INTRODUCTION

Straddling the Handover: Colonialism and Decolonization in British and PRC Hong Kong

GARY CHI-HUNG LUK

Revisiting Colonialism and Decolonization in Hong Kong For many in Hong Kong, the British handover of the territory to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997 marks not the end of its colonial status but the onset of another colonial rule. Henry Tang Ying-yen 唐英年 was a business tycoon, senior official in post-Handover Hong Kong, and candidate for chief executive in 2012. In 1994, Tang, then a Legislative Council member, prophesied: “Without a hope of becoming independent, we just move from being a British colony to a Chinese colony.”1 In Hong Kong: China’s New Colony (1999), a Hong Kong–based British journalist recorded the reconfiguration of the territory’s political order upon the change of overlord. With the provocative title, the book revolves around the theme This volume evolved from the conference “From a British to a Chinese Colony? Hong Kong Society in the Past and Today” that I convened at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, on December 1, 2012. The contributors and I would like to thank St Antony’s College and its Asian Studies Centre for sponsoring the conference. We also thank all the presenters for their papers (which unfortunately are not all included here) and the audience members for their participation. 1  “Seeking to Bridge the Divide in a Transitional Hong Kong,” International Herald Tribune, January 24, 1994. Before the 1997 Handover, quite a few public figures predicted that Hong Kong would convert from a British to a Chinese colony. They include Ronald Li Fook-shiu 李福兆, chairman of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; journalist Emily Lau Wai-hing 劉慧卿; and barrister Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee 吳靄儀. The latter two first became legislative councilors in 1991 and 1995, respectively, and were reelected to the Legislative Council after 1997; see “Breach of Promise? Draft Basic Law Raises Fears More than It Assures,” Far Eastern Economic Review, May 12, 1988; “Why the People Are Leaving HK,” South China Morning Post, February 18, 1989; “Who Is Going to Want to Run the Show after 1997?,” South China Morning Post, February 13, 1990; Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee, “Post-Handover Rule of Law,” 118.

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that “Hong Kong quickly travelled down a road leading from British colonialism to a new form of colonial-type rule.”2 Since the mass demonstration on July 1, 2003—the sixth anniversary of the Handover—against the national security legislation and the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), more and more Hong Kong people have protested against what they denounce as “colonial rule” by the PRC or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).3 After 2003, local resistance against PRC/CCP rule in the HKSAR peaked in the Umbrella Movement in 2014, when the police crackdown on local activists rejecting the PRC’s design of the 2017 chief executive election and demanding “genuine” universal suffrage sparked a blockade of some urban thoroughfares by people from various walks of life for over two months.4 Not only shared among the local populace in recent years, the concept of CCP or Mainland Chinese “(re)colonization” has also been often employed—and has become particularly popular in the last decade—in studies of Hong Kong’s politics, economy, society, culture, and Chinese people’s identity from the lead-up to the sovereignty transfer (1984–1997) to the present. These studies have examined Hong Kong’s lack of selfdetermination in its political future before the Handover, the PRC’s intervention into Hong Kong affairs before and after 1997 (which intensified after the 2003 mass protests), Beijing’s erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy, uniqueness, as well as “core values,” and Hong Kong’s rapid or gradual political, economic, social, and cultural assimilation into Mainland China. In these works, the recurrent themes, backgrounds, or notions include that “the Hong Kong government began to preside over the transition from one form of colonialism to another,” that the PRC or CCP is Hong Kong’s new colonizer, and that PRC-ruled Hong Kong is witnessing recolonization, “Sinification,” and/or “Mainlandization.” ”Mainlandization” has been defined in one study as “Hong Kong’s ideological assimilation to mainland China at the expense of its core values, such as the rule of law and professionalism.”5 Yet, for want of clear definitions of colonization, colony, 2 

Stephen Vines, Hong Kong: China’s New Colony, v. Around 1997 some other writers, academic and nonacademic alike, also described the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to the PRC as a process of colonization; see Jamie Allen, Seeing Red, xvii; Roger Buckley, Hong Kong. 3  On the anti-subversion legislation and the mass protests in 2003, see Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, The Dynamics of Beijing–Hong Kong Relations, 151–169. 4  On the Umbrella Movement, see Jason Y. Ng, Umbrellas in Bloom; Lim Tai Wei and Ping Xiaojuan, Contextualizing Occupy Central; Hui Po-keung and Lau Kin-Chi, “‘Living in Truth.’” 5  John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 192; Rey Chow, “Between Colonizers”; Carol A. G. Jones, Lost in China?; Carol A. G. Jones, “Lost in China”; Kwong Kin Ming and Yu Hong, “Identity Politics”; Law Wing-Wah, “The Accommodation and Resistance”; Law Wing Sang, Collaborative Colonial Power; Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, “The Mainlandization and Recolonization of Hong Kong”; William P. MacNeil, “Enjoy Your Rights!”; Ian Scott, “Political Transforma-

Introduction

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and, above all, colonialism in the aforementioned literature, the ideas of “PRC (re)colonization,” Mainland China as a colonizer, and the HKSAR as a “CCP colony” largely remain assertions with thin or even no theoretical and empirical support. Daniel Vukovich has thus criticized some representative Hong Kong studies writings that support the “1997=recolonization equation”: “[i]n the absence of straight-forward argumentation about an alleged Chinese colonization of its own territory, what we have are bold declarations and a consistently, one-sidedly negative representation of the P.R.C.”6 Worse, in the online media and public demonstrations in Hong Kong, notions revolving around PRC (re)colonization have been reduced to clichés, political imaginations held by the locals upset about the HKSAR’s present and future, or even sentimental accusations and pejorative slogans shouted by such radicals as those clamoring for the independence of Hong Kong. It is necessary to clarify the concepts related to “PRC/CCP colonialism” before judging whether they are useful to understanding Hong Kong and its relationship with Mainland China before and after the 1997 Handover. In an intriguing parallel to the growing academic interest in the PRC’s “(re)colonization” of Hong Kong, scholarship on British decolonization in the territory has been rapidly expanding. It shows that rather than beginning at the sovereignty handover in 1997, British decolonization in Hong Kong set in as early as the Japanese occupation (1941–1945) and profoundly shaped the evolution of local politics, society, and people’s identity after World War II. Unlike most other ex-colonial possessions, postwar British Hong Kong witnessed, as Lau Siu-kai succinctly puts it, “decolonization without self-determination and independence.”7 Brian Hook argues, and it has been generally agreed, that compared to British decolonization elsewhere, the case of Hong Kong was unique in that Britain retroceded the colony to China,8 Hong Kong was “the last British colony of any significance constitutionally to sever the link with Britain,” and the PRC regime did not immediately exercise sovereignty over the British colony after its establishment on the Mainland in 1949.9

tion in Hong Kong”; Tam Kwok-kan, “Identity on the Bridge”; Wendy Siuyi Wong, “Design Identity of Hong Kong.” The quotations are cited from Ian Scott, Political Change, viii; Kwong Kin Ming and Yu Hong, “Identity Politics,” 135. 6  Daniel Vukovich, “The End of ‘Re-Colonization,’” 175. 7  Lau Siu-kai, Decolonization without Independence. 8  This is predicated on the viewpoint that the PRC inherited China from the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), which ceded Hong Kong Island, surrendered Kowloon Peninsula, and leased the New Territories to Britain in 1842, 1860, and 1898, respectively. 9  Brian Hook, “National and International Interests,” 84–85.

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The significance of the Handover in Hong Kong’s British decolonization, however, remains a subject of debate. While the year 1997 has often been assumed to be the end—and sometimes even the time—of British decolonization in the territory, some scholars argue that British decolonization continues to take place in the political, social, and cultural realms of post-Handover Hong Kong.10 What’s more, as scholars have yet to reach a consensus on the meaning of decolonization in the Hong Kong context, some have depicted seemingly incongruous paths of British decolonization in the territory. Mark Chi-kwan, on one hand, argues that “[b]y 1968, Hong Kong had been ‘decolonized’ in the sense that its United Kingdom sovereign had lost both the will and the means to determine the future and was willing to transfer its responsibilities to China.”11 Law Wing Sang, on the other hand, wrote in 2009 that the indigenization of British colonial power in pre-1997 Hong Kong “can help explain why decolonization [original emphasis]—in political and cultural terms—is still an objective to be longed for a decade after the Chinese authorities had resumed their governmental power in Hong Kong.”12 Clarifying the various features of decolonization in the Hong Kong context would explain or conciliate the preceding apparent contradictions, thereby illuminating the trajectory of British decolonization as well as British colonialism in the territory. Summary of This Volume Considering the foregoing conceptual inadequacies in literature on PRC (re)colonization of and British decolonization in Hong Kong, this collection of papers reassesses colonialism and decolonization in the territory before and after the 1997 Handover, with implications for the wider fields of the British Empire and its dissolution, and modern Chinese studies. As colonization, decolonization, and recolonization can be long processes entailing either a critical departure from the past or a continuity from the past to the present, or both, this volume considers the evolution of Hong Kong from 1841, when the British occupied Hong Kong Island amid the 10  Ming K. Chan, “The Politics of Hong Kong’s Imperfect Transition,” 15; John Darwin, “Hong Kong in British Decolonisation”; Mark Hampton, Hong Kong and British Culture; Brian Hook, “National and International Interests”; Law Wing Sang, Collaborative Colonial Power; Law Wing-Wah, “The Accommodation and Resistance”; Mark Chi-kwan, “Development without Decolonisation?”; Mark Chi-kwan, “Lack of Means”; Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War; Shi-xu, Manfred Kienpointner, and Jan Servaes, Read the Cultural Other; Gerard A. Postiglione, “The Decolonization of Hong Kong Education”; Tam Kwok-kan, “Identity on the Bridge”; James T. H. Tang, “From Empire Defence to Imperial Retreat”; Klaus Stierstorfer, “1997.” 11  Mark Chi-kwan, “Lack of Means,” 47. 12  Law Wing Sang, Collaborative Colonial Power, 152.

Introduction

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First Opium War (1839–1842), to the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the Handover in mid-2017, when the book manuscript was completed.13 Studying British and PRC Hong Kong from an interdisciplinary perspective, this volume contains chapters by scholars in cultural studies, economics, history, linguistic anthropology, and sociolegal studies, with many chapters involving multiple disciplines. It contributes to scholarship on British colonialism and decolonization in Hong Kong, the Hand­over’s significance in modern Hong Kong, Hong Kong–Britain–China relations, and contemporary Mainland Chinese rule in Hong Kong as well as other “peripheral” regions of the PRC. Apart from this introduction, the volume is composed of three parts, each comprising three chapters organized in roughly chronological order. Part 1 centers on three legacies of one and a half centuries of British colonial rule in Hong Kong. In this introduction, I will explain how the British colonial heritage reflects some central elements of British colonialism in Hong Kong, how its evolution is related to the process of British decolonization in the territory after the 1997 sovereignty transfer, and how the British legacies have shaped PRC and HKSAR rule in post-Handover Hong Kong. Part 2 looks at the evolving relationships, from the twentieth century to the present, between Hong Kong, Britain, and Mainland China. I will reconsider the autonomy of the Hong Kong administration in the British and HKSAR periods, and the relations, if any, between postwar Hong Kong’s administrative and financial autonomy and its British decolonization and Mainland Chinese colonization. Part 3 of the volume reveals some sociocultural elements of British decolonization, “retrocession” (huigui 回歸), and PRC colonialism in Hong Kong from World War II to the present. In the last few sections of this introduction, I will critically evaluate existing scholarship on British decolonization in Hong Kong and suggest future research directions in the field. I will also assess the applicability of the concept of “internal colonialism” to the Mainland Chinese presence in Hong Kong since the Handover. In this introduction, I argue that while some aspects of PRC rule in post-1997 Hong Kong can be regarded as colonial, many of the arguments proposed by both scholars and the public for the PRC/CCP’s ongoing (re)colonization of Hong Kong are untenable. In other words, the usefulness of colonialism as a conceptual tool in examining Hong Kong’s relations with its new overlord after the Handover should not be overstated.

13  Although this introduction covers discussions on Hong Kong up to the twentieth anniversary of the Handover in July 2017, in many chapters discussions stop at 2014, 2015, or 2016.

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PRC Colonialism? How can we define “colonizer,” “colony,” and “colonialism” in the context of post-1997 or—given that the British colonial rule ended in 1997—“postcolonial” Hong Kong?14 Constitutionally, Hong Kong is not a colony of the People’s Republic of China, which has never announced herself as a colonial power. In the works that describe the PRC as a colonizer and the HKSAR a colony, the expressions “colonizer” and “colony” have been employed in a rather general sense, respectively referring to “one who colonizes” (i.e., the PRC or CCP) and “a place which is being colonized or undergoing (re)colonization” (i.e., PRC-ruled Hong Kong). Academically speaking, the definition of “PRC colonialism” determines whether (or the extent to which) the PRC’s relationship with and its rule in Hong Kong are colonial and defines the meanings of “colonizer” and “colony” in the post-Handover Hong Kong context. Thus, to judge whether Hong Kong is a PRC/CCP colony and whether the territory is undergoing Mainland Chinese (re)recolonization, the concept of “PRC colonialism” must first be clarified. In fact, there is neither a comprehensive nor a universally accepted definition of colonialism. As Heather Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz note in their general history of colonialism and imperialism from the early modern period to the present, even though the term “colonialism” has been “used by people across the world or throughout time,” what it signifies is “often very different to different authors and audiences.”15 Many politicians and social activists, for example, interpret colonialism as an exploitative and oppressive relationship between foreign or global and “indigenous” parties so as to criticize the former and pursue their own agendas. Scholars often offer their own definitions of colonialism in order to deploy the concept in enhancing comparative and global studies, for example, the comparison of and linkages between empires, and to illuminate asymmetrical (or “colonial”) relationships that existed—and often still exist—in local, regional, and international politics, economy, society, and culture.16 To determine whether the conceptual framework of colonialism—regardless of its usually derogatory implications nowadays—is 14 

While cultural studies scholars argue that postcolonial Hong Kong began in the 1970s or 1980s, the handover year of 1997 has been widely regarded as the beginning of postcolonial Hong Kong in scholarship on Hong Kong politics and society. 15  Heather Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz, Empires and Colonies in the Modern World, 1. 16  Examples of recent definitions of colonialism proposed by historians include Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 1–19; Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism, 15–18; Heather Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz, Empires and Colonies in the Modern World, 1–15; Stephen Howe, Empire, 30–31.

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useful for explaining the Mainland China–Hong Kong relationship after the Handover, here I will compare British colonialism in pre-1997 Hong Kong with the Mainland Chinese/CCP presence in post-1997 Hong Kong. I will also compare Beijing–Hong Kong relations with Beijing’s relations with the PRC’s “peripheries” that have been regarded by some scholars as “internal colonies,” such as Guizhou, Xinjiang, and Tibet. British Colonial Legacies Patrimonies left by a colonizing power in its former possession can be physical, intangible, or both. In Hong Kong, British colonial inheritance includes, but is not limited to, place and road names as well as “colonial” buildings; British urban policies (such as water resource management; see David Clayton’s chapter); an effective and relatively incorrupt civil service; eleventh-hour democracy and a far from democratic political system; a “poverty of political leaders” (Lau Siu-kai’s term); a free and competitive economy (labeled as “capitalist”) and robust financial institutions (such as the banking system examined in Leo F. Goodstadt’s chapter); an affluent, liberal, pluralistic yet economically unequal society; partially benevolent and noncomprehensive government social services; a sense of local identity in which British culture or “Britishness” constitutes an important element; and, among many Hong Kong Chinese, a “colonial mentality,” that is, a feeling of inferiority and psychological dependence on the West.17 Many British legacies in Hong Kong, it should be noted, have been intertwined with non-British cultural elements. For example, the school curriculum of the University of Hong Kong, “the oldest university in the territory and by common consent the most thoroughly anglicized one,” includes many Chinese cultural and some North American educational features traceable to times before the Handover.18 Hong Kong’s British colonial legacies also include the Chinese business elite collaborating with the ruling authorities, the English language, 17 

John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 172–176, 228–232; Ming K. Chan, “The Legacy of the British Administration”; David Faure, Colonialism and the Hong Kong Mentality; David Faure, “In Britain’s Footsteps”; Leo F. Goodstadt, Poverty in the Midst of Affluence, 223–226; Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics and Panics; Mark Hampton, Hong Kong and British Culture, 211–218; Mark Hampton and Carol C. L. Tsang, “Colonial Legacies and Internationalization”; Ashley Jackson, Buildings of Empire, 220–234; Lau Chi Kuen, Hong Kong’s Colonial Legacy; Bernard Hung-Kay Luk, “Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum”; Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, 190–196, 273–278; Andrew Yanne and Gillis Heller, Signs of a Colonial Era. On the poverty of political leaders, see Lau Siu-kai, Decolonization without Independence. 18  Mark Hampton and Carol C. L. Tsang, “Colonial Legacies and Internationalization,” 570.

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and the rule of law, which are the topics in part 1. In chapter 1, Kaori Abe delves into the emergence and coming of age of the comprador system in British Hong Kong. She highlights the roles of compradors in Western firms and the British colonial administration—many being Chinese and some being Eurasian—as intermediaries between the Western and the Chinese business worlds as well as between the British government and the Chinese community in nineteenth-century Hong Kong.19 While compradors working for foreign companies were also common in China after the First Opium War, compradors in British Hong Kong, Abe argues, were distinct from their counterparts on the Mainland in the nineteenth century because of the colony’s different political, economic, and judicial settings.20 Although compradors disappeared in Hong Kong in the early postwar period, as an “intermediary elite” the compradors share similar commercial and political behaviors with many Chinese business elites in contemporary Hong Kong, a “city of compradors” as described by a local investment banker.21 The term “compradors,” moreover, has sometimes been used rather figuratively to refer to, in the context of British Hong Kong, Chinese elites and middlemen collaborating with the British colonial government and Westerners at large.22 As demonstrated in scholarship, while Chinese business elites and the British authorities in Hong Kong often conflicted with each other for different interests, their cooperation was pivotal to British rule in Hong Kong and characterized “collaborative colonialism” in the territory.23 As discussed later, many of the local Chinese professional and business elites who rose and supported 19 

Abe’s doctoral dissertation centers on the multifarious activities of the Hong Kong compradors working in the British colonial government and foreign companies in the nineteenth century and the concomitant emergence of what she calls a “system of intermediation,” a “fundamental social structure of Hong Kong”; see “The City of Intermediaries.” Her monograph based on the dissertation, Chinese Middlemen in Hong Kong’s Colonial Economy, 1830–1890, was published in September 2017. 20  The most representative study on compradors working for foreign firms in China after the First Opium War is Hao Yen-p’ing’s Comprador in Nineteenth Century China: Bridge between East and West. 21  Kaori Abe, “The City of Intermediaries,” 199–200. 22  Hui Po-keung, “Comprador Politics and Middleman Capitalism”; Tsai Jung-fang, “Comprador Ideologists in Modern China”; Tsai Jung-fang, “The Predicament of the Comprador Ideologists.” 23  On the conflicting and cooperative relationships between the Chinese business elite and the government and how these relationships constitute collaborative colonialism in British Hong Kong, see Cai Rongfang, Xianggangren zhi Xianggangshi; John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires; Leo F. Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners; Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity; Tsai Jung-fang, Hong Kong in Chinese History; Law Wing Sang, Collaborative Colonial Power.

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British rule before the Handover have collaborated with the HKSAR administration after 1997. As Abe’s work indicates, many Chinese business elites in British Hong Kong knew some English or even mastered the language. The prominence of English is another noticeable British legacy in Hong Kong. In chapter 2, Sonia Lam-Knott reviews “the means and extent of British colonial influence in shaping the Hong Kong linguistic scene.” For the sake of governance and economic development and as part of Britain’s cultural project, the Hong Kong government, Lam-Knott argues, promoted English in school throughout the British colonial era, even though Cantonese was (and is still) the mother tongue of the majority of the Hong Kong Chinese population.24 The elevation of the English language in local society epitomizes the superiority of British culture in Hong Kong, one salient feature of British colonialism in the territory. Thanks to the persistent British promotion of English before 1997, after the Handover the language remains privileged in Hong Kong as a “language of power and success” (Ng Kwai Hang’s term), the mastery of which continues to be a symbol of social status and a prerequisite for many lucrative and promising careers.25 Besides the English language, the rule of law is widely perceived to have been one cornerstone of British rule in Hong Kong. Many even argue that it is the most significant British inheritance in the HKSAR.26 Nonetheless, legal sociologist Ng Kwai Hang reminds us that before the last decade of the British colonial period, the Hong Kong government’s notion of the rule of law “was a highly formalistic one,” “a narrow adherence to the established rules of a legal institution [i.e., the Common Law system] that was not intrinsically oriented toward and was in fact quite indifferent to social sensibilities.”27 This old concept of the rule of law contrasts with the one embraced by many Hong Kong people at the time of the Handover, which “ambitiously incorporates . . . democratic aspirations, liberal ideals of freedom, and moralistic notions of justice.”28 Considering the changing nature of the rule of law, in chapter 3 Carol A. G. Jones gives a clear account of its evolution as a British legal method, government practice, and ruling ideology, as well as a social value in 24 

For an overview of “the historical landscape of societal bilingualism” in British Hong Kong, see Ng Kwai Hang, The Common Law in Two Voices, 50–76. 25  Ng Kwai Hang, The Common Law in Two Voices, 52. 26  Ming K. Chan, “The Legacy of the British Administration,” 580; Steve Tsang, Judicial Independence, 1; Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, 274–275. 27  Ng Kwai Hang, Common Law in Two Voices, 21. 28  Ng Kwai Hang, Common Law in Two Voices, 23. Also see Ming K. Chan, “The Legacy of the British Administration,” 567–570.

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Hong Kong from the first years of British colonial rule to the Handover and beyond. As her chapter and many other studies indicate, the rule of law in British Hong Kong was not taken for granted. Rather, its development was full of twists and turns beset with misgovernment, corruption, political and executive intervention, and anti-Chinese prejudice. In the last British days, the rule of law in Hong Kong was still confronted with defects and inadequacies concerning codification; legal languages, procedures, and personnel; the practice of setting precedents; and the legal basis for government interference in the judiciary. It was also compromised by some old draconian legislation and limited efforts on localization, such as the employment of locally born legal professionals and dual status for Cantonese.29 Jurors had to speak English, and “those Hong Kong Chinese who appear on the ‘List of Common Jurors’ are likely to be better educated, middle class businesspersons or professionals with sufficient knowledge of English to understand court proceedings.”30 This demonstrates the interrelations between the rule of law, the prominence of English, and the rise of the Chinese business and professional elite, and exemplifies the inseparability of various British colonial legacies in Hong Kong. After 1997, the Mainland Chinese regime has dealt with different British colonial legacies in Hong Kong in a variety of ways. While eliminating the obvious symbols of British rule (for example, the royal elements in civil and legal apparatuses) immediately following the Handover, the PRC authorities have retained or “recycled” many other patrimonies practical for their new rule in Hong Kong. The Mainland authorities’ relationship with the local Chinese business elite who took off in the British colonial period is a case in point. Interestingly, before 1997, both the PRC and the British Hong Kong regimes drew support from the local Chinese business leaders for their respective political purposes. Vividly described by Ambrose Yeo-chi King as part and parcel of the “administrative absorption of politics” and “lopsided synarchy,” the British Hong Kong government coopted Chinese business (as well as industrial and professional) elites into decision making and consultative bodies for achieving “some level of elite integration” and “legitimacy of political authority.”31 Meanwhile, as a “United Front” effort, the Chinese Communist Party drew the support of Chinese businesspersons in Hong Kong as early as the late 1930s, when China was at war with Japan and the CCP had yet to control the whole 29  Ming K. Chan, “The Imperfect Legacy”; Christopher Munn, Anglo-China; Steve Tsang, Judicial Independence; Peter Wesley-Smith, “Anti-Chinese Legislation”; Ray Yep, “‘Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong.’” 30  Ming K. Chan, “The Imperfect Legacy,” 135. 31  Ambrose Y. C. King, “Administrative Absorption of Politics.”

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Mainland. Since then, the CCP’s United Front work in Hong Kong has never ceased. Often through the Hong Kong branch of the Xinhua News Agency, the CCP actively enlisted the backing of Hong Kong’s “patriotic capitalists” willing to cooperate with the communist regime founded in 1949 and with the new administration in Hong Kong following the British departure in 1997. During the transitional period, that is, the time between the signing in 1984 of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that fixed Hong Kong’s political future and the 1997 Handover, many local Chinese business tycoons were appointed to committees formed by Beijing for drafting the Basic Law—Hong Kong’s de facto constitution post-Handover—and establishing the government and legislature of the future special administrative region.32 For the PRC, Hong Kong’s business and professional talents have also been instrumental in economic modernization programs on the Mainland since the late 1970s.33 After the Handover, the Mainland Chinese and the HKSAR authorities have coopted into the new Hong Kong regime many of the local Chinese business and professional elites who previously collaborated with the British administration. In the early HKSAR period, the CCP even subscribed to the principle of “merchants governing Hong Kong,” under which Tung Chee-hwa 董建華, a shipping magnate, became the first chief executive (1997–2005). In the aftermath of the 2003 mass demonstration, the PRC has been active in “grooming the second generation of local tycoons” by supporting them to form elite clubs and join the Hong Kong government’s advisory and statutory bodies.34 Compared to the British before 1997, the post-Handover Hong Kong regime, as Lau Siu-kai argues, has been less successful in drawing the Chinese elites’ backing to cement a “governing coalition” (guanzhi lianmeng 管治聯盟).35 Nevertheless, the PRC’s reliance on the local Chinese business and professional groups in ruling the HKSAR resembles the British efforts in coopting the elite members in the British colony, a collaborative form of British colonialism in Hong Kong. The PRC government has held an ambiguous attitude toward many other aspects of British colonial heritage. Although it has usually claimed to be the defender of, if not paid lip service to, some locally popular British legacies to enhance its image in Hong Kong, it has at times appropriated or even distorted some elements of the heritage to promote its own political discourse and remove obstructions to its new rule over the territory. Its 32 

Cindy Yik-yi Chu, Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists; Christine Loh, Underground Front; Wong Wai-kwok, “Can Co-optation Win over the Hong Kong People?” 33  Sung Yun-Wing, The China–Hong Kong Connection; Wong Wai-kwok, “Can Co-optation Win over the Hong Kong People?,” 108. 34  Peter T. Y. Cheung, “The Changing Relations,” 336–337. 35  Liu Zhaojia, Huigui shiwunian yilai, 175–191.

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approach to the rule of law is an excellent example. The PRC government has been verbally committed to the rule of law in Hong Kong to maintain the territory’s economic prosperity and social stability, to augment its legitimacy in the former British possession, and, particularly since 2003, to veil its intervention in Hong Kong’s executive, legislative, and judicial affairs. Deliberately or not, the PRC authorities have often mixed up the rule of law with the Mainland concept of “rule by law.” (Interestingly, according to Ng Kwai Hang, until the 1980s rule by law, “often associated with authoritarian political regimes,” was essentially the British Hong Kong government’s version of the rule of law.36) Many legal scholars (including Jones) and lawyers have considered the several interpretations of the Basic Law by the PRC’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee as Beijing’s twisting of the de facto constitution and serious Mainland Chinese infringement upon the rule of law (at least the one popularly upheld in local society) and judicial independence in post-Handover Hong Kong.37 Besides the PRC, the Beijing-backed HKSAR government has also participated in maintaining, discarding, and molding British colonial heritage in Hong Kong. The HKSAR administration, as Lam-Knott argues in chapter 2, has promoted biliteracy (Chinese and English) and trilingual (Cantonese, Mandarin, and English) teaching in secondary education, thereby demoting the privileged status of English while elevating Mandarin, the PRC’s official language, in Hong Kong society. Supported by local pro-­establishment social groups and political organizations, the HKSAR government has rhetorized the rule of law, manipulated Hong Kong people’s respect for it, and invoked existing laws to legitimize and smooth its own governance and PRC rule over the territory, for example to subdue the street occupation during the 2014 Umbrella Movement. Moreover, the Hong Kong government have revitalized the legislation against unlawful assembly and riots enacted in the British colonial era to charge local activists, such as those arrested for their participation in the Umbrella Movement and the civil unrest in Mong Kok (nicknamed the “Fishball Revolution”) during the Chinese New Year in 2016.38 The evolution of British colonial legacies in Hong Kong sheds light on the territory’s British decolonization. One aspect of British decolonization in Hong Kong largely absent in academic and public discussions concerns the PRC and HKSAR authorities’ ongoing eradication and reshaping of 36 

Ng Kwai Hang, The Common Law in Two Voices, 21. On the National People’s Congress Standing Committee’s interpretation of the Basic Law, see Danny Gittings, Introduction to the Hong Kong Basic Law, 219–262; Carol A. G. Jones, Lost in China?; Lo Pui Yin, The Judicial Construction, 355–463. 38  See Carol A. G. Jones’s chapter in this volume and her most recent book, Lost in China? 37 

Introduction

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the British colonial patrimonies after the Handover. This is probably a lengthy process, thanks to the long duration of British rule and the deeprootedness of many of the intangible British legacies. Yet, it would be unconvincing and overstretching to argue, as some scholars and critics of Hong Kong’s ruling authorities do, that Beijing has been (re)colonizing Hong Kong or PRC rule in Hong Kong is colonial because of the parallels between British and PRC rule in the territory and/ or because of Beijing’s and the HKSAR’s inheritance of British colonial heritage.39 Looking beyond Hong Kong, the new regimes of all the regions previously under colonial rule have to different extents inherited the legacies (such as the ruling apparatus) left by the former colonial power. This phenomenon does not prove that the new regimes’ rule is essentially colonial. The colonial elements of PRC rule in post-Handover Hong Kong, as shown later, lie elsewhere. Hong Kong, Britain, and China Hong Kong emerged in 1841, during the First Opium War, as a British “frontier settlement” on the “edge” of the British Empire and the Qing Empire, the latter ruling China from 1644 to 1912.40 As an entrepôt Hong Kong, before the communist takeover of the Mainland in 1949, had been the “British bridgehead” (before being overshadowed by Shanghai in the 1850s) and part of the British “informal empire” in China—which was characterized by British free trade imperialism and control without largescale conquest or annexation.41 After World War II, Hong Kong had become the British “redoubt” in China.42 Moreover, Hong Kong was a British crown colony that constituted Britain’s formal empire in Asia, which also reached Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. Hong Kong was “Britain’s last colonial stronghold,” its political transfer to the PRC signifying the “British imperial sunset in Asia.”43 Throughout the British colonial period from 1841 to 1997 (except the Japanese occupation period, 1941–1945), Hong Kong was politically, economically, socially, and cultur39  See, for example, Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, “The Mainlandization and Recolonization of Hong Kong,” 219. 40  The terms “frontier settlement” and “edge of empires” are Tsai Jung-fang’s and John M. Carroll’s, respectively; see John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires; Tsai Jung-fang, Hong Kong in Chinese History. 41  Robert Bickers, Britain in China; Robert Bickers, “The Colony’s Shifting Position”; Britten Dean, “British Informal Empire”; Jürgen Osterhammel, “Britain and China”; Jürgen Osterhammel, “China”; Jürgen Osterhammel, “Semi-Colonialism and Informal Empire.” 42  Robert Bickers, Book review of Imperialism Revisited. 43  Association for Radical East Asian Studies, Hong Kong; Dietmar Rothermund, The Routledge Companion to Decolonization, 99–101.

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ally intertwined with the metropole of London, with British settlements and institutions on the Mainland, and with other British possessions in Asia and beyond.44 In 1945–1997 Hong Kong, as Mark Hampton has shown, still witnessed British cultural engagement and various aspects of Britishness.45 Not only a chapter of British imperialism and colonialism, modern Hong Kong is also an important chapter of Chinese history from the late Qing period through the Republican era (1912–1949) to the Communist epoch starting in 1949.46 The British government and Chinese people in Hong Kong maintained close links with their counterparts in the Mainland’s various regions, especially the neighboring Guangdong Province. Since the beginning of British rule in Hong Kong in 1841, the “indigenous” political powers in Guangdong and on the Mainland at large have included the Qing state, Republican regional administrations, the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) government, and the PRC regime.47 Hong Kong has also maintained multifarious relationships—via trade, remittance, and social organizations—with Taiwan and Macau (which, with Hong Kong and the Mainland, constitute “Greater China”) as well as the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, America, and other regions across the globe.48 Hong Kong has developed dynamic triangular relations with Britain and the Chinese Mainland, played strategic roles in international relations (during the Cold War, for example) and, as a global metropolis and an “in-between place,” forged worldwide connections.49 44 

Robert Bickers, “Loose Ties that Bound.” Mark Hampton, Hong Kong and British Culture. 46  The most representative work that contextualizes nineteenth-century and early twentieth-­century Hong Kong in modern Chinese history is Tsai Jung-fang’s Hong Kong in Chinese History: Community and Social Unrest in the British Colony, 1842–1913. 47  For books demonstrating political, economic, and social links between British Hong Kong and Guangdong, see Chan Lau Kit-ching, China, Britain and Hong Kong; Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing; Stephanie Po-yin Chung, Chinese Business Groups in Hong Kong; Deng Kaisong and Lu Xiaomin, Yue-Gang guanxi shi; Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok and Alvin Y. So, The Hong Kong–Guangdong Link. 48  On Hong Kong–Taiwan relations, see Lin Man-houng, “Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Pacific”; Luo Xiangxi, 1949 nian yilai; Steve Tsang, The Cold War’s Odd Couple, 165–185. On Hong Kong’s linkage with the Chinese in China and the Chinese diaspora across the globe, see Takeshi Hamashita, “China and Hong Kong in the British Empire”; David R. Meyer, Hong Kong as a Global Metropolis; Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing; Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity. 49  Book-length studies illustrating Hong Kong–Britain–China relations and the significance of British Hong Kong in international relations include Chan Lau Kit-ching, China, Britain and Hong Kong; Ming K. Chan, Precarious Balance; David Clayton, Imperialism Revisited; Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War; Steve Tsang, The Cold War’s Odd Couple, 165– 186; Andrew Whitfield, Hong Kong, Empire and the Anglo-American Alliance; Franco David 45 

Introduction

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While nearly all the following chapters address Hong Kong–Britain– China relations,50 part 2 reassesses the trilateral relationships from unconventional perspectives. In chapter 4, Zardas Shuk-man Lee explores Cold War politics in Hong Kong cinemas.51 Lee details film censorship by the British Hong Kong government from the late 1940s to the 1960s to illustrate tensions between Communist China and Kuomintang Taiwan, between the PRC (backed by the Soviet Union until the 1950s) and US-supported Britain, and between the communist and capitalist blocs at large.52 For example, at the height of Maoist China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and the concomitant leftist-instigated anti-British riots throughout Hong Kong in 1967, some local communists in the film industry campaigned (unsuccessfully) against official film censorship, accusing the British authorities of oppressing CCP supporters and colluding with the United States and Taiwan.53 But later, with the improved British-Mainland relations and détente in the late 1960s and early 1970s, political censorship of PRC films in Hong Kong loosened. Meanwhile, as administrative localization developed quickly after the 1967 Riots, more and more Chinese in Hong Kong participated in film censorship that revolved around moral issues. In addition to great power clashes and local politics, Lee pays attention to cooperation in film censorship within the British Empire in the Far East, that is, among the British governments of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Federation of Malaya. Whereas Lee highlights Cold War confrontations in Hong Kong, David Clayton narrates in chapter 5 a story of generally cordial relations between the British Hong Kong and the Mainland authorities at a local level by unraveling Hong Kong’s diplomacy with Guangdong Province to solve water

Macri, Clash of Empires in South China; Michael Share, Where Empires Collided; Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong; Christopher Sutton, Britain’s Cold War in Cyprus and Hong Kong; Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. Also see David R. Meyer, Hong Kong as a Global Metropolis; Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing. 50  The exception is chapter 9, which mostly concerns Hong Kong–Mainland China relationship after 1997. 51  For an introduction to Hong Kong’s film industry during the Cold War, see Fu Poshek, “Cold War Politics.” 52  On Chinese Nationalist and Communist activities in postwar Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s roles in the Cold War, see Chan Man Lok, “Between Red and White”; Cindy Yik-yi Chu, Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists; Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War; Steve Tsang, The Cold War’s Odd Couple, 165–186; Steve Tsang, “Strategy for Survival.” 53  On the 1967 Riots, see Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, May Days in Hong Kong; Gary Ka-wai Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed.

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shortage from the late 1950s to the 1960s.54 Putting this in perspective, the negotiation on water supply is one of the many occasions—a most dramatic one being the eventual suppression of the 1925–1926 G ­ uangzhou– Hong Kong Strike-Boycott—on which the British Hong Kong government cooperated with the Guangdong authorities for the territory’s social stability.55 Nevertheless, political-social turmoil on the Mainland often impaired Hong Kong–Guangdong relations in the British colonial period. For example, the major exception to the mostly amicable “water diplomacy” under Clayton’s purview is the interruption to the importation of water from Guangdong to Hong Kong at the high tide of the Cultural Revolution and the associated 1967 Riots, when the provincial authorities terminated communication with Hong Kong regarding water supply.56 Another restraint on the negotiation over Guangdong’s water provision to Hong Kong, Clayton argues, was the suspicion of British officials in London and Hong Kong that Communist China would exploit the issue to propagandize among the local Chinese and “raise the issue of Hong Kong’s sovereignty during talks about the exchange of water.”57 From the PRC’s establishment in 1949 to the early 1970s, what lingered in London’s official minds was Hong Kong’s future status and whether the territory, being contiguous to the Mainland and thus thought to be indefensible in face of PRC attacks, should be retained or abandoned.58 For the British Hong Kong authorities, the sovereignty question loomed large before the 1997 Handover. Alan Smart and Lui Tai-lok contend that in the aftermath of the 1967 Riots, which has often been regarded as “Hong Kong’s watershed,” the local British administration endeavored to “boost public confidence and to secure hegemonic leadership before China raised questions concerning the future of Hong Kong.” “The social reforms” in the 1970s, Smart and Lui continue, “were therefore part of the preparation work for the forthcoming negotiations with the Chinese [i.e., the PRC]” on Hong Kong’s political future.59 From the 1980s to 1997, issues concerning Hong 54  In discussing the 1963–1964 “water crisis,” Mark Hampton also touches upon Hong Kong–Guangdong relations, but his focus is on how the Hong Kong administration managed the crisis; see Hong Kong and British Culture, 121–124. 55  On the Hong Kong–Guangdong relations during the 1925–1926 Strike-Boycott, see Chan Lau Kit-ching, China, Britain and Hong Kong, 169–219. Also see John M. Carroll’s Edge of Empires, 131–158, for the roles of the Chinese elite in subduing the strife. 56  Also see Christine Loh’s Underground Front, 109–110, on Guangdong’s water supply to Hong Kong in 1967. 57  Also see Mark Hampton, Hong Kong and British Culture, 121–122. 58  Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War; Mark Chi-kwan, “Lack of Means”; Mark Chi-kwan, “Defence or Decolonisation?” 59  Ray Yep and Robert Bickers, “Studying the 1967 Riots,” 14; Alan Smart and Lui Tai-lok, “Learning from Civil Unrest.”

Introduction

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Kong’s post-Handover status were significant variables in British rule in the territory and also in UK-PRC relations.60 In chapter 6, Leo F. Goodstadt traces the financial importance of Hong Kong for the Mainland from the early twentieth century to the present. Goodstadt argues that since the early twentieth century, British Hong Kong had enjoyed considerable fiscal and financial autonomy from London thanks to its “independent management of the currency,” vigorous banking, and ability to defy London’s policy directives, among other factors. This facilitated Hong Kong to become a world-class manufacturingfor-export economy until the 1970s. Given its financial autonomy, Hong Kong has grown into the Mainland’s “irreplaceable” international financial center that helped the PRC survive the Cold War embargoes and economic sanctions from the 1950s to the early 1970s and launch the “reform and opening up” policy since 1978. In the early twenty-first century, Hong Kong has also contributed to transforming the renminbi into a global currency and helped the PRC “become a major force in the world’s financial affairs.”61 Being economically important for the Mainland, pre-1997 Hong Kong, though adjoining the Mainland as a British enclave, was actually not as “precarious” or “vulnerable” as some scholars claim.62 Because of this importance, Goodstadt concludes, “the CCP’s concern for the national interest will ensure the continuing survival of the British colonial legacy for some decades to come, both in its political institutions and its financial arrangements.”63 The three chapters in part 2 point to a considerable degree of autonomy from the metropole (i.e., London) enjoyed by the postwar British Hong Kong government in policy formulation and implementation.64 Lee’s and Goodstadt’s chapters indicate the Hong Kong government’s autonomy in film censorship and the financial sector, respectively. Clayton’s chapter shows that in the late 1950s and 1960s, the local administration launched its water policy “with minimal interference from the London government” and often negotiated directly with the Guangdong authorities on 60 

Ian Scott, Political Change; Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, 211–267. On the evolution of Hong Kong as an international financial center and its banking system, see Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics and Panics; Y. C. Jao, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre; Catherine R. Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre. 62  Ming K. Chan, Precarious Balance; Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War; Mark Chi-kwan, “Lack of Means.” 63  On the economic roles of Hong Kong in the PRC since the latter’s open-door policy, see Sung Yun-Wing, The China–Hong Kong Connection; Sung Yun-Wing, The Emergence of Greater China. 64  For the autonomy of Hong Kong from the London government in the prewar period, see Norman Miners, Hong Kong under Imperial Rule. 61 

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water importation. In fact, the Hong Kong government’s “colonial autonomy” (Goodstadt’s and Robert Bickers’s term) was inherent in the British Empire.65 Similar to many other British colonial officials across the globe, “Hong Kong’s British administrators,” as Bickers notes, “acted locally with a high degree of recognised functional autonomy based on a set of fundamental instructions and regulatory guidelines. They were bound to London, but the ties that bound were unavoidably loose.”66 The London government (which contained different departments), British official representatives on the Mainland, and the local colonial administration often held different interests and concerns about Hong Kong. As Lee’s chapter shows, during the Cold War’s first two decades or so, the film censorship policy of the Hong Kong authorities, who prioritized the territory’s stability, sometimes diverged from the instructions of London’s Colonial Office (incorporated into the Commonwealth Office in 1966), which oversaw the Hong Kong government and sought to prevent it from exercising excessive power. Even if endorsed by the Colonial Office, Hong Kong’s local policy differed frequently from the opinion of British diplomats in Mainland China, who, accountable to London’s Foreign Office (which enlarged and became the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1968), placed their relations with the Mainland-based regimes above Hong Kong’s stability and development.67 Sometimes the metropole even acted in ways that were perceived to be detrimental to Hong Kong, the devaluation of the British pound in 1967 being one standout example.68 Yet, when Hong Kong officials and British imperial bureaucrats disagreed, Whitehall, though theoretically holding the power to veto local policies and legislation, found it arduous to direct, let alone dominate, the actions of the Hong Kong government. For example, after World War II the Hong Kong authorities, Goodstadt argues, “successfully avoided demands to enforce the United Kingdom’s statutory controls on foreign exchange transactions.”69 “Opportunities for manipulation” by the Hong Kong government, administrative officer-turned-historian Gavin Ure con65 

Robert Bickers, “Loose Ties that Bound.” Robert Bickers, “Loose Ties that Bound,” 51. 67  Robert Bickers, “The Colony’s Shifting Position,” 47; Chan Lau Kit-ching, China, Britain and Hong Kong; Ray Yep and Robert Bickers, “Studying the 1967 Riots,” 5. 68  Catherine R. Schenk, “The Empire Strikes Back.” 69  Elsewhere Goodstadt also argues for the high financial and fiscal autonomy enjoyed by the British Hong Kong administration in the postwar period, which can be traced back to prewar times; see “Fiscal Freedom”; Profits, Politics and Panics; Uneasy Partners. Also see Prasenjit Duara, “Hong Kong and the New Imperialism”; Catherine R. Schenk, “The Empire Strikes Back,”; Gavin Ure, Governors, Politics and the Colonial Office, 191–215. In another essay, David Clayton argues that in the late 1950s and early 1960s, London imposed on Hong Kong locally undesirable labor laws, and the British proposals were diluted, delayed, and often 66 

Introduction

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tends, “existed through skilful presentation of information [to London] or through obfuscation or delay.”70 Mark Chi-kwan relates the administrative autonomy of postwar British Hong Kong to British decolonization in the territory.71 Other scholarship, however, suggests that the relationship is tenuous or even nonexistent. While British decolonization accelerated in Hong Kong throughout the postwar era, Ure persuasively argues that there was “no clear linear progression in the development of the Hong Kong government’s autonomy” from London (and also from unofficial members of the territory’s Legislative and Urban Councils).72 Although Ure focuses on early and midtwentieth-century Hong Kong, his argument is also applicable to the last three decades of British rule in the territory. Ian Scott contends that the reforms launched during Murray MacLehose’s governorship (1971–1982) consolidated the government’s legitimacy in the aftermath of the 1967 Riots, and his tenure, which preceded the 1982–1984 Sino-British negotiation on Hong Kong’s sovereignty issues, signified a high degree of “governmental autonomy” from both London and the local business and professional elite.73 The MacLehose administration’s autonomy, Ray Yep and Lui Tai-lok argue, lay in the fact that the governor, a “reluctant reformer,” could resist the demand for more rapid social reforms from London’s Labour government.74 However, after the Sino-British negotiation—where Hong Kong was not formally represented—and the conclusion of the Joint Declaration in 1984, “[t]he Hong Kong government’s scope for action was more restricted, particularly in such areas as constitutional development and the economy.”75 The 1984 declaration, on the other hand, “fundamentally changed the role of the British government from that of the colonizing power to that of a de-colonizing power.”76 In short, from the 1970s to the 1984–1997 transitional period, the evolution of Hong Kong’s administrative autonomy did not coincide with the evolving British decolonization in the territory. While the autonomy of the postwar British Hong Kong administration did not develop linearly, after 1997 Hong Kong has witnessed the increasing efforts of the PRC to circumscribe its administrative autonomy. evaded in the territory by the colonial administration and local business groups; see “From ‘Free’ to ‘Fair’ Trade.” 70  Gavin Ure, Governors, Politics and the Colonial Office, 2. 71  Mark Chi-kwan, “Development without Decolonisation?” 72  Gavin Ure, Governors, Politics and the Colonial Office. 73  Ian Scott, Political Change, 81–170. 74  Ray Yep and Lui Tai-lok, “Revisiting the Golden Era of MacLehose.” 75  Ian Scott, Political Change, 324. 76  Ian Scott, Political Change, 23–24.

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The HKSAR’s “high degree of autonomy” has been officially enshrined in the Basic Law under the principle of “one country, two systems,” the two systems being the PRC’s “socialist system” and Hong Kong’s “capitalist system.” Devised by Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of the post– Cultural Revolution PRC and the “chief architect” of its economic reforms, the design can be traced back to Beijing’s establishment of relations with Tibet in the 1950s as an experiment for Mainland China’s peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan.77 Despite the constitutional guarantee for the HKSAR government’s autonomy, in the aftermath of the 2003 anti–Article 23 mass protests, the PRC, reiterating its sovereignty and ultimate rule over Hong Kong, has been increasingly resolute in delimiting the extent of the territory’s administrative autonomy.78 A white paper by the PRC’s State Council on “one country, two systems” in 2014 stressed that “[t]he high degree of autonomy of the HKSAR is not full autonomy, nor a decentralized power. It is the power to run local affairs as authorized by the central leadership.”79 In a Basic Law forum in late May 2017, Zhang Dejiang 張德 江, leader of the CCP’s Central Coordination Group for Hong Kong and Macau Affairs, clarified the Beijing–Hong Kong relationship as “that of delegation of power, not power-sharing.” “Under no circumstances,” he continued, “should the central government’s powers be confronted in the name of a high degree of autonomy.”80 Whereas Beijing kept a low profile in the HKSAR administration before the 2003 mass demonstration, in its aftermath the Mainland Chinese regime has shown increasing determination to intervene in Hong Kong’s political, economic, and social development. Hong Kong’s economic policies, for example, have become progressively subordinate to Beijing’s economic planning. Although the Basic Law states that “[t]he socialist system and policies shall not be practised” in the HKSAR, since the 1997 Hand­ over Hong Kong has been included in the PRC’s five-year plans, which characterize CCP China’s planned economy. Moreover, in recent years PRC leaders have on various occasions publicly directed Hong Kong’s future planning, repeating, for example, the local needs for strengthening national education (more on this later) and policies that enhance the

77  Hung Ho-fung and Kuo Huei-ying, “‘One Country, Two Systems.’” Moreover, as Goodstadt aptly argues in this volume, “[t]he Basic Law has actually increased Hong Kong’s autonomy in managing currency and financial affairs compared with the British colonial era.” 78  Ma Ngok, “Negotiating Democracy and ‘High Autonomy.’” 79  State Council, People’s Republic of China, “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy.” 80  South China Morning Post, May 27, 2017.

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country’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative.81 If Hong Kong’s autonomy is a function of what Ray Yep calls “adaptation, negotiation, and accommodation between the sovereign state and the local administration,” the HKSAR administration has become less autonomous as it has become more adapted to PRC rule and accommodated Mainland influence in the territory while continuing to lose ground for negotiation with the CCP authorities.82 Yet, it would be hasty to equate, as some scholars do, the PRC’s intervention into Hong Kong affairs and its circumscription of the territory’s autonomy with the PRC/CCP colonization of Hong Kong.83 The CCP Beijing government has in many ways intruded into the provinces’ and autonomous regions’ local affairs and limits their administrative autonomy, but it is hard to argue that the PRC’s central-local relations on the Mainland are invariably colonial.84 So, are there any aspects in which PRC rule in post-1997 Hong Kong has been colonial? If so, what are they? These questions are associated with the meaning of “PRC colonialism,” which will be discussed later. Illuminating British Decolonization in Hong Kong Postdating the British “imperial retreat” from China that started in the 1920s, British decolonization in Hong Kong was triggered by the Japanese occupation of 1941–1945.85 World War II, however, did not result in the total collapse of British colonialism in Hong Kong. As Felicia Yap has shown elsewhere, in wartime “British imperial values” did not cease to exist in Japanese Hong Kong and Japanese-occupied territories in Southeast Asia formerly ruled by Britain. The interned colonial officials were determined to restore British rule in (or “recolonize”) Hong Kong.86 After the war, the British interned by the Japanese in Hong Kong “not only returned and took up the threads where they had left off, but they did so with new 81 

One recent example is the speech by President Xi Jinping 習近平 at the inauguration ceremony for the new HKSAR government on July 1, 2017, during his visit to Hong Kong for the twentieth anniversary of the Handover; see Oriental Daily, July 1, 2017. 82  Ray Yep, “Understanding the Autonomy of Hong Kong,” 7. 83  Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, “The Mainlandization and Recolonization of Hong Kong”; Ian Scott, “Political Transformation in Hong Kong.” 84  For discussions on centralization and provincial autonomy within the PRC, see Lam Tao-chiu, “Central-Provincial Relations.” 85  On British “imperial retreat” from and decolonization in China, see Robert Bickers, “The Colony’s Shifting Position”; Edmund S. K. Fung, The Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat; Jürgen Osterhammel, “China.” 86  Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 189–205; Felicia Yap, “A ‘New Angle of Vision.’ ”

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visions for their imperial mission.”87 While the year 1945 saw the British recolonization of Hong Kong and a “resurgence of British morale,” British decolonization had been underway in Hong Kong throughout the postwar period before the British political withdrawal in 1997.88 Part 3 of this volume reveals the sociocultural dimensions of decolonization, retrocession, and PRC (re)colonization. In chapter 7, Felicia Yap narrates the history of the communities of Portuguese (most born in Macau, a Portuguese settlement in southern China from the mid-sixteenth century to the sovereignty transfer to the PRC in 1999), Eurasians, and Baghdadi Jews in Hong Kong. Yap argues that the 1941–1945 Pacific War is a watershed in the evolution of the three communities as it catalyzed their eventual dispersal in the postwar period. Inhabiting “the ambivalent middle strata between Europeans and Asians” and sometimes overlapping with them, the three communities in Yap’s study characterized Hong Kong society in the prewar British colonial period. While “most members of the three communities,” Yap argues, “tended to regard Hong Kong as their main long-term abode” before World War II, the Japanese occupation brought about their disintegration. European decolonization across Asia in general and political-social turmoil in Mainland China and Hong Kong in particular, most notably the 1949 communist takeover and the 1967 Riots, threatened the economic interests as well as the social lives of the three communities and thereby contributed to their breakdown. In the aftermath of the 1967 Riots, “most of the few remaining members were gradually woven into the larger fabric of Hong Kong society through intermarriages with the local Chinese (or with other migrant communities), causing a further dissolution of the once distinctive identities of the three communities.” Yap’s chapter complements the relatively small scholarship on the social aspects of British decolonization in Hong Kong. In academic dis­ cussions on Hong Kong’s British decolonization, the main themes include European decolonization and waves of anti-colonialism across the world, international geopolitics (particularly the dynamic relations between Britain, the United States, Mainland China, and Taiwan during the Cold War), the global British imperial decline and retreat, London politics, and the “China Factor,” that is, all kinds of influence of the contiguous Mainland on Hong Kong. Attention has also rested on Britain’s relations with Hong Kong and politics on the “periphery,” with a huge body of ­literature on London’s ability and will to retain Hong Kong; postwar Hong Kong’s constitutional development, administrative localization, and 87  88 

Felicia Yap, “A ‘New Angle of Vision,’” 105. Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 310–327.

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democratization endorsed by London; and the territory’s political transition leading up to the Handover after the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Britain’s transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to the PRC in 1997 has been widely considered the climax of British decolonization in the territory.89 The essentially British-, Western-, or great power–centered approach in the foregoing literature has greatly advanced our understanding of Britain’s decolonization of Hong Kong,” that is, the metropole’s role in decolonizing its only colonial possession in postwar East Asia. In fact, as literature on twentieth-­century decolonization elsewhere has demonstrated, decolonization is not limited to a matter for the metropole and of high politics; it also entails the evolution of society, economy, and culture on the “periphery.”90 In other words, British decolonization in Hong Kong involves not only international relations, London politics, and local political-administrative development, but also the social, economic, and cultural evolution of Hong Kong. There is certainly scholarship on Hong Kong’s society and culture in the context of British decolonization. Educationalists have examined changes in Hong Kong’s education in the transitional period.91 In a recently published monograph, Mark Hampton contextualizes British culture and the British community in postwar Hong Kong in Britain’s decolonization, among other international, regional, and local contexts.92 While Hampton’s focus remains on the British, Felicia Yap looks at the three “noncolonizing” communities of Eurasians, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jews. The three communities’ disintegration starting from the Japanese invasion constitutes a significant social facade of British decolonization in Hong Kong. As for Hong Kong culture, the enormous body of scholarship on Hong Kong’s art, literature, design, popular culture, and local identity since the 1970s in the “postcolonial” context has illustrated many aspects of the culture shared among the Hong Kong Chinese in the postwar period.93 The notions of “postcolonial” and “postcoloniality” are certainly 89 

Ming K. Chan, “The Politics of Hong Kong’s Imperfect Transition”; John Darwin, “Hong Kong in British Decolonisation”; Brian Hook, “National and International Interests”; Mark Chi-kwan, “Defence or Decolonisation?”; Mark Chi-kwan, “Development without Decolonisation?”; Mark Chi-kwan, “Lack of Means”; Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War; Ian Scott, Political Change; Ian Scott, “Political Transformation in Hong Kong”; James T. H. Tang, “From Empire Defence to Imperial Retreat.” 90  For discussions on different dimensions of decolonization, see John Darwin, “Decolonization and the End of Empire”; Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel, Decolonization. 91  Law Wing-Wah, “The Accommodation and Resistance”; Gerard A. Postiglione, “The Decolonization of Hong Kong Education.” 92  Mark Hampton, Hong Kong and British Culture. 93  Rey Chow, “Between Colonizers”; David Clarke, Hong Kong Art; Klaus Stierstorfer,

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Western imports, and Hong Kong was still politically colonial on the eve of the Handover, when the local people enjoyed no self-determination but only limited participatory democracy while the government remained essentially autocratic.94 Nevertheless, further dialog between scholars of British decolonization and scholars of cultural and postcolonial studies in the Hong Kong context would advance our understanding of the sociocultural aspects of British decolonization in Hong Kong. On postwar Hong Kong’s economy and finance, scholars have examined, among many other topics, the weakening of British merchant groups and the rise of Cantonese and Shanghai businesspeople, local financial policies and banking, the China Factor on the Hong Kong economy, and Hong Kong’s roles in the “colonial monetary system” and “sterling economy” with the City of London as the center.95 Few of the discussions, however, have closely linked these economic factors, features, and development to British decolonization in Hong Kong. In fact, rather than London’s efforts to decolonize Hong Kong’s economy after World War II, scholars have placed more emphasis on the territory’s “imperial financial links.” Catherine R. Schenk has shown that after the sterling devaluation debacle in 1967, “the huge size of Hong Kong’s sterling assets meant that the colony was able to ‘strike back’ at its imperial master” and force the British government to alter subtly its sterling policy to the benefit of banks based in the British possession.96 Moreover, existing scholarship suggests that financial and fiscal autonomy and British decolonization in postwar Hong Kong did not necessarily coexist. In the early twentieth century, when Hong Kong’s British decolonization had yet to begin, the colonial administration and banks, as Goodstadt has argued in chapter 6, had already enjoyed a high degree of financial autonomy from London.97 What is more, little is known about London’s economic and financial relations with Hong Kong from the 1970s to the eve of the Handover. The economic trajectory of British decolonization in Hong Kong, in short, is far from clear. Further research on the subject is required. “1997”; Tam Kwok-kan, “Identity on the Bridge”; Wendy Siuyi Wong, “Design Identity of Hong Kong.” 94  Starting to develop as late as the mid-1980s, limited representative government remains a British colonial legacy that, twenty years into the Handover, still looms large in Hong Kong politics. 95  Wong Siu-lun, Emigrant Entrepreneurs; Leo F. Goodstadt, “Fiscal Freedom”; Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics and Panics; Leo F. Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners; Y. C. Jao, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre; David R. Meyer, Hong Kong as a Global Metropolis; Catherine R. Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre. 96  Catherine R. Schenk, “The Empire Strikes Back,” 579. 97  Also see Prasenjit Duara, “Hong Kong and the New Imperialism.”

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After the Handover, the local populace has played an important role in maintaining or transforming British colonial legacies and thus conditioning British decolonization in the territory. As Lam-Knott’s chapter shows, many Hong Kong Chinese have preserved the prestige of English after 1997 partly to enhance their own socioeconomic status and partly to resist the elevation (official and unofficial alike) of Mandarin. Not only to pursue their own personal interests, local people have employed some British colonial heritage also to counter the Mainland Chinese presence in Hong Kong. They have, for example, upheld the rule of law as a “core value” (hexin jiazhi 核心價值) of Hong Kong (see Jones’s chapter) to highlight the territory’s political, social, and cultural difference with, and superiority over, Mainland China. In recent years, some nostalgic localists vehemently opposing the CCP and calling for an unrealistic reversion to British rule even wave in public the Blue Ensign of Hong Kong, a British colonial symbol officially discarded on the day of sovereignty transfer. Yet, interestingly, the general public and the ruling authorities in Hong Kong have held similar stances on some British colonial legacies. For example, though having different considerations, both of them have treasured the civil servant system, which is traceable to the 1860s. The participation of Hongkongers in erasing, prolonging, or even reviving British colonial heritage and their interaction with the PRC as well as the HKSAR administration in the process are important variables in the development of British decolonization in post-Handover Hong Kong. PRC supporters have repeatedly called for decolonization in post-1997 Hong Kong. In an article titled “Decolonization Is an Imperative” (“Qu zhiminhua shi dangwu zhi ji 去殖民化是當務之急”) in a 2017 issue of Wide Angle (Guangjiaojing 廣角鏡), a Hong Kong political journal freely circulated in Mainland China, the author calls for Hong Kong’s complete decolonization of local education, removal of British colonial elements from all institutions as well as the names of roads and buildings, and elimination of foreign judges.98 As Law Wing Sang argues, decolonization means “not only a change of political sovereignty but also a transformation of the society and culture that had sustained the colonial power relationship.” Considering Law’s perspective on decolonization and the evolution of British colonial heritage in Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s British decolonization may never end because many British colonial legacies define modern Hong Kong society and culture.99 98 

Ye Lishan, “Qu zhiminhua shi dangwu zhi ji.” On this, Law Wing Sang’s discussion elsewhere on the lingering presence of colonialism in Hong Kong is illuminating. He argues that decolonization (or “the dismantling of coloniality”) in Hong Kong is difficult because the indigenization of colonial power in the postwar 99 

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Does Hong Kong fit in the global trend of British decolonization and decolonization in general? John Darwin, who has written extensively on the British Empire and British decolonization, argues in his 1997 essay titled “Hong Kong in British Decolonisation”: “if we define decolonisation more generously and realistically as the breakdown of an international colonial order embracing formal and informal empire, and possessing diplomatic, international-legal, economic, demographic and cultural attributes, then Hong Kong’s twentieth-century history looks much less strange.”100 In the same volume Brian Hook, however, emphasizes the uniqueness of British decolonization in Hong Kong.101 Echoing Hook’s essay, Robert Bickers even contends that “Hong Kong’s predicament was ultimately unique within the wider landscape of British colonialism, and the wider processes of decolonization.”102 Many Hong Kong studies academics also underline the unique characteristics of British decolonization in the territory.103 Understandably, local studies scholars often stress their localities’ specificities. British decolonization in Hong Kong has certainly been underway in a specific context, but we should avoid the pitfall of labeling events and processes as exceptional when explaining Hong Kong’s British decolonization and Hong Kong history at large (even though the history of every region is unique in some ways). Apart from global and regional geopolitics and the metropole’s roles, to which scholars of British decolonization in Hong Kong have already paid much attention, the aspects that are useful to compare and connect decolonization in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the world, as this volume shows, include the evolution of colonial legacies in society, social composition (e.g., the transformation of communities), the economic structure, and the evolution of local culture and people’s identity. To sum up, the Hong Kong case demonstrates that decolonization is a dynamic and multifaceted process that involves both macro- and micropolitics, both the metropole and the “periphery,” both government and society, and the thoughts and actions of both the “colonizer” and the “colonized” as well as those in between. One has to consider all these factors to draw a full picture of British decolonization in Hong Kong. period has brought about the deep-rooted and multifaceted colonial structure in Hong Kong; see Collaborative Colonial Power. 100  John Darwin, “Hong Kong in British Decolonisation,” 29. Darwin’s representative works on the British Empire and British decolonization include Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World, The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970, and Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain. 101  Brian Hook, “National and International Interests.” 102  Robert Bickers, “Loose Ties that Bound,” 51. 103  For example, see Roger Buckley, Hong Kong; John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 7; Lau Siu-kai, Decolonization without Independence.

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Retrocession and PRC (Re)Colonization During the one-and-a-half-decade run-up to the 1997 Handover, the Mainland authorities and many Chinese people in Hong Kong employed huigui (“return” or “retrocession”) as an irredentist discourse to refer to the “reunification” of Hong Kong with its “homeland,” thereby legitimizing the PRC’s claim over the “resumption” of the territory’s sovereignty. Rather than focusing on such a political-juridical sense of “return,” Law Wing Sang examines in chapter 8 writings by intellectuals and students and elucidates the sociocultural meanings of huigui for different groups of Chinese in Hong Kong from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, before the question of Hong Kong’s political future started to be widely discussed in local society.104 He examines the urge to revive “traditional” Chinese cultural practices and values during the cultural Cold War among the “Chinese diaspora” in Hong Kong, that is, those who fled the Chinese communist regime for the British-ruled territory. They included southbound anticommunist New Confucian (xin Rujia 新儒家) scholars such as Tang Junyi 唐君毅, who espoused Chinese cultural conservatism and distanced himself from Hong Kong’s social conditions. Later, during Maoist China’s Cultural Revolution, local communist sympathizers in Hong Kong, for example those whom Law calls the “homelandist” (guocuipai 國粹派) college students, supported the rationalist, statist idea of actively participating in the modernization of the “real” “Red China” and joined the Defend the Diaoyu Islands Movement as well as the “Know the Mother Country” Movement. This motherland-bound “reunification movement” ran contrast to the emergent concern for Hong Kong affairs in the late 1960s and 1970s among the Hong Kong–born Chinese who held a growing sense of local identity and rejected abstract slogans “about rebuilding China, reunification, and bearing the cultural yoke.” At the chapter’s end, Law briefly discusses the hope for “democratic reunification” among the Hong Kong Chinese who advocated both democracy and nationalism in the lead-up to the 1997 Handover. They saw huigui as “a prediction or description of some inescapable reality or fate waiting ahead” rather than “a term about existential and philosophical choices” back in the 1960s and 1970s.

104  Some discussions in Law’s chapter in this volume developed from his seminal book on collaborative colonialism in Hong Kong; see Collaborative Colonial Power, 131–148. For studies on the wide array of discourses surrounding the British handover of Hong Kong to the PRC in the transitional period, see Jan Servaes and Sankaran Ramanathan, “Reporting the Hong Kong Transition”; Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner, “The Contest over Hong Kong”; Shi-xu, “Unfamiliar Voices from the Other”; Lee Cher-Leng, “Media and Metaphor”; Wang Hongzhi, Lishi de chenzhong; Lawrence Wang-chi Wong, “Narrating Hong Kong History.”

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Law’s chapter is entitled “Reunification Discourse and Chinese Nationalisms.” Despite the 1997 Handover, some pro-PRC historians and public figures, as Law notes and Lawrence Wang-chi Wong has discussed, have still called for Hong Kong’s “cultural retrocession,” that is, “the return of people’s hearts” from the former British colonizer to the motherland through reinforcing among the local Chinese the national identity deemed appropriate by the PRC.105 The promotion of Mandarin in the HKSAR discussed in Sonia Lam-Knott’s chapter has been widely considered one of the official efforts to nurture among the Hong Kong youth a sense of national identity endorsed by the Mainland Chinese regime. Such indoctrinating efforts are exemplified in the operation of the National Education Centre, which was established in Hong Kong’s Tai Po District in 2004 in the aftermath of the 2003 anti-government protests and was closed in 2013. Kevin Carrico’s ethnographic inquiry into the center in chapter 9 reveals its key function of teaching Hong Kong primary and secondary school students how to become patriotic and nurturing among them the PRC’s “orthodox” national identity. “[B]y examining how the National Education Centre promotes an official vision of Hong Kong identity as a naturalized Chineseness,” Carrico demonstrates “how the center enacts a colonizing process of national identification under the guise of decolonization.”106 In Heather Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz’s Empires and Colonies in the Modern World: A Global Perspective (2016), the last chapter includes a section titled “A Modern Chinese Empire?,” which briefly discusses the PRC’s economic engagement with Africa, expansion to the South China Sea, “One China Policy” against Taiwan, and, related to this volume, rule in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong.107 It is not the first academic work to explore the colonial elements of CCP rule in the PRC’s “peripheral” regions. Michael Hechter, in his 1975 study of the asymmetrical cultural and economic relationships between England and Britain’s “Celtic Fringe,” popularized the idea of “internal colonialism.”108 Once widely applied to illuminate various forms of uneven development, underdevelopment, and dependent relations (often in terms of rural-urban divide) in both developed countries and the “Third World,” the conceptual framework has been enhanced and employed in some studies on Qing, Nationalist, and Communist rule in China’s “peripheries” including Guizhou Province 105  Wang Hongzhi, Lishi de chenzhong, 42–46; Lawrence Wang-chi Wong, “Narrating Hong Kong History,” 200–201. 106  Also see Gordon Mathews, Eric Kit-wai Ma, and Lui Tai-lok, Hong Kong, China, 78–94, on national education in post-Handover Hong Kong. 107  Heather Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz, Empires and Colonies in the Modern World, 508–515. 108  Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism.

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and Tibet in the southwest and Xinjiang in the west, as well as the relations of these regions and people therein with the central authorities.109 In the scholarship, the peripheral territories are considered “internal colonies” where colonization, sanctioned by the China-based regimes or not, predated the PRC’s establishment in 1949 and has continued afterward.110 In literature on internal colonialism in China, one main topic concerns the central authorities’ imposition of state ideologies and specific—often discriminatory and oppressive—policies upon the culturally distinctive ethnic groups (or minority nationalities, shaoshu minzu 少數民族) in the peripheral regions. This brought about a “hierarchical cultural division of labor” where “members of some ethnic groups disproportionately cluster in low or high status occupations,” and also local resistance.111 Scholars have also examined the official construction of ethnicity in which “indigenous” people were considered and represented as “others” that shared a distinct culture. The economic aspects of internal colonialism in China include regional economic division, the central authorities’ economic exploitation of the peripheries, and the peripheries’ economic dependence upon the central administration. The internal colonies, particularly the border regions, also witnessed the migration of the Han Chinese from China proper as well as their political domination over and socioeconomic superiority to local ethnic groups. Has post-Handover Hong Kong been the PRC’s internal colony in the sense that the features presented here describe Hong Kong after 1997? To answer this question, I shall first discuss whether the Hongkonger is an ethnic group. As literature on ethnicity in Hong Kong and China from early modern to contemporary times has demonstrated, ethnic grouping is not a rigid classification but rather a malleable, socially con­ structed category. While the state categorizes people into different eth­ nic groups or minority nationalities, people form, deform, and reform 109 

David Drakakis-Smith and Stephen Wyn Williams, Internal Colonialism; Special Issue on Internal Colonialism; John Walton, “Internal Colonialism”; Harold Wolpe, “The Theory of Internal Colonialism.” 110  Ingri Kværne Amundsen, “Chinese Tibet”; Dru C. Gladney, Dislocating China, ­360–367; Dru C. Gladney, “Internal Colonialism and the Uyghur Nationality”; Dru C. Gladney, “Inter­ nal Colonialism and China’s Uyghur Muslim Minority”; David Goodman, “Guizhou and the People’s Republic of China”; Timothy S. Oakes, “Tourism in Guizhou.” For studies on statesanctioned or unofficial colonization of China’s peripheries in the early modern and modern periods, for example, the Ming, Qing, and Nationalist eras, see Tonio Andrade, How Taiwan Became Chinese; John E. Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist; Peter C. Perdue, “Comparing Empires”; J. E. Spencer, “Kueichou”; Emma Jinhua Teng, Taiwan’s Imagined Geography; Wang Yi, “Transforming the Frontier.” For criticism of applying the concept of internal colonialism to studying the PRC’s border regions, see Barry Sautman, “Is Xinjiang an Internal Colony?” 111  Barry Sautman, “Is Xinjiang an Internal Colony?,” 244.

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ethnic boundaries via various means based on changing political, social, and economic circumstances.112 On the one hand, the Mainland authorities have propagated, and many of the Hong Kong Chinese historically and culturally affiliated with China have thought, that the Chinese on the Mainland and the Chinese in Hong Kong have the same origin. This is different from the cases of the PRC’s peripheral regions, where the minority nationalities’ distinct culture has been underscored or even constructed. On the other hand, since 1997, and particularly in the past half decade, many of the Hong Kong Chinese who feel threatened by and resist PRC rule have been actively constructing the Hongkonger as a separate ethnicity (zuqun 族群). Upholding a strong local identity and localist agendas, they have defended modern Hong Kong’s distinct culture and “core values” to highlight the difference and thus to demarcate ethnic boundaries between themselves and the Mainlanders (neidiren 內地人 or daluren 大陸 人), who have been considered homogeneous “others” regardless of their diverse regional and socioeconomic backgrounds. In recent years, those arguing that the Hong­konger is a nation (minzu 民族) and clamoring for self-­determination and independence have also based the nationality formation on Hong Kong’s local culture and identity.113 What, then, is the identity—be it national or cultural—held by Hong Kong people today? As Allen Chun argues, culture is essentially a discourse subjectively embraced by people upon which their identity is constructed.114 Law Wing Sang’s chapter indicates that, historically, different Chinese in Hong Kong—from intellectuals fleeing the Mainland to the locally born—advocated different kinds of “Chinesenesses” and Chinese nationalisms. Many Chinese elites in Hong Kong built their pro-China nationalist thoughts upon their British colonial experience.115 At least since the 1970s, many Hong Kong Chinese have, to different extents, identified themselves with China as a sociocultural entity (but not as a political regime) on the one hand, and have on the other hand deeply based their identity on the political, cultural, and social attributes of British rule or the British colonial legacies they have treasured, for example the rule of law

112  C. Fred Blake, Ethnic Groups and Social Change; Dru C. Gladney, Ethnic Identity in China; Hung Ho-fung, “Identity Contested”; Agnes Tat Fong Liu, “Negotiating Social Status”; Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation; Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton, Empire at the Margins. 113  Erlingyisan niandu Xianggang daxue xueshenghui xueyuan, Xianggang minzu lun. 114  Allen Chun, “Fuck Chineseness.” Chun’s arguments in this important article evolved into his recently published monograph, Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification. Due to the publication schedule, I am unable to engage with the book here. 115  John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires; Law Wing Sang, Collaborative Colonial Power, 79–148.

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(see Jones’s chapter) and a relatively incorrupt society.116 They have also been proud of the symbols, traits, or qualities widely thought to be authentically “Hong Kong” or “local” (bentu 本土). One excellent example is their obsession with the Cantonese dialect and its mixture into English in daily lives, for example in the classroom, as Lam-Knott illustrates in her analysis of “code-mixing”and “Hong Kong Speak.” Many Hong Kong people emphasize local culture (which is ever-changing) to form a distinct identity, using symbols, traits, or qualities—tangible and intangible alike—to differentiate themselves from Mainlanders. For example, as Jones argues in chapter 3, the belief of many local people in the rule of law has become “a means of distinguishing Hongkongers from Mainlanders, a marker of their distinctive identity.” Interestingly, from the 1960s to the Handover, British rule also contributed to forming and consolidating Hong Kong people’s local identity and hardening the difference between the Hong Kong Chinese and the Mainland Chinese, by measures such as fighting corruption, the abolition of the “Touch Base Policy” (dilei zhengce 抵壘政 策) against illegal Chinese immigrants, and issuing identity cards to the Chinese from the Mainland who were allowed to reside in the territory.117 In short, since 1997, and in the last half decade in particular, an identity rooted in the previous British rule and the notion of Hongkonger as an ethnicity has been rapidly emerging among many local people. Their “conscious struggles over belonging to a nation” in the post-Handover period suggest that at least a substantial part of the Hong Kong Chinese— of both the older and younger generations—have yet to hold the national identity promoted by the Mainland authorities in the territory.118 In this regard, the PRC’s efforts to indoctrinate Hong Kong students (predominantly Chinese) in a “legitimate” version of national identity or “Chineseness” (elaborated in Carrico’s chapter) can be regarded as one of the PRC’s efforts in replacing the pre-1997 set of national, political, and cultural values held by the Hong Kong Chinese with a new set after the Handover. The PRC’s imposition of its own form of national belonging upon the ethnically distinct people in Hong Kong constitutes one main feature of “internal colonialism” in China. Moreover, given that this PRC patriotic education in post-Handover Hong Kong involves reshaping the local identity deeply grounded in the British colonial heritage, it is a good example of 116 

Xiao Fengxia, “Xianggang zaizao”; Gordon Mathews, “Heunggongyahn”; Gordon Mathews, Eric Kit-wai Ma, and Lui Tai-lok, Hong Kong, China, 22–57. 117  John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 172–176; John M. Carroll and Mark Chi-kwan, “Introduction,” 11; Agnes S. Ku, “Negotiating Laws”; Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, 190–196. 118  Gordon Mathews, Eric Kit-wai Ma, and Lui Tai-lok, Hong Kong, China.

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the inseparability of British decolonization and PRC colonization in Hong Kong since 1997.119 The usefulness of internal colonialism as a conceptual tool in explaining the relationship between Mainland China and Hong Kong should not be overestimated, however. As in other PRC peripheral regions inhabited by seemingly culturally distinct ethnic groups, post-Handover Hong Kong has seen the official elevation of Mandarin, which, Sonia Lam-Knott argues in chapter 2, is “indicative of a nation-building/nationalizing project.” Nevertheless, the pervasiveness and successfulness of this government policy should not be exaggerated. In post-1997 Hong Kong, while Mandarin has been promoted in schools and in society at large, English has remained an official language and has been widely privileged, for example in the legal sector. Many local people have resisted the spread of Mandarin (see Lam-Knott’s chapter) in order to resist what they perceive as colonial rule by the CCP. In the eyes of PRC officials, the local resistance to Mandarin shows that culturally speaking Hong Kong has not yet “returned to the homeland.” Economically, many scholars and public figures have asserted that Hong Kong’s growing economic dependence on the Mainland after 1997, and in the aftermath of the 2003 mass demonstration in particular, characterizes the Mainlandization or CCP colonization of the territory.120 They argue that the PRC’s preferential economic policies toward Hong Kong, for example the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) signed in 2003, serve to establish and strengthen Hong Kong’s economic reliance on the Mainland. While this parallels the PRC’s economic relationships with the regions regarded as its internal colonies, modern Hong Kong’s economic reliance on the Mainland is in fact traceable to as early as the first days of British rule, when the territory was established as a free port for Western trade with China.121 The economic dependence has been determined by both Hong Kong’s geographical proximity and its socioeconomic linkage to the Mainland. As Goodstadt notes, in the British colonial period the United Kingdom appreciated that “Hong Kong’s survival depended on its economic ties with the Mainland” and granted the territory financial autonomy “to adjust official policies and its business culture to match the changing Mainland environment.” There are deep historical roots in Hong Kong’s economic integration 119 

Another good example of the concurrence of British decolonization and PRC recolonization in Hong Kong concerns the evolution of the territory’s education in the transitional period; see Law Wing-Wah, “The Accommodation and Resistance.” 120  Carol A. G. Jones, Lost in China?, 1–40; Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, “The Mainlandization and Recolonization of Hong Kong.” 121  Gary Chi-hung Luk, “The Opium War,” 222–223.

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with Mainland China in general and with Guangdong Province’s Pearl River Delta in particular, which has accelerated since the PRC’s economic reforms launched in the late 1970s. What is more, economic relations between Hong Kong and the Mainland since the Handover have been neither unilaterally dependent nor exploitative. Generally speaking, different from all the other regions described as China’s internal colonies, Hong Kong is more economically advanced than China proper. Rather than being allocated a subordinated regional economic role, Hong Kong has remained an “indispensable international financial center” for Beijing (in Goodstadt’s words) and leading city within the PRC that facilitates the development of Mainland China’s economy and—under the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, for example— its linkage to the world. Hong Kong and the Mainland, as shown in Clayton’s and Goodstadt’s chapters as well as numerous other studies, have a long history of socioeconomic interdependence: while Hong Kong has relied on the Mainland for provisions and water (which Clayton styles as “regionalism”), Hong Kong has provided to the PRC much needed foreign exchange, other kinds of capital, and financial service.122 Hong Kong’s necessity for economic help from the Mainland is in fact less a reality than a discourse that boosts the PRC’s image and legitimacy in the territory after 1997. Moreover, not all major economic policies in post-1997 Hong Kong have been dictated by Beijing. Hong Kong has certainly been included in the PRC’s central and regional economic planning, as mentioned previously. Economic policies initiated by the HKSAR government (e.g, public spending on infrastructure construction) have usually been passed in the local Legislative Council, which has still been far from fully democratic, with pro-establishment members as the majority. Nevertheless, the Legislative Council, thanks to a significant number of opposition members, has sometimes been able to ban government financial proposals, for example the funding of the reorganization of the senior administration in 2012. Furthermore, the opposition councilors have been vocal critics of the policies widely perceived as designs for Hong Kong–Mainland economic integration, such as the allocation of money for the construction of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge and the Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong Express Rail Link. 122  See, for example, Catherine R. Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre, 2, 12, 14. Similarly, London’s economic relations with British Hong Kong in the twentieth century were far from unilaterally exploitative but were in many ways dependent. Britain needed Hong Kong, the second largest overseas sterling holder in 1967, to support its sterling economy and, before 1949 and after 1978, promote British business interest in China. See Robert Bickers, “The Colony’s Shifting Position”; Catherine R. Schenk, “The Empire Strikes Back.”

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Another central feature of internal colonialism in China concerns the Han Chinese’s migration from China proper to border regions and political and socioeconomic supremacy over local, culturally distinct ethnic groups. Many scholars and Hong Kong public figures take it for granted that the large-scale arrival of the Mainland Chinese characterizes the PRC or CCP colonization of post-1997 Hong Kong. They argue that the Mainland authorities manipulated the One Way Permit Scheme (under which up to one hundred fifty Mainland Chinese per day could settle in Hong Kong with the One Way Permit granted by the PRC authorities) to facilitate massive Mainland Chinese migration. In fact, the One Way Permit Scheme has its historical origin in 1980, when the British Hong Kong government canceled the Touch Base Policy and adopted stricter immigration control after negotiating with Beijing and Guangdong. Thirty-seven years into the scheme’s establishment, which straddles the Handover, there has been no major change to it, its main official goal remaining “facilitating family reunification at a rate that Hong Kong’s economic and social infrastructure can absorb without excessive strain.”123 It is thus untenable to argue that the One Way Permit Scheme is a deliberate PRC state policy devised to colonize the HKSAR. Moreover, putting in perspective Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong, the post-1997 immigration is in fact much smaller in scale than the immigration waves of the 1960s, such as the one during Maoist China’s Great Leap Forward and Great Famine (1958–1962). In May 1962, it was estimated that more than fifty thousand entered Hong Kong through the Mainland–Hong Kong border in a matter of six weeks.124 This figure is roughly equal to the annual quota of the One Way Permit since 1995. In fact, from the first day of British rule, Hong Kong society has always been characterized by a huge number of Chinese immigrants from the Mainland. Mainland Chinese tourists, dubbed by many Hong Kong people “locusts” as they allegedly damage the local socioeconomic fabrics, have come in great numbers since 2003, when the “Individual Visit Scheme” started under CEPA. Yet, as they mostly stay in Hong Kong for only a short time, their large-scale arrival cannot be considered an aspect of the PRC’s colonization of the territory. As for the new immigrants from the Mainland, they have enjoyed no political or socioeconomic superiority over the local people. Enshrined in the Basic Law is the principle of “Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong” (Gangren zhi Gang 港人治港), under which the first four chief executives were the former leader of a shipping 123  John Bacon-Shone, Joanna K. C. Lam, and Paul S. F. Yip, The Past and Future of the One Way Permit Scheme, 4–5. 124  Tsang Shun-fei, “Border Control in Colonial Hong Kong.”

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company headquartered in Hong Kong (i.e., Tung Chee-hwa), two British Hong Kong civil servants (Donald Tsang Yam-kuen 曾蔭權 [r. 2005–2012] and Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor 林鄭月娥 [r. 2017–]), and a local professional elite who came of age before 1997 (i.e., Leung Chun-ying 梁振英). Socioeconomically, many new Chinese immigrants, rather than maintaining the use of Mandarin and their Mainland lifestyles, have attempted to adapt to the new living environment by learning Cantonese, going to local schools, and finding local jobs, thereby incorporating into the local Chinese community. The vast majority of the new immigrants have enjoyed no occupational advantage over the local people. Rather, they work in various sectors, with quite a number of them at low-paid jobs. The cultural division of labor thus does not exist among the locally born Hong Kong Chinese and the Chinese newcomers. The Future of Hong Kong: British or Mainland Chinese? Since 1997, Hong Kong people have imagined the territory’s future in a variety of ways. At one end, some are confident that thanks to the one and a half centuries of British rule, the ingrained “core values” and distinct culture of Hong Kong will last long. At the other end, many are worried that Hong Kong will become nothing more than a Mainland Chinese city. What will Hong Kong become in 2047, when the “one country, two systems” cherished in the existing Basic Law expires? The history of Weihaiwei under British and Chinese rule may cast light on the future development of Hong Kong.125 In 1898, when Britain leased the New Territories from the Qing state and put it under the Hong Kong colonial administration, Britain also acquired the leasehold of Weihaiwei, a port at the eastern tip of Shandong Province. Ruling this “semi-colonial backwater of northern China” for thirty-two years, the British left many tangible and intangible legacies in Weihaiwei, such as government buildings, roads, its free port status and concomitant prosperous waterborne trade, as well as the land-tax, police, and judicial systems.126 On October 1, 1930, the British surrendered Weihaiwei to the Kuomintang-led Nationalist government, even though the local Chinese population, the British thought, was generally content with their rule. On the eve of the Japanese 125  Discussions on British and Chinese rule in Weihaiwei in this paragraph and the next are based on Pamela Atwell’s British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers: The British Administration of Weihaiwei (1898–1930) and the Territory’s Return to Chinese Rule and Clarence B. Davis and Robert J. Gowen’s “The British at Weihaiwei: A Case Study in the Irrationality of Empire.” 126  Peter Wesley-Smith coined the term “semi-colonial backwater of northern China”; see Unequal Treaty, 10.

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attack in 1938, many Chinese people in Weihaiwei still felt nostalgic for British rule and sought protection from the British navy stationed nearby. Turning the former British leasehold of Weihaiwei into a special administrative zone under the central government’s direct control, the new Nationalist rulers intended to “transform the area into a model of enlightened administration.”127 While retaining some of the British legacies in Weihaiwei, the police system for instance, the Nationalist authorities eradicated many other British patrimonies, for example its free port status and English words on the stones marking the former leasehold boundaries. The Kuomintang’s party administration, moreover, was introduced into the region. After the 1938–1945 period of Japanese rule (under which a special administrative region was also established), Weihaiwei was “liberated” in 1945 by the Chinese Communist Party, which, after 1949, incorporated the territory into the PRC’s provincial administration in Shandong.128 Nowadays the British heritage in Weihaiwei has been reduced to a few European-style buildings employed for tourism and administrative purposes. Weihaiwei is nothing more than a coastal Mainland Chinese city where no one misses British rule or regards PRC rule as colonial. Will Hong Kong become another Weihaiwei? If so, how long will it take? References Abe, Kaori. “The City of Intermediaries: Compradors in Hong Kong from the 1830s to the 1880s.” Ph.D. diss., University of Bristol, 2014. ———. Chinese Middlemen in Hong Kong’s Colonial Economy, 1830–1890. London: Routledge, 2017. Allen, Jamie. Seeing Red: China’s Uncompromising Takeover of Hong Kong. Singapore: Butterworth-Heinemann Asia, 1997. Amundsen, Ingri Kværne. “Chinese Tibet: Tibet Autonomous Region’s Path to Welfare Colonialism.” Master’s thesis, University of Oslo, 2011. Andrade, Tonio. How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Association for Radical East Asian Studies. Hong Kong: Britain’s Last Colonial Stronghold. London: Association for Radical East Asian Studies, 1972.

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——— and Lui Tai-lok, eds. Consuming Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001. ———, Eric Kit-wai Ma, and Lui Tai-lok, eds. Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008. Meyer, David R. Hong Kong as a Global Metropolis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Miners, Norman. “Foreword.” In Pamela Atwell, British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers: The British Administration of Weihaiwei (1898–1930) and the Territory’s Return to Chinese Rule, vii–xiv. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985. ———. Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, 1912–1941. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987. Mullaney, Thomas S. Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Munn, Christopher. Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1880. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Ng, Jason Y. Umbrellas in Bloom: Hong Kong’s Occupy Movement Uncovered. Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books, 2016. Ng, Kwai Hang. The Common Law in Two Voices: Language, Law, and the Postcolonial Dilemma in Hong Kong. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Ng, Margaret Ngoi-yee. “Post-Handover Rule of Law—A New Interpretation.” In Chris Yeung, ed., Hong Kong China: The Red Dawn, 99–119. Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1998. Oakes, Timothy S. “Tourism in Guizhou: The Legacy of Internal Colonialism.” In Alan A. Lew and Lawrence Yu, eds., Tourism in China: Geographic, Political, and Economic Perspectives, 203–222. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Oriental Daily [Dongfang ribao 東方日報]. 2017. Osterhammel, Jürgen. “Britain and China, 1842–1914.” In Andrew Porter, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century, 146–169. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ———. “China.” In Judith M. Brown and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 4, The Twentieth Century, 643–666. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ———. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. Trans. Shelley L. Frisch. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005. ———. “Semi-Colonialism and Informal Empire in TwentiethCentury China: Towards a Framework of Analysis.” In Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities, 290–314. London: German Historical Institute, 1986.

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Perdue, Peter C. “Comparing Empires: Manchu Colonialism.” In Lars Laamann, ed., Critical Readings on the Manchus in Modern China (1616–2012), vol. 2, 553–562. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Postiglione, Gerard A. “The Decolonization of Hong Kong Education.” In Ming K. Chan and Gerard A. Postiglione, eds., The Hong Kong Reader: Passage to Chinese Sovereignty, 98–123. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. Rothermund, Dietmar. The Routledge Companion to Decolonization. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2006. Sautman, Barry. “Is Xinjiang an Internal Colony?” Inner Asia 2, no. 2 (2000): 239–271. Servaes, Jan, and Sankaran Ramanathan. “Reporting the Hong Kong Transition: A Comparative Analysis of News Coverage in Europe and Asia.” In Shi-xu, Manfred Kienpointner, and Jan Servaes, eds., Read the Cultural Other: Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong’s Decolonization, 73–88. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. Schenk, Catherine R. “The Empire Strikes Back: Hong Kong and the Decline of Sterling in the 1960s.” Economic History Review 57, no. 3 (2004): 551–580. ———. Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre: Emergence and Development, 1945–65. London: Routledge, 2001. Scott, Ian. Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989. ———. “Political Transformation in Hong Kong: From Colony to Colony.” In Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok and Alvin Y. So, eds., The Hong Kong–Guangdong Link: Partnership in Flux, 189–223. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995. Share, Michael. Where Empires Collided: Russian and Soviet Relations with Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2007. Shi-xu. “Unfamiliar Voices from the Other: Exploring Forms of Otherness in the Media Discourses of China and Hong Kong.” In Shi-xu, Manfred Kienpointner, and Jan Servaes, eds., Read the Cultural Other: Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong’s Decolonization, 119–138. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. ——— and Manfred Kienpointner. “The Contest over Hong Kong: Revealing the Power Practices of the Western Media.” In Shi-xu, Manfred Kienpointner, and Jan Servaes, eds., Read the Cultural Other: Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong’s Decolonization, 89–102. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. ———, Manfred Kienpointner, and Jan Servaes, eds. Read the Cultural Other: Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong’s Decolonization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005.

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Sinn, Elizabeth. “Hong Kong as an In-between Place in the Chinese Diaspora, 1849–1939.” In Donna R. Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, eds., Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s, 225–247. Leiden: Brill, 2011. ———. Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013. ———. Power and Charity: A Chinese Merchant Elite in Colonial Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Smart, Alan, and Lui Tai-lok. “Learning from Civil Unrest: State/Society Relations in Hong Kong before and after the 1967 Disturbances.” In Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, eds., May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, 145–159. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Snow, Philip. The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. South China Morning Post. 1989–1990, 2017. Special Issue on Internal Colonialism, Ethnic and Racial Studies 2, no. 3 (1979). Spencer, J. E. “Kueichou.” Pacific Affairs 13, no. 2 (1940): 162–172. State Council, People’s Republic of China. “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.” June 10, 2014. Available at http://www. fmcoprc.gov.hk/eng/xwdt/gsxw/t1164057.htm. Stierstorfer, Klaus. “1997: The Decolonization of Hong Kong in Contemporary Fiction in English.” In Rüdiger Ahrens et al., eds., Anglophone Cultures in Southeast Asia: Appropriations, Continuities, Contexts, 173–180. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2003. Streets-Salter, Heather, and Trevor R. Getz. Empires and Colonies in the Modern World: A Global Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Sung, Yun-Wing. The China–Hong Kong Connection: The Key to China’s Open-Door Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. The Emergence of Greater China: The Economic Integration of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Sutton, Christopher. Britain’s Cold War in Cyprus and Hong Kong. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Tam, Kwok-kan. “Identity on the Bridge: Double (De)Colonization in the Hong Kong Poet Gu Cangwu.” In Theo D’Haen and Patricia Krüs, eds., Colonizer and the Colonized, 65–77. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000.

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Tang, James T. H. “From Empire Defence to Imperial Retreat: Britain’s Postwar China Policy and the Decolonization of Hong Kong.” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 2 (1994): 317–337. Teng, Emma Jinhua. Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683–1895. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004. Tsai, Jung-fang. “Comprador Ideologists in Modern China: Ho Kai (Ho Ch’i, 1859–1914) and Hu Li-Yuan (1847–1916).” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1975. ———. Hong Kong in Chinese History: Community and Social Unrest in the British Colony, 1842–1913. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. ———. “The Predicament of the Comprador Ideologists: He Qi (Ho Kai, 1859–1914) and Hu Liyuan (1847–1916).” Modern China 7, no. 2 (1981): 191–225. Tsang, Shun-fei. “Border Control in Colonial Hong Kong, 1958–1962.” M.Phil. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2010. Tsang, Steve. “Commitment to the Rule of Law and Judicial Indepen­ dence.” In Steve Tsang, ed., Judicial Independence and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong, 1–18. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001. ———. The Cold War’s Odd Couple: The Unintended Partnership between the Republic of China and the UK, 1950–1958. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006. ———. Democracy Shelved: Great Britain, China, and Attempts at Constitutional Reform in Hong Kong, 1945–1952. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988. ———. Governing Hong Kong: Administrative Officers from the Nineteenth Century to the Handover to China, 1862–1997. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. ———. A Modern History of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. ———. “Strategy for Survival: The Cold War and Hong Kong’s Policy towards Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Activities in the 1950s.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25, no. 2 (1997): 294–317. ———, ed. Judicial Independence and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001. Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945– 1992: Uncertain Friendships. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994. Ure, Gavin. Governors, Politics and the Colonial Office: Public Policy in Hong Kong, 1918–58. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. Vines, Stephen. Hong Kong: China’s New Colony. London: Orion Business, 1999.

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Vukovich, Daniel. “The End of ‘Re-Colonization’: On Hong Kong, Knowledge, and G.O.D.” Neohelicon 39 (March 2012): 167–182. Walton, John. “Internal Colonialism: Problems of Definition and Measurement.” In Wayne A. Cornelius and Felicity M. Trueblood, eds., Urbanization and Inequality: The Political Economy of Urban and Rural Development in Latin America, 29–50. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1975. Wang Hongzhi 王宏志 [Lawrence Wang-chi Wong]. Lishi de chenzhong: Cong Xianggang kan Zhongguo dalu de Xianggangshi lunshu 歷史的沉 重: 從香港看中國大陸的香港史論述 [The burden of history: A Hong Kong perspective of the Chinese Mainland discourse of Hong Kong history]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2000. Wang Yi. “Transforming the Frontier: Land, Commerce, and Chinese Colonization in Inner Mongolia, 1700–1911.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2013. Weihaishi difang shizhi bianzuan weiyuanhui 威海市地方史志編纂委員 會. Weihaishi zhi 威海市志 [Gazetter of Weihai city]. Ji’nan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 1986. Wesley-Smith, Peter. “Anti-Chinese Legislation in Hong Kong.” In Ming K. Chan, ed., Precarious Balance: Hong Kong between China and Britain, 1842–1992, 91–105. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. ———. Unequal Treaty, 1898–1997: China, Great Britain, and Hong Kong’s New Territories. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1980. Whitfield, Andrew. Hong Kong, Empire and the Anglo-American Alliance at War, 1941–45. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001. Wolpe, Harold. “The Theory of Internal Colonialism: The South African Case.” In Ivar Oxaal, Tony Barnett, and David Booth, eds., Beyond the Sociology of Development, 229–252. London: Routledge, 1975. Wong, Lawrence Wang-chi. “Narrating Hong Kong History: A Critical Study of Mainland China’s Historical Discourse from a Hong Kong Perspective.” In Shi-xu, Manfred Kienpointner, and Jan Servaes, eds., Read the Cultural Other: Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong’s Decolonization, 197–210. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. Wong, Siu-lun. Emigrant Entrepreneurs: Shanghai Industrialists in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988. Wong, Wai-kwok. “Can Co-optation Win over the Hong Kong People? China’s United Front Work in Hong Kong since 1984.” Issues & Studies 33, no. 5 (1997): 102–137. 
 Wong, Wendy Siuyi. “Design Identity of Hong Kong: Colonization, De-Colonization, and Re-Colonization.” The Sixth International Conference of the European Academy of Design Conference Proceedings. CD-ROM. Bremen, Germany: University of the Arts, 2005.

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Xiao Fengxia 蕭鳳霞 [Helen F. Siu]. “Xianggang zaizao: Wenhua rentong yu zhengzhi chayi 香港再造: 文化認同與政治差異” [Hong Kong remade: Cultural identity and political difference]. In Wu Junxiong 吳俊雄 [Ng Chun Hung] and Zhang Zhiwei 張志偉 [Cheung Chi Wai], eds., Yuedu Xianggang puji wenhua, 1970–2000 閱讀香港普及文化, 1970–2000 [Reading Hong Kong popular cultures, 1970–2000], 703–713. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002. Yanne, Andrew, and Gillis Heller. Signs of a Colonial Era. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Yap, Felicia. “A ‘New Angle of Vision’: British Imperial Reappraisal of Hong Kong during the Second World War.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42, no. 1 (2014): 86–113. Ye Lishan 葉麗珊. “Qu zhiminhua shi dangwu zhi ji 去殖民化是當務之急” [Decolonization is an imperative]. Guangjiaojing 廣角鏡 [Wide angle] 534 (March 2017): 52–55. Yep, Ray. “‘Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong’: Emergency Powers, Administration of Justice and the Turbulent Year of 1967.” Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 4 (2012): 1007–1032. ———. “Understanding the Autonomy of Hong Kong: Looking beyond Formal Institutions.” In Ray Yep, ed., Negotiating Autonomy in Greater China: Hong Kong and Its Sovereign before and after 1997, 1–25. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2013. ———, ed. Negotiating Autonomy in Greater China: Hong Kong and Its Sovereign before and after 1997. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2013. ——— and Robert Bickers. “Studying the 1967 Riots: An Overdue Project.” In Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, eds., May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, 1–18. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. ——— and Lui Tai-lok. “Revisiting the Golden Era of MacLehose and the Dynamics of Social Reforms.” In Ray Yep, ed., Negotiating Autonomy in Greater China: Hong Kong and Its Sovereign before and after 1997, 110–141. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2013.

Part I.  British Colonial Legacies

ONE

The Comprador System in NineteenthCentury Hong Kong

KAORI ABE

Throughout the nineteenth century, the compradors, Chinese middlemen who served foreign institutions, were a crucial part of the Chinese business elite in Hong Kong. In this chapter, I highlight how the nineteenthcentury compradors were an archetype of current Hong Kong business elites. “Comprador” (maiban 買辦) generally refers to a Chinese middleman who worked with foreign firms. In East Asia and Southeast Asia, the main duty of the comprador was mediation in business between foreign principals and Chinese merchants. In Hong Kong, many of the prominent compradors employed by major foreign firms and banks, such as Jardine Matheson & Co. and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), became key commercial figures and social benefactors in the territory. The compradors accumulated wealth within a short time, by working in foreign firms and running multiple side businesses. At the same time, prominent compradors styled themselves as Chinese community leaders by organizing, funding, and managing various benevolent institutions and activities. Obtaining reputations in both the commercial world and the local Chinese community, the compradors played formidable roles in the economy and society of nineteenth-century Hong Kong. The socioeconomic roles of the Hong Kong commercial elites, who are often intermediaries between Chinese and foreign companies, resemble those of the nineteenth-century compradors in the British colony. Water Cheung 張宗永, a notable investment banker in present-day Hong Kong, observes that Hong Kong, as an international financial center, is and will always be a “city of compradors” (maiban chengshi 買辦城市): “What we [Hong Kong Chinese business people] sell in these years are always ‘Chinese applications of Western equipment [yangqi Zhong yong 洋器中用].’ These applications could be medicines during the Korean War period, personal computers during the 1980s in the early phase of economic reforms

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in China, and new shares [xingu 新股] in recent years.”1 As Cheung points out, the importation, processing, and exportation of foreign products to the Chinese market have historically been the main enterprises in Hong Kong. Further, Hong Kong’s key economic strength, the contemporary economic historian Sung Yun-Wing concluded, has resided in its role as a “middleman in commodity and services trade.” In the 1980s, many Hong Kong firms mediated between foreign and Chinese companies in a variety of businesses related to tourism, finance, and business consulting. After Mainland China’s economy was opened up to foreign companies in the early 1980s, foreign firms used the intermediation services of Hong Kong businessmen to penetrate the Chinese market, which was highly heterogeneous and complicated.2 From the 1840s to the present, Hong Kong businesspeople have mediated business between China and foreign countries. The nineteenth-century compradors were the forebears of present-day intermediaries. The career of the Eurasian comprador Robert Ho Tung 何東 epitomizes the prosperity of compradors in Hong Kong from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. After receiving education in the Chinese and English languages in his adolescence, Ho Tung served in the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service, a foreign-run agency in Qing China (1644–1912), collecting tax in Guangzhou (Canton) from 1878 to 1880.3 After leaving the customs service, he joined Jardine, Matheson & Co. to become its comprador. Meanwhile, Ho Tung managed his private enterprises and achieved success in property broking and a sugar-trading enterprise by the 1910s.4 In the early 1930s, Ho Tung was an eminent philanthropist who served “almost every organization” that promoted the interests of the Chinese community in Hong Kong.5 Due to his significant roles in the economy and his contribution to several benevolent projects, Ho Tung was dubbed “Hong Kong’s Grand Old Man” in English newspapers in the colony from the 1930s to the 1950s.6 In late-nineteenth-century Hong Kong there were more than seventy compradors like Ho Tung who spoke English, worked in foreign firms, ran their own enterprises, and contributed to benevolent activities.7 1 

Zhang Zongyong, “Xianggang shi maiban chengshi.” Sung Yun-Wing, “The Pivotal Role of Hong Kong,” 1261, 1276–1277. 3  Zheng Hongtai and Wang Shaolun, Xianggang dalao, 23–32, 62–66. 4  “Sir Robert Ho Tung’s Career,” South China Morning Post and Hongkong Telegraph, April 27, 1956. 5  “The Golden Wedding of Sir Robert and Lady Ho Tung,” L14/9. 6  “Sir Robert Ho Tung Laid to Rest,” South China Morning Post and Hongkong Telegraph, May 3, 1956; “Hong Kong’s ‘Grand Old Man,’” Straits Times, April 14, 1932. 7  The China Directory, 47. 2 

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Since the 1910s, scholars have extensively investigated the economic roles of compradors in China. It is possible to divide the academic research on the compradors into two major trends. The first is the communist and nationalist intellectual trend in the early and mid-twentieth century, in which the compradors were regarded as a hindrance to China’s economic development or as “collaborators” of foreign imperial powers.8 Since the 1970s, Chinese researchers have begun to focus more on the compradors’ contributions to the modernization and industrialization of China. Hao Yen-p’ing’s comprehensive monograph, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, revised the negative ideological perceptions of the compradors.9 Reflecting the policy of opening up the Mainland Chinese economy led by Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平, the paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China from 1978 to 1992, from the 1970s Chinese-language studies investigating the compradors’ contribution to the internationalization of Chinese business proliferated.10 These works share two contradictory images of the compradors: as facilitators of the internationalization of the economy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and gatekeepers barring direct communication between foreign and Chinese business actors. While modern China researchers tend to focus on the compradors’ economic roles, scholars of Hong Kong history regard the compradors as an intermediary elite between the British colonial government and the Chinese community. Many monographs on the history of Hong Kong published after the 1980s examine the roles and activities of the compradors. John M. Carroll, for example, describes the comprador system as an “institutionalized system of collaboration” and introduces the prominent compradors’ economic roles and their engagement in philantrophic activities.11 Meanwhile, Elizabeth Sinn’s research reveals the compradors’ involvement in the founding and management of the Tung Wah Hospital in the nineteenth century.12 In 1872, the Hong Kong Chinese elite established the Tung Wah Hospital, with formal approval from the colonial government. The board members of the hospital, mostly the Chinese intermediary elite, organized medical services for the poor and the needy, as well as arranging philanthropic works.13 In scholarship on Hong Kong, therefore, the compradors have been regarded as elites who not only facilitated 8 

Zhang Ping, “Jindai maiban yanjiu zongshu,” 111–113. Also see Pao Kuang Yung, “The Comprador”; Ma Yinchu, “Zhongguo zhi maiban zhidu,” 166–169; Sha Weikai, Zhongguo maibanzhi. 9  Hao Yen-p’ing, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China. 10  Xie Wenhua, “Maiban yanjiu de huigu.” 11  John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 33–35. 12  Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity. 13  Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity, 1–6.

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economic development, but also supported the British governance of the local Chinese community. My research highlights the detailed process of the emergence of Hong Kong compradors, which has not yet been explored in studies on modern China and Hong Kong. In the historiography of modern China, many researchers have focused on the compradors’ work on the Mainland, especially in Shanghai and Tianjin. These China historians explore the compradors’ contribution to the Self-Strengthening Movement—the set of official projects in Qing China for the reformation of the country’s economy, military, and industry from 1861 to 1894.14 However, these narratives do not sufficiently capture the Hong Kong compradors’ socioeconomic activities, or their relationship with the neighboring Qing and the local British authorities. The political, economic, and judicial systems in Hong Kong were different from those of Qing China’s port cities. One main purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the uniqueness of the compradors based in Hong Kong. Scholars of Hong Kong history focus mainly on the lives of the prominent compradors who were categorized as elite. Their works suggest that the comprador system, that is, the employment relationship between foreign firms and Chinese agents, was consolidated in Hong Kong in the 1870s and the 1880s. By contrast, scant attention has been paid to the lives of obscure figures who were less successful or failed in business, or to the compradors who worked with colonial officials. Christopher Munn’s and Gary Chi-hung Luk’s research on political scandals and corruption in the Hong Kong colonial government in the mid-nineteenth century indicates the close relationships between the compradors and high-ranking colonial officials.15 In the nineteenth century, English-language newspapers frequently reported court cases between the compradors and their employers as well as abscondence by compradors who embezzled their principals’ money.16 By the 1880s, the prominent compradors had become indispensable intermediary elites for the majority of foreign firms in Hong Kong. Yet, foreign businessmen and the compradors often distrusted, misunderstood, and attempted to outsmart each other. How did the complicated dichotomous system of intermediation emerge, transform, and become consolidated in nineteenth-century Hong Kong? 14 

For example, see Wang Jingyu, Tang Tingshu yanjiu; Hu Bo, Xiangshan maiban yu jindai Zhongguo. 15  Christopher Munn, Anglo-China; Gary Chi-hung Luk, “Monopoly, Transaction and Extortion.” 16  “Comprador Question,” Hong Kong Daily Press, March 8, 1867; “The Disappearance of the Comprador of the Oriental Bank Corporation,” Hongkong Telegraph, April 27, 1882.

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To address this key question, in the following sections I begin with an analysis of why the British needed the comprador system in Hong Kong in the first place. I then explain the evolution of the comprador system in nineteenth-century Hong Kong in order to map out the emergence of the compradors as an elite business group in the British colony. The concluding section discusses the changes in the British comprador system in the first half of the twentieth century and its legacies in present-day Hong Kong.17 Compradors as Local Intermediaries in the British Empire in Asia The compradors can be categorized as one type of local intermediary working with the British Empire. British settlers often sought assistance from “native” middlemen to assist in the smooth administration of the informal and formal areas of the empire. Rather than bearing the full economic and political responsibility of direct rule over colonies, European imperial powers built “informal empires” through military, economic, and diplomatic activities in the nineteenth century. As the expansion of imperial socioeconomic networks involved ruling and managing the local communities, in practice it required “indigenous” middlemen in addition to European settlers.18 In these informal empires, European authorities drew on the support of local intermediaries who could streamline financial, administrative, and economic transactions pertinent to local communities. For the intermediaries, the foreign officials and businessmen provided new work opportunities to improve or maintain their social positions in “indigenous” societies. Ronald Robinson describes how these mediators were compelled to establish their positions in the colonial and indigenous societies: “collaborators had to perform one set of functions in the external or ‘modern’ sector yet needed to ‘square’ them with another, more crucial set in the indigenous society.”19 Foreign imperialisms doubled, and sometimes even multiplied, the social layers in existing local societies. By effectively coordinating the political-economic interests of different actors, the mediating elites established their authority in both foreign and local communities. 17 

In this chapter, the application of the term “comprador” is limited to the Chinese staff hired under the name of “comprador” or those calling themselves maiban. This definition of compradors does not include other Chinese intermediaries, such as shroffs, clerks, and interpreters in the Hong Kong government, Western firms, and foreign households. 18  John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade”; Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism,” 120–124; Edmund S. K. Fung, The Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat, 3. 19  Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism,” 121–122.

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For example, in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, elites in different sections of Islamic society, for instance Khatmia Muslims and the orthodox Muslim ulama, were employed to ensure the efficient governance of Sudan. The British attempted to cooperate with those local authorities to prevent a possible mass uprising of the neo-Mahdists, who were followers of Muhammad Ahmad, a Muslim leader of a religious revolt against Egyptian rule of Sudan in the 1880s. Similar to Khatmia Muslims and the orthodox Muslim ulama, the mediators accumulated wealth and improved their social status through collaboration with European settlers; many of them had an English education and some of them had graduated from schools in the metropolis.20 British officials and mercantile authorities developed a practice, policy, or system of drawing on the local mediators to assist in economic and political expansion and thus to maintain the empire. James Onley’s research on the pre-twentieth-century Persian Gulf also suggests a crucial role for local middlemen in the region. Partly because of the small number of British officers, the British hired “native” intermediaries to protect their own political and economic interests, as well as to govern local communities. Intermediaries in the Persian Gulf included Bania merchants (Indian Hindu merchants), members of reputable families in local societies, and Muslim merchants who had strong economic and political networks. These intermediaries cooperated with the British not only for business opportunities but also to raise their own social status. British officials in Persia and Arabia attempted to maintain political hegemony in the region by employing the political and economic intermediaries. However, this does not mean that the relationship between the British officials and the middlemen was consistently amicable. Although the local intermediaries were effective mediators for the British, they were also competitors in the commercial world. Nevertheless, the British officials continued to draw on the local intermediaries due to their efficacy in securing British economic and political interests in the Persian Gulf.21 Similarly, in nineteenth- and twentieth-century China, the British employed local intermediaries—the compradors. During this period, numerous compradors were employed by the majority of the foreign companies and organizations operating in colonial settlements and possessions, which included Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hong Kong. Because of the shortage of foreign staff who were familiar with the local dialects, customs, and business conditions of the Chinese market, British officials and traders employed the compradors, who could speak “pidgin” English and 20  21 

Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism,” 135–137. James Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj, 103.

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support Western mercantile activities in China.22 In the eighteenth century, the term “comprador” did not refer to economic middlemen. The word was originally from Portuguese and meant “purchaser.” British visitors to Southeast Asia reported the existence of various kinds of local staff in foreign houses in India; one of these was the comprador, whose duties included purchasing food from markets.23 The term “comprador” primarily meant purveyors of provisions who worked with European settlers in Asia. In Guangzhou, foreign visitors and traders also employed compradors as provision suppliers in the early eighteenth century.24 These suppliers of provisions gradually transformed their work, and they eventually turned into social and economic intermediaries in China after the First Opium War (1839–1842). Guangzhou had been an important center of foreign trade for a century before the First Opium War. As a result of the British military victory over China and the conclusion of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, the colony of Hong Kong and the five treaty ports of Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai were opened to Westerners.25 In addition to European traders, missionaries, and officials, Chinese people—especially Cantonese merchants and compradors—started migrating to the newly established ports.26 In the late nineteenth century, a comprador employed in a foreign firm played multiple roles: supervisor of the other Chinese staff, treasurer, and business assistant providing market intelligence to the foreign staff.27 Most commodity purchases for foreign merchants in China were made by compradors, who in return received a commission fee of 2 to 5 percent in addition to monthly salaries, which varied from 40 to more than 160 taels. Moreover, the compradors in major foreign firms were established merchants who ran multiple side businesses.28 Similar to the local intermediaries in the Persian Gulf, in Chinese treaty ports and Hong Kong the compradors were both indispensable business partners of and competitive rivals for the British by the 1880s. 22 

John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 33. Edward Ives, A Voyage from England to India, 50; Innes Munro, Narrative of the Military Operations, 27; Thomas Williamson, East India Vade-Mecum, 270. 24  Charles Lockyer, An Account of the Trade in India, 108. 25  John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 51; Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China, 84–85. 26  It is estimated that around 250 major compradors operated on the China coast in 1854, and by 1870 the number had risen to at least 350, in line with an increase in the number of foreign firms from 250 in 1854 to 550 in 1870. See Hao Yen-p’ing, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, 102. 27  Samuel Wells Williams, A Chinese Commercial Guide, 224–225. 28  Hao Yen-p’ing, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, 89–99. 23 

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The Evolution of the Comprador System in Hong Kong The comprador system—the cooperative and competitive relationship between foreign businessmen and Chinese middlemen—was transformed and consolidated in the Pearl River Estuary from the 1830s to the 1880s. Some of the first generation of compradors in Hong Kong worked in Guangzhou before the First Opium War. In the 1830s, under the Qing’s trade regulations, Western trade with China was limited to Guangzhou. The Qing government had restricted direct communication between foreigners and the local Chinese since the establishment of the “Canton System” in the mid-eighteenth century. Only Chinese merchants, interpreters, provision suppliers, and river pilots (navigators of foreign ships arriving at Huangpu port via the Pearl River) who obtained licenses from Qing officials were permitted to conduct business with foreigners.29 During the period of the Canton System, the compradors’ main duty was to provide provisions to the foreigners coming to Guangzhou. Qing local officials issued licenses to the compradors and supervised the compradors’ work. In the 1830s, there were two types of compradors who were licensed by the Qing authorities in Guangzhou: ship compradors and house compradors. Ship compradors provisioned foreign ships visiting Guangzhou, while house compradors stayed in foreign company houses in the city and supported the work of Western traders. The ship compradors were temporary provision suppliers whereas the house compradors worked with the foreign traders on a comparatively long-term basis.30 William C. Hunter, a business associate of American merchants in China, observed the roles of the licensed compradors during his stay in Guangzhou in the late 1830s.31 He stated: The most important Chinese within the Factory was the Compradore. He was secured by a Hong merchant [a licensed Chinese merchant] in all that related to good conduct generally, honesty and capability. All Chinese employed in any factory, whether as his own “pursers,” or in the capacity of servants, cooks, or coolies, were the Compradore’s “own people”; they rendered to him every “allegiance,” and he “secured” them as regards good behaviour and honesty.32

29 

John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 46–51; Li Hongbin, Order to Hong Merchants, June 5, 1831, FO 1048/31/40; Nanhai magistrate surnamed Sheng 陞, Order to Hong Merchants, May 20, 1831, FO 1048/31/37. 30  Paul A. van Dyke, The Canton Trade, 51–75. 31  E. W. Ellsworth, “Journal of Occurrences at Canton,” 11–12. 32  William C. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton before Treaty Days, 53.

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Hunter’s description indicates that a comprador, who was a chief of the Chinese staff, was an essential employee for foreigners in Guangzhou before the First Opium War. Despite the Qing’s regulations and policies regarding commercial interactions between foreigners and local Chinese, the emergence of unlicensed provision purveyors was evident in the 1830s. Their rise was partly due to the Qing restriction on the number of official compradors, even though there had been a constant increase in foreign traders visiting Guangzhou.33 The imbalance in the number of licensed provision purveyors and foreign traders encouraged the unlicensed compradors to penetrate the provisioning market. For example, it was reported that Huang Cheye 黃車葉, a Chinese from Xiangshan 香山 District, which was approximately 145 kilometers south of Guangzhou, started serving foreign ships as a comprador without a license in 1834. In 1840, Wu Yaping 吳亞平, another unlicensed comprador from Xiangshan, was arrested because he was “privately employed by a barbarian called Tuchanfu 吐嘽咈 as a comprador.”34 The number of unlicensed compradors proliferated during the period of Sino-British hostilities from 1839 to 1842. Both Chinese and British records suggest that at least one hundred Chinese people sold provisions to the British Expedition and served as information agents during the war period. In 1839, an English-language newspaper reported that hundreds of “comprador’s boats” sold provisions to foreign ships at Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong.35 The political disturbances and the arrival of the British expeditionary force provided new working opportunities for the Chinese as provision purveyors, who styled themselves as “compradors” without the permission of the Qing government. The conclusion of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 fully terminated the Canton System and its concomitant licensed comprador system. Thereafter, a variety of private compradors, including ship compradors, house compradors, and company compradors, worked with foreigners in China’s treaty ports and British Hong Kong. After the British occupation of Hong Kong in 1841, the compradors migrated to Hong Kong to seek work opportunities during the development of the British possession. Apart from foreign firms, colonial officials in Hong Kong employed compradors in the 1840s and the 1850s. The British colonial government employed compradors in two different ways. First, compradors were directly hired in different departments of the colonial 33 

Paul A. van Dyke, The Canton Trade, 53. Hu Bo, Xiangshan maiban, 4. 35  Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes, 222–244; “Art V Proclamation from the High Imperial Commissioner Concerning the Murder of Lin Weihe,” Chinese Repository, vol. 8, August 1839, 215. 34 

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administration. The post office, police and magistrate offices, and the British army and navy also hired compradors.36 Second, individual colonial officials employed house compradors who occasionally supported their employers’ services to the colonial government. The function of these government compradors was different from the compradors employed by foreign firms in the sense that the former possessed the authority to directly intervene in the lives of Chinese residents in Hong Kong. In the first two decades of the colony, the British officials had to rely on a small number of Chinese mediators for governing the Chinese community. The government compradors played dominant and crucial roles in mediating communication between senior colonial officials and the local Chinese. Given their privileged status as indispensable intermediaries, some of the government compradors were involved in corruption and extortion from the local Chinese. For example, Lo Een-teen 羅見田 was the comprador to William Caine, the chief magistrate in the 1840s, and Chow Aaon 曹亞安 was a treasury comprador.37 They extorted bribes from Chinese leaseholders and franchise holders in the public markets of Hong Kong by drawing on Caine’s authority. When an applicant for a lease on the public markets refused to pay a bribe, Lo threatened the applicant by indicating that he would report to Caine.38 Both Lo and Chow also achieved conspicuous success in commercial activities. Lo was well known as a merchant who ran several businesses in Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the 1850s. Chow made profits from managing real estate and pawnshops.39 Despite the significance of government compradors in Hong Kong in the 1840s and the 1850s, they had become less prominent in the public sector by the early 1860s. After learning about the social situation in Hong Kong, the British authorities refined the system of employing Chinese staff. Instead of hiring compradors, whose duties were vaguely defined, in the 1870s the colonial government increased the number of duty-specific Chinese staff, such as clerks, writers of Chinese documents, and shroffs 36 

For post office compradors, see George William Des Voeux, Despatches to Knusford, January 10, 1890, CO 129/244, 32–39. For the commissariat comprador Hing Kee, see China Mail, June 5, 1879; London and China Telegraph, August 9, 1879. For the chief magistrate’s comprador, see John Davis to the Earl Grey, Resignation of Mr. Fittock, September 23, 1847, CO 129/21, 47–50. 37  William Caine employed compradors as early as June 1841. See John Morrison to William Caine, June 21, 1841, FO 17/46, inclosure no. 19 of dispatch no. 10. 38  For Chow’s and Lo’s exactions from Chinese interest holders of the public markets, see Gary Chi-hung Luk, “Monopoly, Transaction and Extortion”; Charles Molloy Campbell, Inquest, July 6, 1847, CO 129/20, 237. 39  Thomas Chisholm Anstey, Crime and Government at Hong Kong, 40–46; Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians, 127–128.

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(currency examiners and exchangers).40 On the suggestion of Governor Hercules Robinson (r. 1859–1865), from 1862 onward the colonial government, under the Hong Kong Cadet Scheme, started to hire British staff who were familiar with Chinese language and culture.41 Specifying the work of the Chinese staff and investing in nurturing foreign intermediaries, the colonial government became less dependent on the compradors. Another possible reason for the decline of government compradors in Hong Kong was the rise of company compradors, who replaced the government compradors to become mediators between the Chinese community and the colonial government. The economic prosperity of the company compradors had become evident by the early 1870s. Many of the commercial guidebooks dated the 1870s for foreign traders in China included lists of principal company compradors, which suggests the ubiquity of these agents in foreign institutions. The China Directory of 1874 listed more than sixty principal compradors in Hong Kong, such as those in the Great Northern Telegraph Company, the Hong Kong and China Gas Company, the Hong Kong Club, the Hong Kong Fire Insurance, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and Lane, Crawford & Co.42 Multinational firms, including British, American, French, German, and Indian firms, employed compradors. For foreign managers, finding a credible comprador was one key to commercial success in late-nineteenth-century Hong Kong. Throughout the nineteenth century, a sizable number of ship compradors also operated in Hong Kong. The main work of the ship compradors remained to be supplying provisions to foreign ships and companies.43 The jobs carried out by compradors in foreign firms were diverse, including employing Chinese staff, exchanging currency, bookkeeping, assisting the business of foreign principals, and providing market intelligence.44 Unless he caused huge losses for the company, a chief comprador was likely to serve his principal for a long time. While working for foreign firms, the company compradors usually ran multiple businesses in their own right. Foreign firms often employed well-to-do Chinese merchants or entrepreneurs as principal compradors. In so doing, foreign principals were able to rely on the company compradors’ commercial networks. 40 

Great Britain, Colonial Office, Hong Kong Government: Blue Books of Statistics, 1878, CO 133/35. See the section that gives a list of officers. 41  Steve Tsang, Governing Hong Kong, 21–22. 42  The China Directory, 1874, 47. 43  British Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons and Command, 48:301; Author unknown, Provisions account for Shewyun, July 1873–May 1875, A7/255; The China Directory, 1874. 44  Samuel Wells Williams, Chinese Commercial Guide, 224–225.

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John Heard, founder of the American trading firm Augustine Heard & Co., commented in 1860 on the company’s comprador Mok Sze Yeung 莫 仕揚: “I have no doubt he is worth $50,000 at least, probably more. He does not speak much English, but being rich and one of the oldest compradors of the place, he has a ‘large face,’” which means he was much respected.45 In other words, the company compradors were staff of foreign firms, and external, independent merchants at the same time. Kwok Acheong 郭甘章 is a representative example of a company comprador who succeeded in his entrepreneurial activities. Kwok established his steamship company in the 1860s while he worked as a comprador for the Peninsula & Oriental (P&O) Steam Navigation Company.46 He began his career as a provision purveyor to the Royal Navy during the First Opium War and later worked for the P&O Company.47 Kwok managed his own steamship company in the 1860s, and by 1877 he was already well known as a successful shipping magnate, running at least thirteen steamships.48 It seems that the P&O staff promoted the development of Kwok’s steam shipping enterprise from a technological perspective. In 1854, Kwok took over part of P&O’s shipwright and engineering department.49 P&O also sold to Kwok two old steamships, the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy and the Bombay, in 1859 and 1879 respectively, which Kwok reused in his business. P&O continued to employ Kwok as a comprador until 1872 or 1873, which suggests that the company’s directors did not consider Kwok’s engagement in his own external business to be a problem.50 Kwok and P&O probably avoided direct competition with each other: while P&O’s main customers were foreign traders, Kwok’s customers were mainly Chinese traders.51 On the one hand, rivalry between foreign companies and their compradors existed. On the other hand, the compradors and foreign principals established mutually constructive relationships by cooperating with each other. The dual status of the company compradors as external and internal business partners for foreign firms was often discussed and questioned 45 

Hao Yen-p’ing, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, 155. Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity, 137; John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 34. 47  Christopher Munn, Anglo-China, 74; John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 34. 48  John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 34; China Mail, April 22, 1880; Hong Kong Daily Press, April 23, 1880. 49  Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians, 124. 50  The China Directory recorded that the P&O comprador was Kwok Acheong in 1872 and Wong Sü Tong 黃樹堂 in 1873. Wong is sometimes identified as Wong Shu-tong, whose father, Wong Yook 黃玉, had business ties with Kwok Acheong. Carl T. Smith suggests that he was also a comprador who worked for P&O. See Chinese Christians, 163–164. 51  Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, 61. 46 

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in multiple court cases. That the compradors’ duties were not clearly defined sometimes caused trouble for the foreign managers. A legal case between Dreyer & Co. and Leong A-ting (Chinese characters unknown) in 1871 highlighted the difficulty of distinguishing between the compradors’ work for the foreign firms and their own business. A-ting, a surety of Dreyer’s comprador called Leong Akum (Chinese characters unknown), was sued for the loss of trade caused by Akum. A-ting was accused because of Akum’s failure in trading umbrellas, needle guns, flannels, and tablecloths. The total loss was estimated at $1,133.20 (in Spanish dollars). The court also examined whether Akum’s private trade ($32,000 in total) should be regarded as part of his work as a comprador. The decision was made in favor of A-ting, since the judges concluded that the comprador merely acted as an “interpreter” for the sale of the products. Akum’s personal trade with his principals was also regarded as beyond his comprador duties. In this case, the judges held that Akum merely intermediated sales of the company’s products, and that he did so not for his own business.52 Foreign principals recognized that the obscure legal status of the compradors could harm the profits of their companies. Since the compradors acted as treasurers, it was not difficult for them to use the company’s cash for their personal enterprises. Abscondence by the compradors was not rare throughout the nineteenth century. One of the most famous cases of a comprador’s disappearance involved Lo Hok Pang 羅鶴朋, an HSBC comprador who in 1892 absconded with debts of almost $1.3 million to the bank.53 The frequent cases of embezzlement related to the compradors gave rise to calls for abolishing the comprador system, but abolition did not come about in the nineteenth century. In 1871, an article in the China Mail lamented that the comprador system was “as healthy as ever” and “as sound as it ever will be,” even though newspapers in Hong Kong discussed the abolition of the system two or three years previously.54 The compradors were a two-edged sword for foreign employers. If the foreign principals hired a credible comprador, this could increase the profits of the company. However, if the foreign managers were unable to establish a constructive relationship with the comprador, that could cause an economic loss for the company. Though aware of the risks of the comprador system, the directors of the foreign firms were unable to terminate it. The complexity of the currency 52 

China Mail, June 17, 1871. Frank H. H. King, Catherine E. King, and David J. S. King, The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 515–516; Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Comprador File, date unknown, HSBCS 0019/0001. 54  China Mail, January 6, 1871. 53 

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system, the diversity of Chinese dialects, and the ever-changing Chinese business environment hampered attempts to abolish the comprador system. For foreign directors, finding foreign personnel who could directly conduct trade with Chinese merchants was not easy. Conducting business in the Chinese market was a challenging task even for the compradors. Printed advertisements in the Chinese newspaper Xunhuan ribao 循環日報 (Universal circulating herald) reveal chief compradors’ struggles to conduct business with Chinese merchants. On May 24, 1880, Ng Chuk-shau 吳竹修, Douglas Lapraik & Co.’s comprador, put out a notice stating that the business partners of the company should not claim payment without a signed contract and direct contact with him or his office. It states: Dear Sirs, Only a face-to-face meeting and signed contract between you and I is valid regarding the purchase, guarantee, borrowing of silver taels, taking goods of each company, and other businesses conducted under the name of this office and mine. If anyone tries to cheat by forwarding letters and stamps and claim that some stores have my stocks to do business, it is in fact unreliable. If anyone behaves in such a manner, I have nothing to do with it. Besides, if there is any accident, it is the dealer’s responsibility only, and it will be your store’s own loss. I declare here, no more issues like this. Yours faithfully, Office of Douglas Lapraik & Co., Ng Chuk-shau.55

A similar kind of notification was made in a newspaper advertisement by Birley & Company’s comprador, Bao Zonghong 鮑宗鴻.56 Another reason for the continued existence of the comprador system was the compradors’ own efforts to enhance their indispensability in local communities through noneconomic activities. Actively participating in social activities in the British community, the company compradors were keen to improve their own social image in order to overcome negative perceptions of them as a risk factor and as competitors of foreign firms. This is epitomized in Kwok Acheong’s cooperation with British colonial officials. When William Thomas Mercer, the acting governor of Hong Kong from 1865 to 1866, retired in 1867, Kwok and other Chinese merchants presented him a Chinese cup inscribed “long shall we remember you like the genial sun; your oceanlike kindness constantly benefits us.”57 Robert Ho Tung was also actively engaged in social welfare projects in the 55  56  57 

Xunhuan ribao, May 24, 1880. Xunhuan ribao, June 19, 1880. The China Magazine, 174–176; London and China Telegraph, January 25, 1869.

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British Empire. He was an administrator of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Fund and the South African War Fund in the 1890s.58 By subscribing to British public projects, and establishing ties with colonial dignitaries, prominent compradors attempted to secure their own social status in the British community. Concurrently, compradors obtained social recognition in the Chinese community. Historians of Hong Kong generally agree that a group of the Chinese elite had emerged and become efficient intermediaries between the British authorities and the Chinese communities by the end of the 1880s.59 The compradors constituted part of this new elite. Together with other types of Chinese elites, the compradors contributed to multiple charitable projects. Although the details are unknown, as early as the 1860s the Hong Kong compradors had formed for themselves a business association. This “comprador guild” had representatives on the board of directors of the Tung Wah Hospital and funded the organization. The compradors provided $1,000 annually to the hospital from 1873 to 1896. Between 1869 and 1871, the group of compradors had the largest number of representatives on the board, numbering five out of thirteen.60 By making financial contributions to and engaging in the management of the Tung Wah Hospital, the compradors styled themselves as reputable leaders of the Chinese community in Hong Kong. The variety of compradors’ economic activities in the nineteenth century contributed to the formulation of Hong Kong’s core enterprises, including the intermediation of the commodity and service trades and the channeling of market information. Furthermore, the compradors strengthened their social position by participating in benevolent projects and welfare services in both foreign and Chinese communities. An ability to speak English allowed the compradors to access British information and financial resources, and also promoted the compradors’ rise as a distinct group among the colonial elite. Significantly, the compradors sought to maintain a collaborative relationship with Qing officials. On August 2, 1873, a newspaper reported that Qing dignitaries visited the Comprador’s Club, that is, the previously described comprador’s guild, before proceeding to a meeting with the governor of Hong Kong. The Comprador’s Club was located “in Queen’s Road, which was opposite the London Inn.”61 The compradors had multiple personas in the commercial and public 58 

John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 74; Arnold Wright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, 174–176; Wu Xinglian, Xianggang Huaren mingren shilüe, 1–3. 59  John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 84–86. 60  Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity, 54, 74; Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, Zhengxinlu, 1933. 61  London and China Telegraph, August 21, 1873.

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worlds—as business partners of foreign firms, Chinese merchants, modern entrepreneurs, social benefactors in the colony, and supporters of both the Qing and British officials. The vibrant commercial and social activities of the compradors were important catalysts of the rise of Hong Kong as a key commercial hub in Asia in the late nineteenth century. By the end of the 1880s, the comprador system had become a cornerstone of the society and economy of British Hong Kong. The Comprador System and Its Legacies The period of the 1870s and 1880s witnessed the social significance of the compradors in Hong Kong at its peak. Thereafter, other types of Chinese middlemen, especially Chinese managers (Huajingli 華經理), increased in importance in foreign companies and took over the position of the compradors. In the early twentieth century, in English-language newspapers, advertisements concerning Chinese managers were more frequent than those concerning the compradors.62 The comprador system had been fully dissolved by 1960. Afterward, however, the group of intermediary elite continued to exist and to evolve their economic and social roles. The last comprador of Hong Kong and China is probably Peter Lee Shun-wah 李純華, who served the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. In 1960, his job title was changed to “Chinese manager”; this probably marks the end of the comprador system in Hong Kong.63 The decline of the compradors is one conundrum in the history of modern China and Hong Kong. How did the comprador system dissolve from the 1890s to the 1960s? What are the relations between the nineteenth-century compradors and the present-day business elite in Hong Kong? Although the compradors were successful in the commercial world of Hong Kong in the first half of the twentieth century, the decline of the comprador system started as early as the 1890s. Foreign firms restricted their compradors’ external commercial activities and changed the name of the position of comprador to “Chinese manager.”64 By teaching Japanese staff the Chinese language and promoting direct trade with Chinese mer62 

Hao Yen-p’ing, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, 59–63. Hao Yen-p’ing, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, 59–63; Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Comprador File, date unknown, HSBCS 0019/0001. 64  Hao Yen-p’ing, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, 63; Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Agreement for Service as Compradore, between Ho Wing (Ho Shai Wing) and Ho Tung, and HSBC, GHO 0501/0001 and GHO 0501/0002; “Bank and Client’s Overdraft: Payments That Went into Compradore Dispute over Liability,” China Mail, April 27, 1931; “A Compradore’s Agreement. For What Is He Liable? Important Decision by the Chief Justice,” South China Morning Post, February 28, 1908. 63 

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chants, the Japanese trading firm Mitsui Bussan succeeded in abolishing its comprador system in Hong Kong in 1902.65 In the first half of the twentieth century, Western companies also replaced the comprador system with the Chinese manager system. Employing Western-educated Chinese managers instead of compradors, John Swire & Sons, a prominent British trading firm in East Asia, ceased to operate any comprador system in the early 1930s. In 1931, Mok Kong Sang 莫幹生 resigned from Butterfield and Swire when the company reduced his commission, and Mok Ying Kui 莫應 溎, the brother of Kong Sang, then became a Chinese manager of the sugar department of the company. While the Chinese manager’s duties were similar to those of the comprador in many ways, a crucial difference between Swire’s Chinese manager system and comprador system was that under the Chinese manager system, Chinese staff were under direct control of the company, not the compradors.66 The foreign directors’ efforts to reduce their dependence on the comprador system entailed the integration of the divisions of Chinese and foreign staff in their companies. The demarcation between Chinese managers and the compradors was not clear in the early twentieth century. The compradors established the Comprador’s Association (Yanghang banfang lianhehui 洋行辦房聯合會) in 1925 in order “to protect the compradors’ rights and to attempt to reduce and resist deficits,” but the association consisted of both compradors and Chinese managers.67 The list of members of the Comprador’s Association, which was probably compiled before World War II, suggests that Chinese managers increasingly took over the work of the compradors in the 1930s. Lo Man-hin 羅文顯, who was Jardine’s comprador in 1935, later became the Chinese manager of the company.68 The name of Kwok Chan 郭贊, a member of the Executive Council and a prominent banker, was included in the list of members of the Comprador’s Association, but he was in fact the Chinese manager of the Banque de l’Indo-Chine. His father, Kwok Siu-lau 郭少流, was the bank’s first comprador from 1894 to 1906.69 Concurrently, the compradors and the Chinese managers operated as important economic middlemen in Hong Kong from the 1890s to the 1930s. From the 1920s onward, however, the compradors were losing efficacy in social intermediation between the British colonial government and the local Chinese community. The career of Lau Chu Pak 劉鑄伯, one of the 65 

Ryutaro Yamafuji, “Mitusi Bussan no baiben haishi,” 12–16. Mo Yinggui, “Wo zouguo de daolu,” 1–23; Howard Cox, Huang Biao, and Stuart Metcalfe, “Compradors, Firm Architecture and the ‘Reinvention’ of British Trading Companies,” 29–31. 67  Tōa Kenkyūjo Shanhai Shisho, Honkon no baiben kumiai nit suite. 68  “Funeral of the Late Mr Lo Man-hin,” South China Morning Post, May 17, 1963. 69  Bernard Mellor, Lugard in Hong Kong, 199. 66 

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most illustrious compradors in the 1910s and 1920s, clearly shows the rise and fall of the compradors’ authority in the local Chinese community. Lau became a comprador of the West Point Godown Company in 1888 and a comprador to A. S. Watsons in 1903. Thereafter, Lau worked for Watsons until his death in 1922. In 1913, Lau became the first leader of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong. In 1914, he established the Po On (Bao’an 寶安) Chamber of Commerce. He was also a leading figure in multiple public institutions, including the Tung Wah Hospital, the Po Leung Kuk, the District Watch Force, and the Plague Hospital for Chinese. He was appointed as an unofficial member of the Legislative Council in 1914.70 Despite his own commercial and social success, Lau was not able to mediate the interests of the colonial government and the local Chinese community effectively when the Seaman’s Strike took place in Hong Kong in 1922. In the strike, more than 10,000 Chinese seamen in Hong Kong and Guangzhou left their work and requested a 30 to 40 percent increase in their wages. While the colonial government expected the Chinese elite to negotiate with the Chinese working class to end the strike, Lau Chu Pak and Chow Shouson 周壽臣, another unofficial member of the Legislative Council, could not resolve the issue. Taking a firm attitude regarding the seamen’s requests, Lau and Chow emphasized that the colonial government should not compromise with the seamen since the strike was a political and leftist movement and was not conducted in pursuit of economic interests. Lau and Chow were unable to act as effective negotiators, and eventually the colonial officials had to make a compromise agreement with the Seamen’s Union. Soon after the end of the Seaman’s Strike, Lau decided to resign from the Legislative Council for the reason of “getting old,” and shortly afterward, in 1922, he died.71 As Lau’s later career indicates, the comprador system was “getting old” in the 1920s. The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong from 1941 to 1945 brought many challenges to existing social groups in Hong Kong, as revealed by Felicia Yap’s chapter on the Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jewish communities in Hong Kong. The Japanese occupation disturbed the commercial activities of the compradors who worked with British firms. Nevertheless, a few compradors took the opportunity to work with the Japanese. Organizing the Chinese Representative Council (Huamin daibiaohui 華民 70 

Kuo Huei-ying, Networks beyond Empires, 69; “Obituary of Lau Chu Pak,” South China Morning Post, May 4, 1922; T. C. Cheng, “Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils,” 30. 71  John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, 79; John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 97–99; John M. Carroll, “Lau Chu-pak”; “The Hon. Mr. Lau Chu-Pak,” South China Morning Post, March 23, 1922.

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代表會), which was composed of Chinese community leaders, the Japanese

military government in Hong Kong tried to inherit and refine the system of intermediation developed under British colonial rule. Some compradors were cooperative with the Japanese, while others passively resisted. The members of the Chinese Representative Council included a head comprador of the Banque de l’Indo-Chine, Chan Lim-pak 陳廉伯, who was famous for his collaboration with the Japanese.72 On the other side, Robert Ho Tung retreated to Macau during the Japanese occupation period. While being reluctant to work with the Japanese military government, he avoided a direct confrontation with the Japanese.73 After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the business structure in Hong Kong transformed dramatically. A new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs emerged in the period of industrialization, and the compradors were no longer significant catalysts for the growth of the Hong Kong economy. Some of the descendants of the compradors have performed key functions in the economic and political world of contemporary Hong Kong. The Mok family, descendants of the nineteenth-century compradors of Augustine Heard & Co. and of the Swire groups, is still an influential clan in Hong Kong.74 From the end of World War II to 1997, some of the successive generations of the compradors successfully established cooperative ties with the PRC government and evolved into valuable intermediaries of the new overlord. From the third generation of the Mok family, Mok Ying Kui was engaged in the socialist movement and political activities in Guangzhou beginning the 1950s and later served on the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee, which designed the fundamental legal and political structure of post-1997 Hong Kong.75 Stanley Ho 何鴻燊, the notable descendant of Ho Tung, the Jardine comprador, was a well-known billionaire and casino owner in Macau. Stanley Ho was also chairman of several companies and business associations in Hong Kong, as well as a member of the Hong Kong Basic Law Consultative Committee.76 Thus, although the comprador system had already been dissolved by 1960, the Hong Kong business elite inherited the compradors’ economic and social behavior and continued to refine their roles. In doing so, the business elite of Hong Kong established their indispensability and efficacy 72 

Stanley S. K. Kwan and Nicole Kwan, The Dragon and the Crown, 36; York Lo, “Chan Lim-Pak.” 73   Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 195–196. 74  For instance, Mok Hing Yiu 莫慶堯 was a well-known doctor in the medical sector in Hong Kong, thanks to his service to the government’s Medical and Health Department from 1953 to 1993. 75  Mo Yinggui, “Wo zouguo de daolu.” 76  Ian Scott, Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy, 281–282.

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as middlemen between colonial overlords and local communities, from the first day of British Hong Kong up to the present. References Anstey, Thomas Chisholm. Crime and Government at Hong Kong. London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1859. Bickers, Robert. The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1800–1914. London: Allen Lane, 2011. British Parliamentary Papers. House of Commons and Command. Vol. 48. 1860. Campbell, Charles Molloy. Inquest. July 6, 1847. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Original Correspondence: Hong Kong, 1841–1951, Series 129, CO 129/20, 237. London: The National Archives. Carroll, John M. A Concise History of Hong Kong. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. ———. Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. ———. “Lau Chu-pak.” In May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn, eds., Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography, 246–247. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. Cheng, T. C. “Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils in Hong Kong up to 1941.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 9 (1969): 7–30. The China Directory. Hong Kong: A. Shortrede & Co., 1874. The China Magazine, a Weekly Miscellany, Illustrated with Photographs. Hong Kong: Noronha & Sons, Government Printers, 1868. China Mail. 1871, 1879–1880, 1931. Chinese Repository. 1839. Cox, Howard, Huang Biao, and Stuart Metcalfe. “Compradors, Firm Architecture, and the ‘Reinvention’ of British Trading Companies: John Swire & Sons’ Operations in Early Twentieth-Century China.” Business History 45, no. 2 (2003): 15–34. Davis, John, to the Earl Grey. Resignation of Mr. Fittock. September 23, 1847. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Original Correspondence: Hong Kong, 1841–1951, Series 129, CO 129/21, 47–50. London: The National Archives. Des Voeux, George William. Despatches to Knusford. January 10, 1890. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Original Correspondence: Hong Kong, 1841–1951, Series 129, CO 129/244, 32–39. London: The National Archives.

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Ellsworth, E. W. “Journal of Occurrences at Canton during the Cessation of Trade at Canton 1839.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 4 (1964): 9–36. Fairbank, John King. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842–1854. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969. Fung, Edmund S. K. The Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat: Britain’s South China Policy, 1924–1931. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1991. Gallagher, John, and Ronald Robinson. “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” Economic History Review, new series 6, no. 1 (1953): 1–15. “The Golden Wedding of Sir Robert and Lady Ho Tung.” Circa 1932–1933. Cambridge, UK: Jardine Matheson Archive. L14/9. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Hong Kong Government: Blue Books of Statistics, 1844–1878, Series 133, CO 133/1–CO 133/35. London: The National Archives. Hao, Yen-p’ing. The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China: Bridge between East and West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Holdsworth, May, and Christopher Munn, eds. Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. Hong Kong Daily Press. 1867, 1880. Hongkong Telegraph. 1882, 1956. Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Agreement for Service as Compradore, between Ho Wing (Ho Shai Wing) and Ho Tung, and HSBC. November 12, 1912, GHO 0501/0001; October 7, 1912, GHO 0501/0002. London: HSBC Archives. ———. Comprador File. HSBCS 0019/0001. London: HSBC Archives. Date unknown. Hu Bo 胡波. Xiangshan maiban yu jindai Zhongguo 香山買辦與近代中 國 [Xiangshan’s compradors and modern China]. Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2007. Hunter, William C. The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton before Treaty Days, 1825–1844. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1882. Ives, Edward. A Voyage from England to India. London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly, 1773. King, Frank H. H., Catherine E. King, and David J. S. King, eds. The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, vol. 1, The Hongkong Bank in Late Imperial China, 1864–1902. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Kuo, Huei-ying. Networks beyond Empires: Chinese Business and Nationalism in the Hong Kong–Singapore Corridor, 1914–1941. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Kwan, Stanley S. K., and Nicole Kwan. The Dragon and the Crown: Hong Kong Memoirs. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.

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Li Hongbin 李鴻賓, Viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi. Order to Hong Merchants. June 5, 1831. Great Britain, Foreign Office. East India Company: Select Committee of Supercargoes, Chinese Secretary’s Office: Chinese-Language Correspondence and Papers, Series 1048, FO 1048/31/40. London: The National Archives. Lo, York. “Chan Lim-Pak.” In May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn, eds., Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography, 71–72. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. Lockyer, Charles. An Account of the Trade in India. London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by Samuel Crouch, 1711. London and China Telegraph. 1869, 1873. Luk, Gary Chi-hung. “Monopoly, Transaction and Extortion: Public Market Franchise and Colonial Relations in British Hong Kong, 1844–58.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 52 (2012): 139–188. Ma Yinchu 馬寅初. “Zhongguo zhi maiban zhidu” 中國之買辦制度 [The comprador system in China]. In Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, comp., Ma Yinchu quanji 馬寅初全集 [Complete collection of Ma Yinchu], vol. 2, 166–169. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1999. Mellor, Bernard. Lugard in Hong Kong: Empires, Education, and a Governor at Work, 1907–1912. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1992. Mo Yinggui 莫應溎 [Mok Ying Kui]. “Wo zouguo de daolu: Cong Taigu yanghang maiban dao Xianggang jibenfa qicao weiyuan” 我走過的道 路: 從太古洋行買辦到香港基本法起草委員 [The path that I walked: From a comprador of the John Swire & Co. to a member of the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee]. In Guangzhou shi gongshangye lianhehui 廣州史工商業聯合會 et al., eds., Guangzhou gongshang jingji shiliao 廣州工商經濟史料 [Historical documents on the industry, commerce, and economy of Guangzhou], vol. 2, 1–23. Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1989. Morrison, John, to William Caine. June 21, 1841. Great Britain, Foreign Office. General Correspondence: China, 1815–1905, Series 17, FO 17/46, inclosure no. 19 of dispatch no. 10. London: The National Archives. Munn, Christopher. Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1880. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Munro, Innes. Narrative of the Military Operations, on the Coromandel Coast, against the Combined Forces of the French, Dutch, and Hyder Ally Cawn, from the Year 1780 to the Peace in 1784; in a Series of Letters. London: Printed for the author, by T. Bensley; and Sold by G. Nicol, 1789. Nan-hai magistrate surnamed Sheng 陞. Order to Hong Merchants. May 20, 1831. Great Britain, Foreign Office. East India Company: Select Committee of Supercargoes, Chinese Secretary’s Office:

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Chinese-Language Correspondence and Papers, Series 1048, FO 1048/31/37. London: The National Archives. Onley, James. The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pao, Kuang Yung. “The Comprador: His Position in the Foreign Trade of China.” Economic Journal 21, no. 84 (1911): 636–641. Provisions Account for Shewyun. July 1873–May 1875. A7/255. Cambridge, UK: Jardine Matheson Archive. Robinson, Ronald. “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration.” In Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds., Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, 117–142. London: Longman, 1972. Scott, Ian. Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989. Sha Weikai 沙為楷. Zhongguo maibanzhi 中國買辦制 [China’s comprador system]. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1927. Sinn, Elizabeth. Power and Charity: A Chinese Merchant Elite in Colonial Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Smith, Carl T. Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985. Snow, Philip. The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. South China Morning Post. 1908, 1922, 1956, 1963. Straits Times. 1932. Sung, Yun-Wing. “The Pivotal Role of Hong Kong.” In John M. Carroll and Mark Chi-kwan, eds., Critical Readings on the Modern History of Hong Kong, vol. 3, 1251–1278. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Tsang, Steve. Governing Hong Kong: Administrative Officers from the Nineteenth Century to the Handover to China, 1862–1997. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. ———. A Modern History of Hong Kong. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004. Tōa Kenkyūjo Shanhai Shisho 東亜研究所上海支所. Honkon no baiben kumiai nit suite: Daitoa senso mae ni okeru 香港の買瓣組合について: 大東亜戦争前に 於ける [The compradors’ guild in Hong Kong before the Greater East Asia War]. Shanghai, date unknown; Toyo Bunko, Tokyo. Tung Wah Group of Hospitals. Zhengxinlu 徵信錄 [Annual reports]. 1933. Hong Kong: Tung Wah Hospital Museum. Van Dyke, Paul A. The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005. Waley, Arthur. The Opium War through Chinese Eyes. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958.

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Wang Jingyu 汪敬虞. Tang Tingshu yanjiu 唐廷樞硏究 [Study of Tang Tingshu]. Peking: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 1983. Williams, Samuel Wells. A Chinese Commercial Guide: Consisting of a Collection of Details and Regulations Respecting Foreign Trade with China, Sailing Directions, Tables. 4th ed. Canton: Printed at the Office of the Chinese Repository, 1856. Williamson, Thomas. East India Vade-Mecum. Vol. 1. London: Black, Parry, and Kingsbury, 1810. Wu Xinglian 吳醒濂. Xianggang Huaren mingren shilüe 香港華人名人史略 [Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong]. Hong Kong: Wuzhou shuju, 1937. Wright, Arnold. Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China. London: Lloyd’s Greater Britain Publishing Company, 1908. Xie Wenhua 謝文華. “Maiban yanjiu de huigu yu zhanwang 買辦研究的回 顧與展望” [Review and prospects of comprador studies]. Lishi xuebao 歷 史學報 22 (June 1994): 391–412. Xunhuan ribao 循環日報 [Universal circulating herald]. 1880. Yamafuji Ryutaro 山藤竜太郎. “Mitusi Bussan no baiben haishi” 三井物産の 買弁廃止 [Abolition of the comprador system in Mitsui Bussan]. Nihon Kigyo Kenkyu Senta WPS 日本企業研究センターWPS 30 (June 2006): 1–18. Zheng Hongtai 鄭宏泰 and Huang Shaolun 黃紹倫 [Wong Siu-lun]. Xianggang dalao: He Dong 香港大老: 何東 [The Grand Old Man of Hong Kong: Ho Tung]. Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2007. Zhang Ping 張平. “Jindai maiban yanjiu zongshu 近代買辦研究綜述” [Summary of studies on modern compradors]. Qingshi yanjiu 清史研究 1 (1996): 111–118. Zhang Zongyong 張宗永 [Water Cheung]. “Xianggang shi maiban chengshi 香港是買辦城市” [Hong Kong is a city of compradors]. April 11, 2011. Ming Pao caijingwang [Ming Pao finance]. Available at http://www.mpfinance.com/htm/Finance/20110411/News/ed4_ ed4a1.htm.

TWO

Government and Language in Hong Kong

SONIA LAM-KNOTT

Introduction Hong Kong was a British colony from 1841 to 1997,1 and is now under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). British rule created a linguistic environment where English and Cantonese converged in the colony, with both languages having permeated the social, economic, and political domains of everyday life to varying degrees. The majority of the population is ethnically Chinese, with Cantonese being the dominant vernacular. Yet toward the end of the twentieth century, a significant portion of Hong Kong Chinese placed more emphasis on acquiring and developing their English-language skills than on their Cantonese mother tongue during their schooling years. This chapter looks at the reasons behind the widespread entrenchment of the English language in Hong Kong, exploring the various sociopolitical factors that have influenced language preference in Hong Kong society. It addresses the following inquiries: is language preference among the population dictated by government agendas and policies or determined by demotic considerations of importance to Hong Kong people, or are these processes interrelated? This chapter highlights the connection between politics and language in an East Asian context, particularly examining the means and extent of British colonial influence in shaping the Hong Kong linguistic scene. Treating language as a political construct, I argue that language management was a political tool of the British colonial government to fulfill its changing political agendas over time. My initial focus is on the interactions between the Cantonese and English languages in Hong Kong, framed 1 

During World War II (1941–1945), Hong Kong was under Japanese occupation.

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within a historical overview showing how the British colonial governments across the globe used the local education system to legitimize the status of En­glish to serve practical and ideological-political needs. I then discuss Hong Kong’s societal perceptions of English, noting how language preferences among the local public are shaped by associations with social class and mobility. Nonetheless, I also emphasize that British control over language use in Hong Kong was challenged by demotic appropriations manifesting themselves in the simultaneous use of Cantonese and English in classrooms and “code-mixing” in everyday life, the latter becoming a form of speech associated with constructs of a localized identity. Although the bulk of the chapter focuses on the British colonial period, the final section looks at how the post-Handover Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has continued the pre-1997 trend of using language policies in education for political purposes, as seen from its promotion of the Chinese language, particularly Mandarin. Language and Politics in the European Colonial Era To understand why the management of language was a priority for the British Hong Kong colonial government, we must first review the entrenched connection between language and power, a theme that has been explored and articulated in academic literature. Although language is ubiquitous in human societies, how we understand and manage languages is not free from the influence of spatially and temporally situated political power relations. This can be seen from the identification and naming of languages by the colonizing powers from Europe from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. It is important to note that naming “languages” during that time do not necessarily correspond to the way contemporary linguists define language based on structural differences in grammar or script. Rather, European colonial definitions of language are strongly influenced by their understandings of power relations between and within societies, and the categorization of languages in colonial territories was done less for the sake of furthering the academic study of different speeches, and more for serving the interests of the colonial authorities.2 As noted by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the “naming” of a “language” is not an innocuous gesture, but a concealed political act representing “the symbolic struggle for the production of common sense,” and a means of enforcing the “imposition of the legitimate vision of the social world.”3 In other words, the very act of “naming” (or “categorizing”) has the capacity to create and impose a certain conceptualization of sociopolitical 2  3 

Peter Mühlhäusler, Linguistic Ecology, 35. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 239.

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reality upon others. First, the identification of distinct “languages” allows colonizers to differentiate themselves from those they consider the “other” so that they can better emphasize group boundaries between those who are colonizing and those being colonized, a means to construct and reinforce the “us” versus “them” oppositional framework. Second, the identification of distinct “languages” is also a practical tool for facilitating colonial governance over the populations in colonized territories. For example, the British recognized the necessity for the diverse range of peoples and languages of colonial India “to be classified, categorised, and bounded before it could be ordered” if they were to successfully assert their control over the region.4 Being able to ascertain what languages existed in colonial India allowed the British to map out and enumerate the plethora of groups (marked by ethnic and religious differences) in Indian society, and allowed the British to efficiently communicate laws to and collect taxes from the colonized populations. In another colonial context, southern African speeches such as the Tsonga and Shona were declared to be distinct “languages” to help define and reinforce ethnic and territorial boundaries created by the British colonial authorities in the region, in accordance with the growing awareness of the concept of the nationstate, which stems from the Enlightenment era, making it easier to categorize people into distinctive groups for the sake of “managing” them.5 Language categorization throughout the previous centuries is thus part of the process whereby colonial authorities across the African and Asian continents assumed power over local societies. European powers sought to define languages across the world not just for the sake of differentiating one group of people from another, but also to situate these languages in a hierarchical evolutionary structure, with European languages at the apex and “less-developed” languages of the “other” at the bottom. While Western languages were often projected as the only legitimate speech, “indigenous” speeches were regarded as corrupt forms of communication.6 Among the British colonialists, ideologies of English language superiority emerged. The Chinese language in Hong Kong, like African and Polynesian speeches found in other British colonies, was generally considered by the colonial government as being less developed 4 

Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, 21–22. Among linguists and philosophers, “language” is delineated between speech and literacy (the latter defined as the conversion and abstraction of speech in written form). The hidden politics of literacy in portraying social reality, and the limitations it imposes on manifestations of speech, are debated and discussed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. The scope of this study does not permit an extensive examination of their arguments. 6  Christopher Stroud, “Bilingualism.” 5 

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and of lower worth to English. In the 1700s, it was argued that Chinese, Arabic, and all other speeches of colonized populations were imperfect compared to the “Western” languages found in Europe, an idea that persisted throughout the nineteenth century.7 For example, William Bentinck, a British governor-general of India in 1828–1835, believed that English could enrich the Indian mentality better than the “vernacular dialects” found on the Indian subcontinent. Echoing this opinion, in Minute on Indian Education (1835), Thomas Babington Macaulay advocated for English language education in India by stating that “it is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit [Sanskrit] language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England.”8 Similarly, many British in Hong Kong believed that “knowledge of Chinese warped the mind, destroyed common sense, and unbalanced the judgment.”9 For the contemporary British, such beliefs reinforced the perceived superiority of colonists over the colonized people. European colonial powers were not only interested in categorizing the languages of the “other” as a means of better understanding their own presumably superior position in the world, but also sought to use language as a means of exerting control over these societies. Languages have the capacity to dictate how individuals perceive, interpret, and articulate who they are and what their sociopolitical and economic realities are like.10 Speech is the basis of everyday communication, situating thought production within specific parameters (examples of language as a reflection of culturally specific modes of perception can be found in anthropological works comparing color coding and kinship terms found across societies, or in recent psychological studies showing how the use of metaphors influences the ways contentious political issues are being framed and received by different language groups). In fact, language is more than a sociocultural phenomenon. As the anthropologist Bernard S. Cohn aptly states, languages should also be recognized as being political “instruments of rule,” capable of enabling and facilitating colonial governance over any locality.11 Having command over the language of the colonized society allows for effective governance by facilitating communication among different peoples. Moreover, languages are a means of producing and reproducing culture and society itself, so possessing 7 

James Joseph Errington, Linguistics in a Colonial World. G. M. Young, Speeches by Lord Macaulay, 349. 9  Gail Schaeffer Fu, “Bilingual Education in Hong Kong,” 1. 10  John J. Gumperz and Jenny Cook-Gumperz, “Introduction.” 11  Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, 46. 8 

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an understanding of—and the ability to regulate—local languages allows colonial authorities to exert control over how individuals perceive, construct, and transmit knowledge of their immediate worlds.12 For example, dictionaries compiled during the colonial era played a significant role in allowing an unknown local language to become “known” to the body of colonial knowledge, enabling local words (and the concepts carried within them) to be defined and codified in terms that could be comprehended by the British authorities. In other words, dictionaries situated the local language within the intellectual and linguistic perspectives and frameworks of the colonizers. More importantly, with local languages becoming affixed to specific meanings, dictionaries simultaneously limited the ability of colonized subjects to exert creative agency in shaping the development of their own languages, thereby changing and limiting the ways in which people understood their worlds.13 Language, Governmentality, and Schooling Given that language plays a central role in shaping perceptions and experiences, those in power in colonial societies made attaining control over language (i.e., which languages were used and how they were to be used) a priority. The question is, how can colonial authorities assert control over which languages are used? The direct imposition by the colonial authorities of the chosen languages (such as through a legal requirement to speak a certain tongue and not others) cannot solely account for the degree of integration these languages have experienced within colonized Asian societies. In fact, language acquisition is “accomplished without consciousness or constraint, by virtue of dispositions which, although they are unquestionably the product of social determinisms, are also constituted outside the spheres of consciousness and constraint.”14 In other words, language acquisition involves processes beyond individual awareness (which is described as “social determinism”), where gestures of approval and disapproval during interactions influence the languages, and the forms of lan12 

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, “Cultural Imagination and English in Hong Kong.” James Joseph Errington, Linguistics in a Colonial World; Peter Mühlhäusler, Linguistic Ecology; Christopher Stroud, “Bilingualism.” Contemporary dictionaries are subject to the same criticism of stymieing organic developments in languages. For example, words in colloquial speech (slang, references to popular culture, and terms arising from digital communicative technologies) may not receive “official” recognition as being part of the English language before the word is included in English dictionaries (which raises questions regarding who has the power to decide which words are to be included in dictionaries). Dictionaries continue to exert much influence over how we understand languages, and, by extension, how we see the world. 14  Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 51. 13 

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guage, learned by the unknowing individual. Social determinism exists everywhere, but in societies under colonial rule, the governing body has utmost authority in managing language use. In these societies, preference for one language over another is often the product of top-down influences imposed through language policies and governmentality. Governmentality is where techniques of control are not limited to threats of government sanctions, but enter everyday life through innocuous institutions, such as schools and hospitals, that create self-governing individuals.15 Of interest here is the role of the school in influencing public language preferences. The school is the site where government policies and governmentality converge and can shape and reshape subjects.16 The influence of education systems on language preferences are not confined to students within delineated spaces of learning. They can also affect attitudes throughout entire societies. From literature highlighting the importance of language in matters of governance within colonial societies, it is interesting to see how these ideas can be applied to the Hong Kong context, especially within the framework of the local education system. Schools in Hong Kong have a strong influence over the everyday lives of the population, in part because educational attainment has been highly valued and venerated among the Chinese who strive to send their children to school, but also because since the 1970s, all young people who are permanent residents of Hong Kong have been legally obliged to attend an educational institution recognized by the government’s Education Department (Jiaoyu sishu 教育司署, renamed in 2003 the Education and Manpower Bureau, Jiaoyu tongchouju 教育統籌局, and renamed in 2007 the Education Bureau, Jiaoyu ju 教育局). Prolonged absence of a child from a government-approved school can result in his or her parents being penalized by jail time or heavy fines under Education Ordinance Section 78, and the government’s stance toward alternatives such as home schooling remains unclear. The majority of the Hong Kong population has thus still been subject to socialization of linguistic norms in schools. The concept of governmentality not only posits that people are to be “disciplined” and controlled. More importantly, it also notes how people are to be “subjected, used, transformed and improved,” emphasizing that they can also be instilled with certain ideologies and practices and thus serve those in power.17 Language education in a colonial context is driven 15 

Mitchell Dean, Governmentality; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish; Majia Holmer Nadesan, Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life. 16  See Foucault’s description of the école militaire in France in Discipline and Punish. 17  Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 136.

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by the political interests and needs of the select few at the apex of the sociopolitical and economic hierarchy within the society concerned. In the case of Hong Kong, Alastair Pennycook, a professor of language studies, notes that education was “a means for more effective governance of the people, and language policy was one mechanism for effectively providing such education” to inculcate docility among the people, and to reduce anti-­imperialistic sentiments that were permeating Hong Kong from China during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.18 As shown in the following section on the history of English language education in Hong Kong, the British colonial rulers and elites preserved their interests by manipulating language policies in the education system. English in the Hong Kong Education System and British Colonial Agendas Parents have been telling their children to mind their language since time immemorial, but in modern Hong Kong it carries rather different connotations. When it comes to schooling, the question of language is a particularly thorny one. Despite being an overwhelmingly Chinese society, this city places English prowess above all else.19

When the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841, there were no perceived benefits in requiring the local Chinese population, who were mostly laborers, to learn English. The colonial authorities made no plans for widespread English education. The colony was considered a trading port where cheap non-European labor was readily available and where English education for the majority of the Chinese population was not deemed a necessity. As Abe’s chapter points out, it was primarily such Chinese elites as compradors who had some command of English. As a result, Hong Kong became a “bi-monolingual society” where the Chinese spoke Chinese (Cantonese), the British spoke English, and basically neither group spoke the language of the other.20 The British reluctance to teach English to local populations was common practice across the British colonies, where “only [indigenous peoples] in positions of authority . . . learn and use English with any native or near native competency.”21 In British Malaya, the limited spread of English was rationalized as a means of preserving what the colonialists believed to be the “pristine” Malay culture. There were

18  Alastair Pennycook, The Cultural Politics of English; Alastair Pennycook, “Language Policies and Docile Bodies,” 94. 19  Will Clem, “Yingkwok-Wah or Cantonese.” 20  Ng Kwai Hang, The Common Law in Two Voices, 51. 21  Barbara A. Fennell, “Colonial and Postcolonial Varieties,” 193.

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also less ­romantic motivations behind restricting access to the English language: the colonial authorities believed that Malays with English education would be unwilling to engage in menial jobs and would become dissatisfied with their socioeconomically and politically disadvantaged status in Malayan society, eventually leading them to mobilize against the British.22 These anxieties regarding the potential political challenge that English-speaking colonized populations could pose were realized when the provision of English education in British India resulted in emergent nationalistic sentiments among the younger generations of Indians, who demanded political reforms from the British regime in 1882.23 Thus, as English was recognized to be a language of empowerment, allowing locals to become aware of their subjugation by the colonial authorities, access to the English language was strictly controlled and managed by those in power.24 This control, however, varied between colonies depending on localized political agendas: To some, provision of limited English was a pragmatic policy to facilitate colonial rule; to others provision of English was an essential part of the messianic spread of British language and culture; to some, provision of vernacular education was a colonial obligation; to others it was a crucial tool in the development of a workforce able to participate in colonial capitalism; to others it was an important means to maintain the status quo.25

In Hong Kong, however, the attitudes of the British government gradually changed toward favoring the advocacy and promotion of English language education. Why? First, there was a growing moral imperative to “enlighten” the Chinese in Hong Kong from their “backwardness.”26 22 

Alastair Pennycook, Englishes and the Discourses of Colonialism. Peter Cunich, A History of the University of Hong Kong. 24  Although this chapter focuses on the British colonial management of language, comparing the British approach with the language policies in territories under German colonial control shows how languages can be used to serve political needs. In the 1900s, Togo in West Africa underwent Germanization. German was taught in Togo schools to enforce the “authority of the German people . . . and German colonial ideas.” See Benjamin N. Lawrance, “Des serviteurs très obeissants,” 493. English, the language of a rival colonial power, was omitted; but the continued use of Ewe, the local Togo language, was permitted because it was not seen as a threat to German authority. Standardizing the languages used within the various German colonies also served pragmatic advantages, as it allowed human labor to be transferred between the colonies if necessary. See Peter Mühlhäusler, Linguistic Ecology. 25  Alastair Pennycook, Englishes and the Discourses of Colonialism, 20. 26  During the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom, China was increasingly seen by the British as the antithesis of Europe. China was deemed despotic, static, and nonmodern, perceptions penetrating British schools in colonial and noncolonial societies. For example, Chinese students in the Morrison Education Society School were taught that “being Chinese” was associated with cruelty and falsehood, and that Chinese people were cultural 23 

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Initial efforts to spread English in Hong Kong for “moral” purposes came from nongovernment religious organizations such as the Morrison Education Society School, which relocated from Macau to Hong Kong in 1842. English education was seen by these missionaries as a vehicle to promote Christian ideologies and a means to instill Western thought that would free the Chinese from the constraints of traditional society, thereby creating a modernized China.27 Although the Morrison school emphasized both English and Chinese acquisition, the headmaster Samuel Brown eventually devoted more time to English education. He believed it would “liberate his students from the fetters of traditional Chinese values and modes of thought and open their minds to a new and better way of thinking,” as the traditional methods for Chinese-language acquisition were deemed to be memorization-based and therefore unsuited for cultivating innovation among students.28 These efforts from the Morrison Education Society received little colonial support from the British Hong Kong government until the time of Governor John Pope Hennessy (r. 1877–1883), who agreed that instilling Western modes of thought within the Chinese population would be beneficial toward creating a “modern” China. The British authorities were eventually convinced that the provision of English education would overcome the difficulties presented by different regional dialects in China, enable the effective transmission of Western thought among the Chinese, and allow the Chinese and British populations to better understand each other.29 Second, demands for more English-speaking Hong Kong Chinese stemmed from pragmatic concerns. Rapid population growth throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries increased the ratio of Chinese subjects and British authorities, and more language mediators were needed to facilitate communication between the government and the Chinese population.30 Educational structures at the time did not meet the task, as most English schools for Chinese children were operated by small missionary degenerates compared to Europeans. See Stephen Evans, “The Morrison Education Society School”; Alastair Pennycook, “Language Policies and Docile Bodies.” 27  Stephen Evans, “The Morrison Education Society School.” 28  Stephen Evans, “The Morrison Education Society School,” 23; Q. S. Tong, “Myths about the Chinese Language.” 29  Peter Cunich, A History of the University of Hong Kong. 30  In 1862, there were 1,604 Europeans compared to 121,907 Chinese, 2,644 compared to 123,207 in 1863, and 1,963 compared to 119,535 in 1864. See Nicholas Belfield Dennys, William Frederick Mayers, and Charles King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, 17. By 1891, the number of Europeans including military and naval personnel totaled 8,500, with only a third of this sum being British, whereas the “coloured people, nearly all Chinese” numbered 213,000. See Edgar Sanderson, The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century, 337. The Chinese population in Hong Kong continued to grow exponentially in the post-WWII years.

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institutions. Subsequently, the British Hong Kong government established English Medium of Instruction (EMI) and Chinese Medium of Instruction (CMI) schools, which were haphazardly coordinated and prompted the creation of the Government Central School in 1862 (renamed in 1894 Queen’s College), which used a curriculum featuring English, Chinese Classics, and Christian Scripture.31 From 1877 onward, Hong Kong governors endorsed English teaching. In 1911, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) was founded to produce a select group of English-speaking Chinese mediators to work in the lower circles of government.32 Although the Western business community voiced their objection to such schemes, believing that an English-speaking Chinese population would pose significant competition for their business ventures, such concerns were superseded by the need to provide Western education to counteract nationalism and anti-imperialism among the Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese, which had been growing stronger since the 1911 Republican Revolution in China.33 The provision of EMI schooling opportunities was matched by policies that sought to increase the Hong Kong Chinese’s preference for EMI schools by “making English the only official language, and reward those civil servants who had better English proficiency.”34 When the colony shifted from a manufacturing to a global service–based economy in the 1970s, demands for more English education came not only from the British Hong Kong government, but also from the local Chinese population. Public sentiment in Hong Kong toward English during this decade appear contradictory and conflicted. Mass campaigns calling for Chinese to be recognized as an official language in the colony began in the 1960s and resulted in colonial laws being changed to accommodate these demands in 1974. But this campaign was geared toward elevating Chinese to an equal standing to English in the sociopolitical domains, not necessarily representing a widespread preference for the Chinese language in education. Furthermore, the heightened status of Chinese in the post-Handover era does not lessen the importance of English, especially 31 

Joseph Boyle, “Imperialism and the English Language in Hong Kong”; Peter Tung, Raymond Lam, and Tsang Wai King, “English as a Medium of Instruction.” Boyle also noted that the success of the Central School in fulfilling colonial aspirations of “bridge making” between the European and Chinese populations is questionable. Chinese students with English skills often left school to start their own businesses or formed cliques excluding non-English speakers. 32  Joseph Boyle, “Imperialism and the English Language in Hong Kong”; Angel M. Y. Lin, “Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation?” 33  Gail Schaeffer Fu, “Bilingual Education in Hong Kong”; Bernard Hung-Kay Luk, “Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum”; Alastair Pennycook, Englishes and the Discourses of Colonialism. 34  Pun Shuk Han, “Hegemonic Struggles in the Language Policy Development,” 82.

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when it comes to economic prospects. With English being a requirement for white-collar jobs in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Chinese parents encourage their children to attend EMI instead of CMI schools. This trend is reflected in the ways that schools cater to growing EMI preference; the proportion of CMI secondary schools fell from 45 percent in 1958 to 8 percent by 1988,35 and 57.3 percent of all secondary schools claimed to be EMI in 1960, increasing to 91.7 percent by 1990.36 The nine-year mandatory education scheme launched in 1978 helped transform Hong Kong from elite bilingualism to mass bilingualism.37 But widespread availability of English-language education correlated with claims of declining English and Chinese standards among Hong Kong students, and English standards outlined in the education syllabi were often not met.38 To address these concerns, the British Hong Kong government began to encourage secondary schools to adopt CMI. Two prestigious secondary schools, Carmel Secondary School and St. Joseph’s College, attempted the conversion in 1987 and 1994 respectively.39 In 1994, the government introduced streaming policies, under which primary school students, based on their academic performance in a series of examinations, were allocated to EMI or CMI secondary schools in the band system at a ratio of approximately 3:7.40 These CMI initiatives, however, were met with resistance from the Hong Kong Chinese population, with 35 

The colonial government never actively hindered the development of CMI schools in Hong Kong, and actually tried to encourage CMI by establishing the first CMI university in 1963, by granting a charter to enable three existing colleges—New Asia College, Chung Chi College, and United College—to become a federation now known as the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The decline in the number of CMI secondary schools was in fact exacerbated by government indifference toward promoting Chinese language education. Secondary schools could choose what language policies to adopt, whereas CMI promotion was generally left to “private concerns and voluntary bodies.” See Gail Schaeffer Fu, “Bilingual Education in Hong Kong,” 8; Sean O’Halloran, “English Medium Secondary Schools.” Furthermore, with the emergence and spread of anti-colonial sentiments in twentieth-century Hong Kong, the British colonial authorities suppressed political elements in the local curriculum. Chinese language classes were removed from teachings of Chinese culture, morality, and politics, making the language lose meaning for Hong Kong students. See Bernard Hung-Kay Luk, “Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum”; Paul Morris and Anthony Sweeting, “Education and Politics”; David Nunan, “The Impact of English as a Global Language”; Herbert D. Pierson, “Societal Accommodation to English and Putonghua”; Daniel W. C. So, “LanguageBased Bifurcation of Secondary Schools.” 36  Mark Bray, “Education and Colonial Transition,” 16. 37  Kingsley Bolton, “The Socio-Linguistics of Hong Kong”; Stephen Evans, “Hong Kong’s New English Language Policy in Education.” 38  Sun Chao Fen, “Hong Kong’s Language Policy in the Postcolonial Age.” 39  Sean O’Halloran, “English Medium Secondary Schools.” 40  Choi Po King, “The Best Students Will Learn English.” The band system is a method of ranking schools and students according to their academic achievement. Band 1 schools claim

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parents and students claiming that to deny them access to English education would be a violation of their human rights. Carmel Secondary School reverted back to EMI in 1990 whereas St. Joseph’s College shelved CMI plans after demonstrations by parents and students.41 To understand why the Hong Kong Chinese population fought for using English—the language of the British colonial regime—in schools, we must examine popular understandings of the implications and meanings of the English language. While this section has dealt with the motivations behind (and manifestations of) institutional impositions of language in the local education system, the following section focuses on the reasons behind widespread societal acceptance and demand for English among the Hong Kong Chinese population. English-Language Preference in Hong Kong Society and Social Mobility [Hong Kong] parents . . . tend to be more practical and want to see their children better prepared for life. And it is difficult to argue that Cantonese will better prepare a person for life in the modern world than English. Armed only with Cantonese, our children will be stuck in Hong Kong. . . . They will need to communicate with their counterparts in other parts of the world. They will not be able to do this in Cantonese.42

Narratives of language and social status are interwoven in Hong Kong; the degree of power conferred to a social class is determined by language use. Not all languages can grant the same degree of social mobility or access to resources, and differences in linguistic capital between languages are amplified under conditions of colonialism.43 For example, in colonial and postcolonial Mozambique, Portuguese is the language of modernity used in public and professional domains, whereas local languages are associated with traditional lifestyles, their use confined within domestic spheres. The visibility of Portuguese in Mozambique society made it the “language proper” for “civilized” peoples, and African languages became dialectos, seen as “corrupt and inadequate forms of speech that held little value.”44 In Mozambique, a language hierarchy with Portuguese at the top emerged and was translated into “social and political hierarchies bethe highest 25 percent of students, whereas Band 5 schools claim the lowest 25 percent. In 2004, the number of bands was reduced from five to three. 41  Sean O’Halloran, “English Medium Secondary Schools.” 42  Frank Ching, “The Reality of Cantonese-Only Schooling.” 43  Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital.” 44  Christopher Stroud, “Bilingualism,” 32.

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tween speakers; the notion of language domain encapsulates a mapping of ‘pure’ languages onto societal functions, thereby determining who may have linguistic access to social goods.”45 The language used by an individual determines his or her social status and the social resources he or she is able to attain. In Hong Kong, English is valued over Chinese because of the socioeconomic advantages conferred by English. First, many Hong Kong parents want their children to learn English in preparation for higher education abroad, partly because university placements in Hong Kong are limited.46 Second, when children sent abroad to study in English-speaking institutions in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States return to Hong Kong for employment, they have a better chance at attaining work placements because Hong Kong employers often favor candidates holding foreign degrees.47 Furthermore, well-paying jobs often require English proficiency. During British rule in Hong Kong, English was a necessity for employment in the administration. The language continues to be a key requirement for jobs in the service and professional sectors. For example, English skills are mandatory if one is to be a university professor, a position that pays three-to-ten times more than the average Hong Kong salary, and so “there is a correlation between a person’s English-language ability and her or his career prospects in Hong Kong.”48 Among the Hong Kong Chinese, many believe that social class is intrinsically linked with occupation.49 As professional and managerial jobs are perceived as more prestigious than physical ones, the Hong Kong Chinese who can speak English and hence attain such jobs are situated higher in the social hierarchy. English is thus the language that enables social mobility. For example, if the offspring of working-class laborers learn English, they can strive to work in the professional sector and have much chance to attain a middle-class lifestyle, which can then increase their social standing among family, friends, and the general population. For the existing middle and upper classes in Hong Kong society, acquiring English skills also ensures that their elevated social status is maintained and replicated in subsequent generations.50 As claimed in local newspapers, “good proficiency in English is seen as a requisite for future success, as it is considered 45 

Christopher Stroud, “Bilingualism,” 28. David C. S. Li, “The Plight of the Purist.” 47  Alastair Pennycook, Englishes and the Discourses of Colonialism; Johanna L. Waters, “Geographies of Cultural Capital.” 48  Sun Chao Fen, “Hong Kong’s Language Policy in the Postcolonial Age,” 295. 49  Janet Salaff and Wong Siu-lun, “Exiting Hong Kong”; Johanna L. Waters, “Geographies of Cultural Capital.” 50  Phil Benson, “Language Rights and the Medium-of-Instruction Issue,” 14. 46 

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the global business lingua franca. Graduates with a poor command of the language are confined to low-paid jobs with low status.”51 It is thus no surprise that in Hong Kong, “English . . . has long been perceived by the public as the language of power and success. . . . People who speak English well are generally considered better educated and socially privileged.”52 For some social groups, however, the deprivation of English-language education (and thus the ability to communicate in English) limits their social mobility. In Hong Kong, job acquisition depends on education attainment and qualifications, which in turn depends on the linguistic skills acquired by the applicant during his or her schooling years, with English being highly valued and Chinese of secondary importance. Yet, language attainment depends on social class background. Citing Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron’s study on social class and language acquisition in France, scholars examining the Hong Kong context came to the conclusion that “social stratification based on language-use is mediated by the school system.”53 For example, in Hong Kong, the 1994 streaming policies exacerbated the division of students based on their social class backgrounds, limiting the access of those from less privileged backgrounds to further education placements and employment opportunities. While streaming practices were introduced to address declining language standards by limiting the number of students enrolled in EMI schools, the government failed to consider how existing socioeconomic structures hinder the linguistic development of certain social groups, especially in regard to existing exposure to English that facilitates acquiring the language.54 Although English is the language of commerce and international dialog in Hong Kong, Cantonese remains the language of domestic and intimate social life for the majority of the local Chinese population.55 British colonial elites, expatriates, and the affluent Chinese were (and, to an extent, continue to be) constantly exposed to English-speaking environments.

51 

Elaine Yau, “Language Switch Causes a Stir.” Ng Kwai Hang, The Common Law in Two Voices, 52–53. 53  Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture; Choi Po King, “The Best Students Will Learn English,” 151; Angel M. Y. Lin, “Hong Kong Children’s Rights”; Alastair Pennycook, Englishes and the Discourses of Colonialism. 54  Hong Kong’s middle-class families often rely on extracurricular tutors in ensuring that their children can learn English. In contrast, children from working-class families cannot afford tutors, so “precisely how much English Hong Kong people encounter in the personal domain depends on a wide variety of factors, including social class, educational level, and age.” See Kingsley Bolton, “Hong Kong English,” 12. Although the education system determines language acquisition, the influence of social class also needs to be considered. 55  Herbert D. Pierson, “Societal Accommodation to English and Putonghua”; John Whelpton, “Cantonese, English, and Putonghua in a Hong Kong Secondary School.” 52 

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In contrast, English is a foreign language for the working class.56 Thus, students with limited access to English face the increasing possibility of being confined to their current social class and enjoy less potential social mobility. As professor of English language education Angel M. Y. Lin argues, “[t]here is a widening gap between the rich and the poor and education researchers cannot ignore the role played by educational institutions, policies, and practices in producing and reproducing social stratification based on the possession or lack of a mastery of English.”57 Emphasis on social mobility and the market value of any particular language removes the language concerned from narratives of colonialism and nationalism. Language is presented as a commodified skill, treated as a form of linguistic capital that translates into cultural and economic capital.58 This market-oriented approach to language is not unique to Hong Kong; it is also acknowledged by the public education systems in Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan, where more curriculum time is spent on English at the expense of other subjects, and where students are increasingly exposed to English at younger ages. With the spread of capitalist markets across the globe, “language is no longer a natural, taken-­for-granted medium of operation and organisation, but a component of markets that must be considered in economic terms of its costs and revenues.”59 Linguistic capital can form and broaden networks, connecting individuals to communities and multinational companies. Language is a symbolic resource with social and material consequences, a fact that is recognized in Hong Kong, as revealed in Pennycook’s interviews with Hong Kong youths who transitioned from CMI primary schools to EMI secondary schools.60 Although many of these youths disliked En­glish and found it difficult to learn, they remained in EMI schools because of the perceived economic opportunities brought about by English. For example, one of Pennycook’s informants, Simon Fu, says that “English in Hong Kong stands for authority and studying it will probably lead to a better prospect like job opportunities, higher living standards etc.” Another informant, Stella Cheung Man Sze, claims that “most of the elder [older] people of Hong Kong are not very familiar with English. They regard English as a conqueror. They think it attacks the Chinese culture. On the other hand, most youngsters consider English as good simply because 56 

Angel M. Y. Lin, “Hong Kong Children’s Right,” 24. Angel M. Y. Lin, “Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation?,” 77. 58  Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital”; Choi Po King, “The Best Students Will Learn English.” 59  Joan Pujolar, “Bilingualism and the Nation-State,” 75. 60  Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power; Angel M. Y. Lin, “Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation?” 57 

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having good English foundation will guarantee a good job and a promising future.” And lastly, student Anita Tang Wing Kin says that “learning in one language and talking in another is a common phenomenon for all non-English speaking countries. But we still have to learn English. After all, it is an influential language in the world.”61 These students appreciated that English is useful for employment and thus approached language with a market mentality. They were aware of the colonial origins of the English language in Hong Kong but they chose to emphasize that this was a view held only by the older generations (see Stella Cheung’s statement). Instead, youths of their generation saw English as a resource enabling social mobility (see Simon Fu’s statement) and global connectivity (see Anita Tang’s statement). Although English is a resource for social mobility, it does not mean that the preference for learning English should necessarily be understood as a “choice” reflecting the agency of the Hong Kong Chinese population. For example, in light of the pragmatic benefits of knowing English, Joseph Boyle, an English professor specializing in English language acquisition in Hong Kong, claims that the “Hong Kong Chinese have always wanted En­ glish [my emphasis].”62 But the notion of ascribing words such as “want” and “choice” to English acquisition is problematic because they downplay the socioeconomic and political influences that impose constraints on how the Hong Kong Chinese decide which languages to learn and use. Despite the dominance and centrality of English throughout the ever expanding global market, the political implications of the language are not lost but are only disguised. The association of English with Hong Kong’s economic growth cements its status as a global language, obscuring its historical colonial implications. At the macro level, the worldwide spread of English is not a “natural” process to be taken for granted, but is determined by sociocultural and political factors throughout the past centuries, which can be summarized as “linguistic imperialism.”63 Although parental and student resistance toward the British streaming policies in Hong Kong can be understood as an assertion of agency, it should be remembered that the desire of the Hong Kong Chinese population for English is determined by wider global conditions. The language conditions today are shaped by, and must be viewed in light of, past politics. The informants in Pennycook’s interviews, as discussed previously, did not like learning En­glish but felt compelled to do so as a means to reap the eco61 

Alastair Pennycook, Englishes and the Discourses of Colonialism, 212. Joseph Boyle, “Imperialism and the English Language in Hong Kong,” 176. 63  Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism. 62 

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nomic rewards conferred by the language. They “chose” to learn English because they were faced with a certain set of socioeconomic parameters that restricted their “choice” to do otherwise.64 Demotic Appropriations of Language in Classrooms and through Code-Mixing The previous sections have shown how English language preference in Hong Kong has been a function of a combination of educational policies imposed by the British colonial government and economic and social class aspirations of the people. Nevertheless, Hong Kong Chinese exert a sense of agency and creativity in how they use, and navigate between, languages in their everyday lives. In reality, a mixture of English and Cantonese is used throughout the society for reasons ranging from the practical to the increasingly identitarian, and this is especially noticeable in schools. For example, the use of both languages can be observed even in EMI classrooms where educational material is supposedly taught entirely in English. This is because before the 1997 Handover, most primary schools in Hong Kong were CMI whereas most secondary schools were EMI, and many students found it hard to adjust to the abrupt linguistic transition as they moved through the grades. As a result, there are instances where students and teachers in secondary schools would use Cantonese and En­ glish as a means of helping students cope with their transition from a CMI into an EMI environment, as observed in professor of education R. Keith Johnson’s ethnographic account on language use in EMI classrooms.65 Reanalyzing Johnson’s work, Angel M. Y. Lin believes that the simultaneous use of English and Cantonese helps the teacher to address concerns that cannot be addressed without switching from English to Cantonese or using Cantonese in English sentences.66 For example, Johnson observed that in class, a teacher stopped using English and spoke in Cantonese to chastize the student for being lazy and not doing homework. By using Cantonese, Lin noticed, the teacher created an atmosphere of humor and familiarity, making the situation comfortable for the students. Similarly, Martha C. Pennington found that when a teacher shifts from English to Cantonese, he or she is signaling a “less hierarchical and more symmetrical allocation of roles, e.g. to open the floor for discussion and invite

64 

Phil Benson, “Language Rights and the Medium-of-Instruction Issue,” 11. R. Keith Johnson, “Report on the ELTU Study.” 66  Angel M. Y. Lin, “Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation?” 65 

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students’ opinions.”67 Switching to Cantonese creates an environment within the classroom suitable for initiating dialog. Hong Kong teachers in EMI classrooms use both English and Cantonese as an educational tool to bring English-taught subjects into a culturally and linguistically relevant context for students. In other words, teachers use Cantonese in classrooms to clarify concepts taught in English “to make English-medium education more bearable and less alienating to the students.”68 In the EMI classroom, English is the language of knowledge while Cantonese is used for annotation, elaboration, and translation. There, switching between Cantonese and English is both a coping mechanism for students to navigate between the languages they are exposed to in their everyday lives and a resource for teachers to convey course material in a practical manner. Not only does the Hong Kong Chinese population exhibit creative appropriation of language use by switching between languages to suit practical needs, this creativity also manifests itself through the use of codemixing in the discourse of everyday life.69 Code-mixing was first called “U-gay-wa,” later renamed “MIX” and “Hong Kong English,” terms that Angel M. Y. Lin eventually replaces with “Hong Kong Speak” to emphasize the creative agency in language appropriation and expression exerted by the Hong Kong people.70 The British Hong Kong government mistakenly equated Hong Kong Speak with “Chinglish” or pidgin (the latter deemed by the authorities to be corrupt forms of speech) and subsequently condemned code-mixing in 1988 by implementing the aforementioned streaming policies to ensure the separation of English and Cantonese.71 In fact, Hong Kong Speak is not the same as pidgin. Pidgin emerged after British traders arrived in the 67 

Martha C. Pennington, “Colonialism’s Aftermath in Asia,” 4. This work is based on earlier research by Pennington in collaboration with Lee Yuen-Ping and Lawrence Lau in Communicating in the Hong Kong Secondary English Classroom: The Evolution of Second Language Discourses. 68  Angel M. Y. Lin, “Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation?,” 68. 69  In Johnson’s ethnography, teachers and students alternated between English and Cantonese sentences during their interactions, which is a form of code switching. For example, the teacher would ask a question in English only for the student to reply in Cantonese. In turn, code-mixing involves the use of both languages in the same sentence, such as a Cantonese sentence punctuated by English words and vice versa. See “Report on the ELTU Study.” 70  John Gibbons, “Code-Mixing and Koineising.” Code-mixing was called U-gay-wa because it is believed to be used primarily by Hong Kong university students. See Kingsley Bolton, “The Socio-Linguistics of Hong Kong,” and “Hong Kong English.” In actuality, codemixing is widespread in Hong Kong society. 71  Phil Benson, “Language Rights and the Medium-of-Instruction Issue”; Angel M. Y. Lin, “Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation?”

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South China region in 1637 and is characterized by different grammatical structures and vocabulary from its original languages (so that Chinese pidgin would not resemble the languages it originated from, here being Chinese, English, and any other language encountered along the South China coastal ports).72 Hong Kong Speak, in contrast, is “essentially of a Cantonese base with loans from English assimilated to a greater or lesser degree to Cantonese phonology.”73 Thus, while pidgin is a new form of speech allowing speakers of different languages to communicate with one another, Hong Kong Speak is Cantonese interspersed with words borrowed from English. Anyhow, by associating Hong Kong Speak with Chinese pidgin, the British Hong Kong government categorized Hong Kong Speak as a “nonlanguage.” The actions of the Hong Kong colonial authorities are not unique in this regard, and many governments across the globe view codemixing unfavorably, associating it with laziness and antisocial behavior, and consider it a threat to the traditional linguistic order and the cause of linguistic degradation.74 Hong Kong Speak was ignored in official discourses, and there was strong public belief that code-mixing resulted in illiteracy in both English and Chinese.75 The British Hong Kong government pushed for linguistic purity in the domains of industry, media, and education, but was met with only limited success. Code-mixing, as represented through Hong Kong Speak, became a popular form of public speech in Hong Kong. Its use can be found in the spheres of business, lifestyle, entertainment, and technology. Code-mixing allows access to a wider range of terminologies, providing new ways of emotional and social expression that the Chinese language may not permit. In post-Handover Hong Kong, Katherine Chen and Gary Carper produced a mini-documentary to show how deeply Hong Kong Speak has become embedded in the everyday lives of Hong Kong youths.76 In the documentary, a number of youths were asked to translate the English phrase “today I must present a project” into Cantonese, but most of them could not find Cantonese equivalents for the words “present” and “project,” and resorted to keeping the two words in English despite the rest of 72  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the establishment of British colonial schools in Hong Kong “greatly increased access to educated varieties of English . . . and some Chinese speakers developed a distaste for pidgin.” This led to a decline in pidgin use in the territory. See Kingsley Bolton, “Hong Kong English,” 5. 73  John Whelpton, “Cantonese, English, and Putonghua in a Hong Kong Secondary School,” 80. 74  Joan Pujolar, “Bilingualism and the Nation State.” 75  Kingsley Bolton, “Hong Kong English”; David C. S. Li, “The Plight of the Purist.” 76  Katherine Chen and Gary Carper, Multilingual Hong Kong.

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the sentence being translated into Cantonese. These youths remarked that not only was it difficult for them to find accurate Cantonese translations for many English terms (especially more specialized and technical language found in school and work), but that conversing only in Cantonese in their everyday lives “feels strange” and awkward. This is not an opinion shared only by the individuals featured in the documentary; it is widespread throughout Hong Kong society, especially among the younger generations. Local youths embrace the use of code-mixing because “the vernacular language of Cantonese with an admixture of English has increasingly emerged as a vibrant and creative resource for developing new identities and new discourses to meet the communicative and psychological needs of the Hong Kong people.” In other words, code-mixing represents a “localized” Hong Kong culture.77 The use of language through code-mixing has been associated with identity constructs among the younger generations, presenting new challenges for any Hong Kong government (whether the British Hong Kong government or the current HKSAR government) attempting to assert direct control over languages in the education domain. Such tensions between the government’s intention to control language use, and the population’s creative appropriation of language, are especially pronounced in the post-Handover era. The Chinese Language(s) in Post-Handover Hong Kong Education After Hong Kong became the PRC’s special administration region in 1997, there were changes in language policies in the local education domain that reflected emerging (and competing) political agendas. There were two main political ideals at play: globalization, which positions Hong Kong as an international city; and “decolonization,” which recognizes that Hong Kong is no longer under British rule but is now a Chinese territory of the PRC.78 The tension between these ideals was encapsulated by the first 77 

Martha C. Pennington, “Colonialism’s Aftermath in Asia,” 12. This chapter approaches the concept of “decolonization” with caution. There is no scholarly consensus on how the term decolonization is to be defined or what the process entails (see Gary Chi-hung Luk’s chapter for a nuanced exploration of the meanings of “decolonization”). Applying the term in the Hong Kong context is difficult, because the territory’s decolonization involved a gradual lack of interest among the British to retain control over the colony since the 1960s, accompanied by the PRC’s desire to undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy since 1997. Although British colonial rule over Hong Kong ended on July 1, 1997, social commentators and academics in Hong Kong have questioned whether it is truly experiencing a postcolonial existence given the significant presence of PRC sociopolitical and economic influence (which has resulted in the eruption of protests across Hong Kong, most notably in 2003, 2010, and 2014). Instead, terms such as recolonization and neo78 

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chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa 董建華 (r. 1997–2005), in his declaration that Hong Kong is simultaneously a “World City” and a “Chinese City.” In reality, the HKSAR government is more inclined toward reinforcing the image of the “Chinese City.”79 To do this, government officials employ the strategies of their British predecessors in governing languages through the local education system. Like the British authorities, the HKSAR government understands that “education will produce the citizens that will determine the context of a society in the near future,” and it has therefore taken a firmer stance with promoting CMI education in Hong Kong in an attempt to realize the vision of the territory as a “Chinese City.”80 For example, in 1997, the Hong Kong Education Department stated that “our community is essentially Chinese. We speak, read and write Chinese in our daily life. Government has therefore been promoting the use of Chinese over the years. We have also encouraged teaching and learning in the mother tongue.”81 In 1998, the mandatory mother tongue policy was introduced to limit the number of EMI secondary schools in Hong Kong to 114. Now, schools that do not qualify for EMI status have to use Cantonese in all lessons (except English class) for students in their first to third years of secondary schooling. EMI schools are monitored by HKSAR officials to ascertain their competence to teach in English.82 This policy gave CMI secondary schools a significant boost in numbers. In the 1996/1997 school year, just before the Handover, there were 74 CMI secondary schools, which accounted for 18.5 percent of all secondary schools; by 1999/2000, the number of CMI schools soared to 312, or 73.2 percent of the total number of secondary schools in Hong Kong.83 The policy allows only the most competent students to attend EMI schools, preventing other students from struggling in an EMI school when they could benefit from CMI education. Although there are pragmatic reasons for boosting the number of CMI schools, such as to address popular perception of declining English and Chinese standards, the political implications of post-Handover language policies are discernible. The HKSAR government announced that education goals would be toward producing the “biliterate and trilingual” colonization have been used to describe the relationship between Hong Kong and the PRC in recent years. See Howard Y. F. Choy, “Schizophrenic Hong Kong”; Agnes S. Ku and Pun Ngai, “Introduction.” 79  Poon Kit, The Political Future of Hong Kong; Tsang Wing-kwong, “English as Cultural Capital.” 80  Zhang Bennan and Robin R. Yang, “Putonghua Education and Language Policy,” 146. 81  Tsang Wing-kwong, “English as Cultural Capital,” 96–97. 82  Choi Po King, “The Best Students Will Learn English”; Stephen Evans, “Hong Kong’s New English Language Policy in Education.” 83  Zhang Bennan and Robin R. Yang, “Putonghua Education and Language Policy.”

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student who has mastered Cantonese, English, and Mandarin.84 Each of these speeches harbors differing significance and connotations in varying domains, with “English representing world-status, Cantonese representing localism, and Putonghua [Mandarin] representing a dedication to the PRC.”85 In other words, Cantonese is the language of communication in everyday life; English continues to connote power in the socioeconomic realm and represent job opportunities; and Mandarin, as the official language of the PRC, to which Hong Kong now belongs, indicative of a nation-building/nationalizing project (see Kevin Carrico’s chapter in this volume). There is a shift in the language of politics, and while government meetings were conducted and broadcasted in English during the time of British colonialism, they are now completely in Chinese (or more precisely spoken Cantonese with televised meetings offering subtitles in traditional Chinese script).86 But it is not only a matter of which language is advocated, but also how the language is used. After the Handover, the HKSAR government has encouraged textbooks to promote the “one country, two systems” mandate, changing the image of the PRC from a “northern neighbor” to a “nation-state with sovereignty over Hong Kong,” and to avoid causing offense to the Beijing government.87 While materials concerning Taiwan are marginalized or removed, textbook producers are advised to follow “guidelines” from the HKSAR government, which has ignited concerns among the Hong Kong population regarding the implications for writing and publishing freedoms. The HKSAR government’s manipulation of language to convey political ideology was seen again during the 2012 “moral and national education” (deyu ji guomin jiaoyu 德育及國民教育) controversy, wherein a proposed teaching manual consisted of phrases complimenting the Chinese Communist Party while denouncing democratic practices such as multiparty dynamics. The contemporary language situation in Hong Kong is further complicated by the promotion of Mandarin (also known as Modern Standard Mandarin or Putonghua), the official language of the PRC. The mainstream language dynamic in Hong Kong is no longer played out only between Chinese and English, but also between Cantonese and Mandarin. So far this chapter has treated “Chinese” as a singular category, although the “Chinese language” in Hong Kong refers to spoken Cantonese with 84  Stephen Evans, “Hong Kong’s New English Language Policy in Education”; Sun Chao Fen, “Hong Kong’s Language Policy in the Postcolonial Age.” 85  Zhang Bennan and Robin R. Yang, “Putonghua Education and Language Policy,” 150. 86  Herbert D. Pierson, “Societal Accommodation to English and Putonghua.” 87  Law Wing-Wah, “Globalization and Citizenship Education,” 267.

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traditional Chinese characters, compared to simplified Chinese characters and spoken Mandarin in Mainland China. Although initial efforts to introduce Mandarin into Hong Kong schools started in the British colonial period, under which the language was offered as an optional subject for primary schools in 1986 and secondary schools in 1988, it was under the Tung Chee-hwa administration that substantial policies promoting Mandarin language education were concretely realized. After 1997, the education authorities have made Mandarin a component of teacher-training courses and conducted a series of experiments in select schools where Mandarin is offered as a school subject and as an extracurricular activity.88 The quasigovernmental organization/educational platform known as the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR) has been investing large sums of money on Mandarin learning, hosting activities promoting Mandarin since 2002, and encouraging students to learn the language outside the classroom.89 In 1998, Mandarin became a core subject for primary and secondary school students.90 Ninety-eight percent of all public primary and secondary schools offered Mandarin courses in September 2000, and the number of Mandarin instructors in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools increased from 92 in 1980/1981 to 9,335 in 2000/2001.91 The number of Hong Kong primary and secondary schools using Mandarin to teach Chinese lessons, as opposed to those using Cantonese, increased from 12 in 1998 to over 40 by 2000.92 This increase has been supported by the HKSAR government since 2002, with government officials announcing their intention for Chinese language and literature classes in primary and secondary schools to be taught in Mandarin instead of Cantonese, and have even begun exploring the possibility of enforcing the use of Mandarin as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong schools (but whether this policy is to apply to some or all schools remains unclear).93 Despite these initiatives by the HKSAR government, the use of Mandarin among the Hong Kong Chinese continues to be limited. This can be partially explained by the linguistic differences between Cantonese and Mandarin: although both speeches belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family, they differ in grammatical structure, pronunciation (including 88 

Herbert D. Pierson, “Societal Accommodation to English and Putonghua,” 97. Standing Committee on Language Education and Research, http://www.languageeducation.com/eng/index.asp. 90  Lai Mee-ling, “Hong Kong Students’ Attitudes towards Cantonese, Putonghua, and English.” 91  Zhang Bennan and Robin R. Yang, “Putonghua Education and Language Policy,” 147. 92  Law Wing-Wah, “Globalization and Citizenship Education,” 266. 93  Angel M. Y. Lin and Evelyn Y. F. Man, Bilingual Education, 82. 89 

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different numbers of tones used in speech), and vocabulary.94 Another reason for the limited use of Mandarin is that the language lacks historical precedence in Hong Kong; despite the arrival of Mandarin-speaking Shanghai immigrants after WWII, and the momentary popularity of Mandarin movies and songs in Hong Kong during British colonial rule, the language never entered into everyday use for the majority of the population, who continued (or, in the case of migrants from the PRC, eventually learned) to speak Cantonese.95 As a result, at present, many Cantonesespeaking Hong Kong youths regard Mandarin as a second language almost as foreign as English. The acceptance of certain languages in Hong Kong society should also be understood in terms of the attitudes of the population. For Hong Kong students, Mandarin is a language that they learn in school because it is required and because it could facilitate their employment endeavors across the border. It is not a language they learn because they feel personally attached to it as the lingua franca of the nation on the Mainland.96 Like English, Mandarin in Hong Kong is seen as a pragmatic language used mostly for business communication with PRC corporations, in the service sector to serve the increasing Mainland tourists, in policy speeches by visiting PRC officials, and by HKSAR officials during interactions with Beijing. Mandarin is used alongside Cantonese and English in announcements on the local transit system, whereas some television channels broadcast programs in Mandarin for a few hours every day. Nevertheless, scholars have 94  The growing popularity of informal modes of communicative media in Hong Kong (such as magazine and tabloid publications, advertisements, Internet forums, social media platforms, and instant messaging) in the past few decades has encouraged Cantonese to develop its own writing style with exclusive new words unintelligible to Putonghua speakers. Differences between Cantonese and Putonghua are significant enough that if the Cantonese-­ speaking provinces “were an independent nation, they would properly be called two different languages.” See Robert Stuart Bauer, “The Hong Kong Cantonese Speech Community,” 66. See also Phil Benson, “Language Rights and the Medium-of-Instruction Issue”; Donald B. Snow, Cantonese as Written Language. 95  Anita Yuk Kang Poon, “Language Use, and Language Policy and Planning in Hong Kong,” 75. Shanghai émigrés brought capital and business expertise to Hong Kong in the 1940s and initiated the industrialization process in the colony. But industrialization required cheap labor, which was supplied by Cantonese-speaking immigrants from Guangdong Province, especially the Pearl River Delta. The Shanghainese were outnumbered by waves of Cantonese-speaking immigrant laborers during the 1950s and 1960s, reducing the linguistic influence of these entrepreneurs. See Robert Stuart Bauer, “The Hong Kong Cantonese Speech Community,” 59; Herbert D. Pierson, “Societal Accommodation to English and Pu­ tonghua,” 97. 96  Stephen Evans, “Hong Kong’s New English Language Policy in Education”; Tong YukYue, Hong Ying-Yi, Lee Sau-Lai, and Chiu Chi-Yue, “Language Use as Carrier of Social Identity”; Zhang Bennan and Robin R. Yang, “Putonghua Education and Language Policy.”

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noted that Mandarin “is perceived as neither mother tongue for the majority Cantonese-speakers in Hong Kong nor necessary for participation in a global market” and is deemed to possess limited relevance in everyday life for the contemporary Hong Kong population.97 Another reason why Mandarin has not joined Hong Kong’s linguistic scene is related to how the local sense of identity has been constructed. As the British Hong Kong colonial government never regulated the development of Cantonese, it was used freely among the Hong Kong Chinese. The dialect became “a more private possession of the speakers, a purer identity marker” for the Chinese population, and has become a vital component in the construction of Hong Kong’s local identity since the 1970s.98 The distinctiveness of this identity is maintained through Cantonese media, which emerged and became popular during the 1970s: examples include Cantonese popular music (“Cantopop”), television shows, and cinema.99 While Cantonese is a marker of the Hong Kong identity, English is also of significance because the “Hongkonger,” as an identity category, is described as speaking “English or expects his children to do so.”100 It has been suggested that the limited use of English in the public domain meant that the language plays a negligible role in the construction of the Hong Kong identity.101 This argument, however, does not explain how Hong Kong Speak, a form of code-mixing, has become “a badge of identity for educated Cantonese.”102 Rather, English could be better understood as a component in defining the Hong Kong identity, but the language by itself does not foster a strong sense of solidarity within Hong Kong society. Because of the socioeconomic and political power associated with English, En­glish is seen by the population as a language connoting “social distance in the wider society.” Consequently, “any Cantonese person, no matter how fluent in English, has to switch to Cantonese if he or she is serious about establishing a genuine and friendly relationship with another Cantonese person in Hong Kong.”103 The Hong Kong Chinese who converse only in English are seen as “unnatural,” “pompous,” and “showing off,” and students expressed a strong sentiment of “discomfort when hearing

97  Kingsley Bolton and Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, “Futures for Hong Kong English,” 306; Sun Chao Fen, “Hong Kong’s Language Policy.” 98  Kingsley Bolton and Christopher Hutton, “Bad Boys and Bad Language,” 305. 99  Angel M. Y. Lin, “‘Respect for Da Chopstick Hip Hop.’” 100  Hugh D. R. Baker, “Life in the Cities,” 478. 101  Law Wing-Wah, “Globalization and Citizenship Education.” 102  John Whelpton, “Cantonese, English, and Putonghua in a Hong Kong Secondary School,” 80. 103  Angel M. Y. Lin, “Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation?,” 67.

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Chinese speakers use English.”104 It is the combination of English with Cantonese that characterizes the Hongkonger. So, although the HKSAR government advocates for Mandarin instruction in schools, local enthusiasm for the language is mild because of demotic uncertainties as to where Mandarin fits into the conceptualizations and constructs of the Hong Kong identity. Of course, as it has been only two decades since the HKSAR government took power after the Hand­ over ceremony in 1997, it is still too early to conclude whether the government’s language policies have had any effect on the language preference of the local populace, and to see whether HKSAR government efforts to influence Hong Kong’s language scene through policies in education will be capable of transforming societal attitudes toward these languages. Hong Kong census figures released in 2012 show that Mandarin has finally overtaken English as the most common second language in Hong Kong, with the proportion of the territory’s population competent in Mandarin and English at 48 percent and 46 percent, respectively.105 This represents a significant increase in the number of people competent in Mandarin since 2001, a time when only a third of the Hong Kong population professed any competency with the language.106 Even though the figures indicate increased Mandarin use in Hong Kong, they do not account for how Hong Kong people feel toward English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.107 First, the increased use of Mandarin does not necessarily reflect the Hong Kong population’s desire to learn Mandarin rather than English. A Hong Kong government survey published in 2015 reveals that if only for the familiar practical reasons involving employment and business opportunities, the majority of those aged 15 to 65 in Hong Kong still prefer to learn English (83.4 percent of respondents prefer to learn written English in contrast to 10.7 percent for Chinese; 61.5 percent of respondents prefer to learn spoken English, whereas this figure is only at 28.4 percent for spoken Mandarin).108 The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey 104 

Martha C. Pennington and Francis Yue, “English and Chinese in Hong Kong,” 13. Malcolm Moore, “Mandarin Overtakes English.” 106  Esther Tran-Le, “Hong Kong.” 107  The increase of Mandarin speakers could also be the result of the changing demographic composition in Hong Kong since the Handover. Under the post-Handover immigration scheme toward Mainlanders, the HKSAR government issue 150 one-way permits to PRC residents every day, with permit holders enjoying the right to permanently settle in Hong Kong. Priority is given to individuals with relatives who are already Hong Kong permanent residents. In 2013, statistics revealed that 760,000 immigrants from the PRC lived in Hong Kong, representing around 10 percent of the entire population. See Stuart Lau, “Mainland Chinese Migrants.” 108  Census and Statistics Department, HKSAR Government, “Use of Language in Hong 105 

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examined local sentiments toward Hong Kong and toward the PRC in 2014. It found that the percentage of respondents who feel “proud” of Mandarin dropped from 34.6 in 2006 to 23.8 in 2012, and more recently to 17.7 in 2014. In contrast, the percentage of respondents harboring a sense of pride toward Cantonese grew from 76.6 percent in 2012 (the first year this question was asked) to 81 percent in 2014.109 There are signs showing that on one hand, popular sentiment in Hong Kong is gradually becoming more attached to Cantonese. On the other hand, Mandarin is seen as the language representing the sociopolitical influences of the PRC government in local affairs, the language of the unwanted “outsider” threatening Hong Kong’s autonomy. For example, in 2012, when a Hong Kong–based clothing company began using simplified Chinese characters on their price tags (as opposed to the traditional Chinese characters used by Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong), some residents and activists held a protest, as they were worried that the use of the common written Chinese script of the PRC was a sign that “their local identity risks getting submerged by waves of visitors from mainland China.”110 There was also much public backlash in response to Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s 梁振英 (r. 2012–2017) use of Mandarin during the swearing-in process in 2012, perceived by many as a sign that Leung was “kowtowing” to the PRC government in Beijing.111 As noted by a blogger called Anna Tam (also known under her Chinese penname Anna 安娜), Leung’s use of Mandarin but not Cantonese during the ceremony was a “crystal clear sign that CY Leung’s priority is being loyal to Beijing, not HK, the place he is supposed to serve.”112 Deciding which language to use in contemporary Hong Kong has increasingly become a choice laden with political implications and identity symbolism. Conclusion This chapter began by discussing the historical spread of English in Hong Kong society thanks to the educational policies in schools established during British colonial rule. The extent of British influence in language acquisition, however, is questionable, as seen in this chapter. We must also account for the Hong Kong population’s ability to exhibit agency, to Kong”; University of Hong Kong Press Release, “Language Use, Proficiency and Attitudes in Hong Kong.” 109  Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey, Chinese University of Hong Kong, “The Identity and National Identification of Hong Kong People.” 110  Chen Te-Ping, “Character Issues.” 111  Chen Te-Ping, “New Hong Kong Leader Opts for Mandarin”; Mark McDonald, “A Telling Language Lesson in Hong Kong.” 112  Anna Tam, “Leung’s Choice of Mandarin.”

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make their own choices and linguistic appropriations despite the will of the British colonial authorities, and to calculate the benefits of using one language instead of another. This agency was seen when parents and students protested the streaming policies boosting CMI and limiting access to EMI, and through the emergence and persistence of code-mixing. But in a bout of circular reasoning, is this notion of “choice” illusory, given that the choice of which language to learn and use in Hong Kong is actually determined by the socioeconomic parameters established by the British colonial administration? Higher education institutions, white-collar occupations, recognized professional qualifications, and the administration all favored English, and so for Hong Kong Chinese families hoping to move up the socioeconomic ladder, the acquisition of English language skills was deemed a necessity. The assertion of agency through individual “choice” is difficult to separate from the practices of governmentality. Choice and governmentality are not juxtaposed categories, but are entwined processes. But considering the growing significance of global capitalistic forces and employment trends in shaping peoples’ choices in language acquisition and language use, although practices of governmentality persist in Hong Kong, the extent of the influence and control such forms of institutional discipline hold over Hong Kong society is gradually diminishing. For example, even though the HKSAR government promotes Mandarin language education in local schools to position the Hong Kong population as citizens of the wider Mainland Chinese nation, students and parents continue to prioritize the acquisition of English in hopes of attaining access to international education and employment, which can then potentially improve their own socioeconomic standings within and beyond Hong Kong. Nonetheless, the HKSAR administration has continued to strengthen the presence of Mandarin in Hong Kong schools since 1997, and it will be interesting to see what new sociolinguistic dynamics will emerge in Hong Kong in the years to come. As mentioned in the final part of this chapter, there are deeper societal meanings of languages that must take into account. Language in Hong Kong is not solely a means for governments to shape society according to political agendas, nor is it only a pragmatic resource for economic achievement. It has become ingrained in self-identification among the local population. Future academic research and government policies pertaining to language in Hong Kong must take into consideration the changing sociopolitical and economic meanings of languages harbored by the population.

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Pujolar, Joan. “Bilingualism and the Nation-State in the Post-National Era.” In Monica Heller, ed., Bilingualism: A Social Approach, 71–95. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pun, Shuk Han. “Hegemonic Struggles in the Language Policy Development of Hong Kong, 1982–1994.” In Mark Bray and W. O. Lee, eds., Education and Political Transition: Perspectives and Dimensions in East Asia, 88–105. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 1997. Salaff, Janet, and Wong Siu-lun. “Exiting Hong Kong: Social Class Experiences and the Adjustment to 1997.” In Ronald Skeldon, ed., Emigration from Hong Kong: Tendencies and Impacts, 205–249. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1995. Sanderson, Edgar. The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century: Its Progress and Expansion at Home and Abroad Comprising a Description and History of the British Colonies and Its Dependencies. London: Blackie & Son, 1897. Snow, Donald B. Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. So, Daniel W. C. “Language-Based Bifurcation of Secondary Schools in Hong Kong: Past, Present and Future.” In K. K. Luke, ed., Into the Twenty-First Century: Issues of Language in Education in Hong Kong, 69–95. Hong Kong: Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, 1992. Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR). http://www.language-education.com/eng/index.asp. Stroud, Christopher. “Bilingualism: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism.” In Monica M. Heller, ed., Bilingualism: A Social Approach, 25–49. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Sun, Chao Fen. “Hong Kong’s Language Policy in the Postcolonial Age.” In Ming K. Chan and Alvin Y. So, eds., Crisis and Transformation in China’s Hong Kong, 283–306. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2002. Tam, Anna. “Leung’s Choice of Mandarin.” Journey to Hong Kong: A Hong Kong Blog. Created on July 4, 2012. Available at http://annatam. com/leungs-choice-of-mandarin. Tong, Q. S. “Myths about the Chinese Language.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 20, nos. 1–2 (1993): 29–47. Tong, Yuk-Yue, Hong Ying-Yi, Lee Sau-Lai, and Chiu Chi-Yue. “Language Use as a Carrier of Social Identity.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 23, no. 2 (1999): 281–296. Tran-Le, Esther. “Hong Kong: Mandarin Supplants English as Second Most Popular Language.” International Business Times. February 24, 2012. Available at http://www.ibtimes.com/hong-kong-mandarinsupplants-english-second-most-popular-language-416066.

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Tsang, Wing-kwong. “English as Cultural Capital for Educational Advancement in a Post-Colonial Society.” In Stephen Wing-Kai Chiu and Wong Siu-lun, eds., Hong Kong Divided? Structures of Social Inequality in the Twenty-First Century, 93–134. Hong Kong: Super Sharp Production Company for the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. Tung, Peter, Raymond Lam, and Tsang Wai King. “English as a Medium of Instruction in Post-1997 Hong Kong: What Students, Teachers and Parents Think.” Journal of Pragmatics 28, no. 4 (1997): 441–459. University of Hong Kong Press Release. “HKU Social Sciences Research Centre Announces ‘Language Use, Proficiency and Attitudes in Hong Kong’ Survey Findings.” August 24, 2015. Available online at http:// www.hku.hk/press/press-releases/detail/13154.html. Waters, Johanna L. “Geographies of Cultural Capital: Education, International Migration and Family Strategies between Hong Kong and Canada.” Royal Geographical Society 31, no. 2 (2006): 179–192. Whelpton, John. “Cantonese, English, and Putonghua in a Hong Kong Secondary School: Language Use and Language Attitudes.” Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics 4, no. 2 (1999): 79–92. Yau, Elaine. “Language Switch Causes a Stir: From September More Schools Teaching in Chinese Can Use English.” South China Morning Post. June 13, 2009. Young, G. M., comp. Speeches by Lord Macaulay, with His Minute on Indian Education. London: Oxford University Press, 1972. Zhang Bennan, and Robin R. Yang. “Putonghua Education and Language Policy in Postcolonial Hong Kong.” In Zhou Minglang and Sun Hongkai, eds., Language Policies in the People’s Republic of China: Theory and Practice since 1949, 143–162. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.

THREE

A Ruling Idea of the Time? The Rule of Law in Pre- and Post-1997 Hong Kong

CAROL A. G. JONES Introduction: In the Beginning This chapter explores the role played by the ideology of the rule of law in British rule in Hong Kong, especially in the resistance to what many regard as Mainland China’s “recolonization” of the territory since 1997 (see Gary Chi-hung Luk’s introduction for a clarification of the concept). Early British colonial policy in Hong Kong was that its “native people” would aspire to equality with European civilizations by adopting the values, institutions, and habits of the British way of life. Central to this conception of colonization was that the colonized people would enjoy all the civil, social, economic, and religious liberties of England. The rule of law would attach the Chinese to colonial rule, securing the hearts, minds, and souls of the local population, and (ideally) their allegiance to the British crown. They would be impressed by “the protection of equal laws, and, in a word, all the best fruits of science and civilization transplanted direct from the European headquarters.”1 Although allegiance to the British crown was never fully secured, by the time the British left Hong Kong in 1997, they had indeed succeeded in (re)attaching the local population to the rule of law, so much so that in the succeeding years, it was to prove an intractable obstacle to rule by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). From the beginning, the British colonial administration deployed a wide variety of administrative and executive measures in tandem with legislative and judge-made laws to control the Hong Kong Chinese population. This duality was to become a leitmotif of British rule, representing what Christopher Munn calls “a readiness by the government to circumvent 1 

Davis to Stanley, December 21, 1843, CO 129/4, 278, cited by Christopher Munn, “‘Scratching with a Rattan,’” 232.

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legal formalities.”2 Bringing the rule of law to Hong Kong was central to Britain’s “civilizing mission,” part of the “white man’s burden.” Colonial rule was founded on a discourse of bringing light out of darkness, order out of disorder, justice and stability out of injustice and chaos. When the Hong Kong authorities strayed too far from these promises, there was always the backstop of the Colonial Office in London and British Members of Parliament who, ever susceptible to pressure from the UK press and the UK electorate, sometimes acted to rein in the more egregious excesses of colonial rule, making the Hong Kong administration somewhat accountable to a distant democracy. Similarly, the Privy Council in London acted as a check on any wayward legal decisions of the Hong Kong courts. These checks ceased in 1997 with Hong Kong’s “retrocession to China,” when crucially the judges on the Privy Council were replaced by political appointees of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC). However, by this time Hongkongers had become so firmly attached to “English” rule of law that they themselves took over the task of defending it against the PRC’s depredations. The Early Years of British Hong Kong When Hong Kong’s first criminal court opened in March 1844, Governor Henry Pottinger (r. 1841–1844) was at pains to impress upon the jury that: In all cases where you have doubts, it is a wise and humane principle of the law to give the advantage of those doubts to the accused, and our observance of this rule is more especially necessary when it is remembered that he can have no counsel to plead for him. . . . I can at least promise that I sit here to exercise the most rigid impartiality as well as to temper justice with mercy.3

In 1844, that “great adjunct of civilization,” the Supreme Court, was opened, its first sessions being held under Chief Justice John Hulme.4 The attorney general, Paul Sterling, used the occasion to reiterate the message that “English laws were not the laws of vengeance, but were intended to protect the innocent by the punishment of guilt, not to punish guilt by mere vindictive feelings.”5 Hulme added that, “[a]s inhabitants of a British Colony, one of the greatest privileges you enjoy is the right to a due and even-handed administration of the English laws, and I am satisfied that

2 

Christopher Munn, Anglo-China, 125. James William Norton-Kyshe, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, 65. 4  James William Norton-Kyshe, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, 59. 5  James William Norton-Kyshe, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, 65. 3 

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the more you become acquainted with these Laws, the more you will learn to love and respect them.”6 Within a very short time, however, the Supreme Court became “notorious as a tool for extortion and malicious prosecutions, as a dispenser of unsafe verdicts and unjust sentences.”7 In the 1850s, Governor John Bowring (r. 1854–1859) allowed many serious cases to be brought before the lowest level of criminal court, the magistrates’ court, and from this point onward it was in the magistrates’ courts that the Chinese most directly experienced the power of colonial rule.8 The chief magistrate, William Caine, came into contact with the Chinese more often than any other officer of government except for the police. For the majority of the Chinese, he was the face of British authority, and reports show that they commonly mistook him for the Hong Kong governor.9 His regime “came to personify all the brutality, corruption, and extravagance of the old colonial system,” and by the mid-1850s his magistracy was the clearest and most dramatic symbol of colonial power, of its “capriciousness and brutality.”10 Caine’s reign epitomized the shallowness of those early, lofty “rule of law” promises. His regime in the courts became “an overture in which many of the themes that dominated the succeeding few decades were played out: of a society systematically divided by race; of rule by selective collaboration rather than broad co-operation; of executive action supplanting due process of law; of a regime that spoke of inclusion and civilization but used the methods of a government of occupation.”11 The currency of rule of law as an ideology was further undermined by the government’s extensive use of administrative (as opposed to legislative) powers to impose control over the population. Early administrative measures included repressive controls on movement within the colony, such as the “light and pass laws,” racial segregation, residential exclusion, and regulation of travel back and forth to the Mainland.12 Most of these discriminatory measures were fueled by a moral panic among an insecure European elite, which blamed the high level of crime in the colony on the Chinese. Historically, downplaying the role of the Chinese elites in main6 

Christopher Munn, “‘Scratching with a Rattan,’” 233. Christopher Munn, Anglo-China, 162. 8  Bowring also sought permission from London to allow Chinese persons to enter the legal profession, with a view toward making them magistrates. 9  Christopher Munn, Anglo-China, 114. 10  Christopher Munn, “‘Scratching with a Rattan,’” 213. 11  Christopher Munn, “‘Scratching with a Rattan,’” 238. 12  Under the light and pass laws, the Chinese were prohibited to be outdoors at night without an official pass and a lantern. For further details, see Peter Wesley-Smith, “AntiChinese Legislation in Hong Kong,” 131–132. 7 

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taining the social stability of colonial society has also created the impression that where stability did exist, this was entirely due to the British, and, order having been brought out of chaos, “the credit naturally went to the administrators.”13 Years of Turmoil: Before World War II The retreat from the promise of rule of law continued in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between the 1880s and World War II (1939– 1945), Hong Kong saw some of its worst civil unrest, which stemmed from large-scale labor disputes, anti-foreign campaigns in China, and the Republican Revolution of 1911. Throughout this period, the courts and the legal profession invariably associated themselves with the status quo. The exception was John Smale, chief justice in the 1860s and 1870s, who clashed with Governor Richard MacDonnell (r. 1866–1872) over a number of social justice issues. MacDonnell took the view that the “native” Chinese did not require due process protections of English law, arguing that “I have become daily more convinced of the unfitness of much of our criminal procedure to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The hands of the police are tied and their utility often impaired by the necessary adherence of our courts to rules which, however well fitted to the place which gave them birth, have little practical value here.”14 However, MacDonnell’s successor, John Pope Hennessy (r. 1877–1883), arrived in Hong Kong with a mandate to instantiate more inclusive policies on law and order. These were, as Kate Lowe and Eugene McLaughlin point out, an effort to obtain “the active consent of native populations in order to secure the legitimacy of imperial governance.” Lowe and McLaughlin continue: Hence his [Hennessy’s] determination to make clear that it was the duty of government to “hold the balance evenly between all men” instead of encouraging particular interests. . . . The most blatant inequities occurred in the sphere of criminal justice policies. He believed that it was of vital importance that all sections of the community have faith in the fairness of the criminal justice system and that governance was premised on the rule of law rather than the parochial interests of British colonists.15

13 

Chan Wai Kwan, The Making of Hong Kong Society, 2. MacDonnell to Kimberley, April 1872, CO 129, cited in Kate Lowe and Eugene McLaughlin, “An ‘El Dorado of Riches and a Place of Unpunished Crime.’” 15  Kate Lowe and Eugene McLaughlin, “An ‘El Dorado of Riches and a Place of Unpunished Crime.’” 14 

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However, Hennessy’s enlightened approach did not outlive his governorship. His reforms were rolled back as soon as he stepped down, leaving the European elite to retrench and regroup. For example, the 1903 Peak Reservation Ordinance and later laws related to Kowloon Tong clearly embedded residential segregation into the cultural and geographical landscapes of the colony.16 Between the 1880s and 1930s, the interests of Chinese workers brought them into direct conflict with both the European and the Chinese elites. The law now became the principal means of suppressing political demonstrations and subduing organized labor, while executive-administrative powers were deployed to deport political and labor activists. In 1886, the Peace Preservation Ordinance was enacted. Based in part on British suppression of the troubles in Ireland, the ordinance was to provide the template for all future public order legislation, such as the Emergency (Principal) Regulations Ordinance, a repressive measure passed in three minutes flat by the anxious Legislative Council (LEGCO) during the 1922 Seamen’s Strike. The 1920s and 1930s also saw an increase in the use of the powers of executive deportation and confidential banishment, enabling the government to bypass the legal system and public hearings in cases where it wished to expel political subversives and other “troublemakers.” These colonial laws remained “on the books” not only for the duration of colonial rule but after Hong Kong’s sovereignty transfer to the PRC in 1997, making these legal and administrative measures of repression equally available to Hong Kong’s new overlord. The Cold War Period As the foregoing suggests, the first hundred years of colonial rule tarnished the promise of an impartial, just, and fair legal system before which all were equal. However, that promise was renewed following World War II, when the international geopolitical climate favored decolonization, democratization, and racial equality. Hong Kong was to prove an exceptional case. After Mao Zedong 毛澤東’s victory in Mainland China in 1949, the colony became strategically important during the Cold War and, between 1949 and 1971, the rule of law was elevated to a dominant ideology in the “West’s” battle against communism. This clash, however, also resulted in the abrogation of rule of law principles as the Hong Kong government strove to contain the various agents of subversion to avoid having the Cold War “go hot” in the colony. 16 

The ordinance allowed the governor to permit exceptions to this rule. Only one was made, in favor of Robert Ho Tung 何東.

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With the victory of Mao, the geopolitics of Asia profoundly altered. Hong Kong became part of the “Bamboo Curtain,” on the front line of the “West’s” military and propaganda war against communism. The Mainland itself was closed, making Hong Kong a key listening post, Asia’s “den of spies,” and a hotbed for international intelligence activities.17 The United States supported the clandestine espionage activities of the Kuomintang (KMT, Nationalist Party) agents who used Hong Kong as a jumping-off point for their sabotage raids on the PRC, as well as for their propaganda war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mainland China also had agents in Hong Kong, the Chinese Intelligence Service (CIS), collecting intelligence and mobilizing local communist sympathizers in United Front activities. The United States increased its presence too: the US Consulate in Hong Kong became the largest in the world, bigger than many US Embassies, its staff swollen by large numbers of intelligence officers from various US agencies. As Richard Aldrich writes, “[d]uring the 1950s and 1960s, both the State Department and the Pentagon considered Hong Kong to be the single most important British overseas territory from the point of view of intelligence-gathering.”18 The Soviet Union had a smaller presence in Hong Kong but never ceased in its efforts to establish a more substantial spy network. The British intelligence agencies (MI5 and MI6) were also present, aided by the Hong Kong Police Special Branch. Between them, these “Cold War warriors” made Hong Kong a territory of spies whose activities threatened to provoke PRC hostility. At the same time, thousands of refugees fled China for Hong Kong, among whom many were Communist and Nationalist supporters. The government, concerned with how to prevent them from continuing the Chinese civil war within the colony and with reining in the activities of intelligence operatives, found an answer in the ideology of the rule of law. This enabled it to “hold the ring” by claiming to treat all law-breakers equally and impartially. Hong Kong now acquired a reputation as a territory of law. Seeking to prevent the colony from becoming a flashpoint that might trigger PRC intervention, the government espoused a strategy of even-handed neutrality in the application of law toward CCP and KMT activities, as well as foreign intelligence agencies. For example, in 1951 the Hong Kong Police uncovered an unknown Chinese contact of the US Consulate and detained him for intensive questioning.19 The United States accused Governor Alexander Grantham (r. 1947–1957) of tolerating Beijing’s extensive underground groups while being “intolerant of Taiwan’s 17 

Bruce Gilley, “Ferment in Asia’s Den of Spies.” Richard J. Aldrich, GCHQ, 151. 19  Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 306. 18 

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secret organizations using the colony as a springboard for operations into mainland China.”20 The complaint fell on stony ground. Grantham reiterated that the law was applied impartially, without fear or favor. By August 1951, some eight undercover operatives from Taiwan were in custody. Fewer CIS agents appear to have been arrested, but they were probably dealt with by legal, executive means such as confidential banishment. In 1949, the Hong Kong Police Special Branch did uncover several Chinese communist agents during a surprise raid on a leading communist supporter living in the colony. Their diaries and the documentation seized painted “a revealing picture of the ruthless fervour, efficiency and cynicism of the Chinese communists and provide abundant evidence that, far from the CPC [CCP] being motivated by any special ‘Chinese’ factors, it is strictly orthodox, confident, mature and at its highest level very well organized.”21 By 1950, the communists were seen as the most serious subversive threat. When local communist supporters “once or twice tried violent conclusions with this Government, their ring leaders were deported to China.”22 Deportation, confidential banishment, and detention without trial now became routine parts of the politicolegal system. The 1938 Sedition Ordinance (amended in 1950) had already criminalized “words in speech or print that raise discontent or disaffection amongst Her Majesty’s subjects or inhabitants of the Colony or promote feeling of ill-will and hostility between different classes of the population in the Colony.”23 Such acts carried a penalty of fine, imprisonment, or both. The 1949 Emergency Regulations and the 1951 Control of Publication and Consolidation Ordinance “placed the Hong Kong press under the rigid control of the government.”24 Every newspaper had to submit a copy of every issue to the registrar for inspection upon publication.25 The Hong Kong media operated in a “sort of Cold War grey zone, where certain communist activities were tolerated but rigidly confined by the colonial legal frame.”26 In 1952, the pro-CCP newspaper Ta Kung Pao published reports accusing the government of repressing a “comfort mission” from Mainland China for the victims of the

20 

Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 311. Ernest Bevin, March 1949, cited in Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 306. 22  Dispatch 1127, Grantham to Lennox-Boyd, June 25, 1956, cited in Steve Tsang, A Documentary History of Hong Kong, 289–290. 23  Hong Kong Government, 1938 Sedition Ordinance, no. 13, section 3; Sedition Amendment Ordinance, no. 28. 24  Yan Lu, “Limits to Propaganda,” 100–101. 25  Yan Lu, “Limits to Propaganda,” 101. 26  Yan Lu, “Limits to Propaganda,” 95. 21 

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Tung Tau fire.27 Along with the Wen Wei Po, the leftist Ta Kung Pao was prosecuted under the Sedition Ordinance. The editor and the owner of the Ta Kung Pao were both fined and imprisoned, and the newspaper was ordered to suspend publication for six months.28 In Mainland China, reaction was immediate and threatening. In Guangdong Province, there was a mass demonstration with a threat to British property. When Premier Zhou Enlai 周恩來 demanded the withdrawal of the prosecution against the Ta Kung Pao, the British government intervened to direct the courts to rescind the sentence. Thus, superpower politics trumped Governor Grantham’s much-vaunted adherence to the even-handed application of law. Superpower politics also compromised the rule of law when the United States put pressure on Hong Kong to interfere with the ordinary processes of law during a 1949 China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) incident that involved seventy aircraft in Hong Kong claimed by both the Nationalist and Communist governments.29 Fears over Washington’s reaction led London to advise Governor Grantham to intervene directly in the colony’s legal process. The governor was, as James T. H. Tang notes, “not happy” with London’s decision, but there was little he could do.30 Direct intervention of this kind damaged the legitimacy of the British Hong Kong government. Less conspicuous, and thus less likely to draw public attention, was the use of executive powers of deportation and detention without trial. The Deportation of Aliens Ordinance or the Emergency [Principal] Regulations Ordinance allowed the authorities to deal with “troublemakers” without being seen openly to compromise adherence to the rule of law. They gave the Hong Kong governor the power to order the deportation of persons deemed “undesirable,” usually on the advice of the police or the “political advisor.” No courts or judges were involved in this process. In the same way a number of left-wing cultural workers and labor leaders were deported following the Tung Tau Riots of 1951 and the October 10 Riots of 1952. In 1955, when agents from Taiwan attempted to assassinate the PRC premier Zhou Enlai by blowing up the Kashmir Princess of Air India, forty-five KMT suspects were detained “for a particularly long time” during the enquiry, thirteen of them for about a year. Governor Grantham “repeatedly appealed to London for their early

27  For a fuller account of the Tung Tau Riots, see Carol A. G. Jones and Jon Vagg, Criminal Justice in Hong Kong, 239–292. 28  Yan Lu, “Limits to Propaganda,” 108–109. 29  James T. H. Tang, “From Empire Defence to Imperial Retreat.” The CNAC incident involved conflicting legal claims on airplanes in Hong Kong by the Mainland and Taiwan governments. 30  James T. H. Tang, “From Empire Defence to Imperial Retreat,” 329–330.

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release or deportation to Taiwan”; eventually thirty-two were deported by sea on January 15, 1956, and thirteen others were deported in June 1956.31 The Emergency Regulations Ordinance, based on the 1922 Emergency (Principal) Regulations Ordinance (re-enacted in 1949), was also used to deport those involved in the 1956 Kowloon Riots. By 1956, however, the PRC and Taiwan would no longer accept persons under deportation orders from Hong Kong. The 1956 Emergency (Deportation and Detention) Regulations therefore were passed allowing the detention without trial of those whom it proved impossible to deport. Astonishingly, between 1956 and 1960, at least 32,258 persons were either deported or detained without trial in lieu of deportation. At least a further 2,304 were put up for “confidential banishment” under a separate procedure.32 The deportation and detention of “undesirables” without trial continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Because this practice operated beyond the radar of law and without the openness of public hearings, it enabled the Hong Kong government to continue its public commitment to the rule of law even while undercutting it. To counter criticism by the International Commission of Jurists (usually referred to as “Justice”) and to forestall Parliamentary comment, a new tribunal was introduced in 1962 to oversee the practice of detention in lieu of deportation. The governor assured the Colonial Office that such measures were still necessary as Cold War Hong Kong faced a “public danger” of sufficient gravity to justify wide executive powers to detain. By 1966, London was sufficiently concerned to order a review of the entire system. However, the proposed overhaul never happened. Riots in 1966 and 1967 instead heralded a new swathe of Emergency Regulations covering a wide range of communist activities. Unlike ordinary laws, these regulations were not subjected to LEGCO approval; they were brought into force by the simple act of being published in the government’s Gazette. Moreover, although the Hong Kong administration was obliged to run proposed legislation past officials in London, it was under no such duty to do so with the regulations published in the Gazette; whether Whitehall officials read all the gazetted regulations is also doubtful. Fears of a backlash from Mainland China did on occasion lead the governor of the time, David Trench (r. 1964–1971), 31 

Steve Tsang, “Target Zhou Enlai.” Committee of Review, Annual Reports 1959 and 1960; First Schedule and Second Schedule, Memo, Chairman of Committee of Review to Colonial Secretary, January 24, 1961, HKRS 179-1-5 and HKRS 179-1-6. The schedules include the number of persons detained in the Chatham Road Centre, including illegal immigrants, returned banishees, persons released from prison on scheduled offenses and awaiting deportation, and persons awaiting the confidential banishment procedure. For more details, see Carol A. G. Jones and Jon Vagg, Criminal Justice in Hong Kong, 375–408. 32 

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to notify London of his intentions to invoke certain powers, such as suppression of the communist press, but in general repressive measures were introduced with minimal democratic or legal oversight. Section 2(i) of the Emergency (Principal) Regulations gave the governor enormous discretionary power, stating that “on any occasion which the Governor-in-Council may consider to be an occasion of emergency or public danger, he may make any regulations whatsoever which he may consider desirable in the public interest.” Unlike other colonies, there was no requirement for an emergency in Hong Kong to be declared before these powers were exercised. Among the Emergency Regulations issued in 1967, two in particular stand out as stark denials of the rule of law. Regulation 88 allowed for trial in camera, in other words, a closed trial not open to the press or public. Regulation 31 allowed the colonial secretary in Hong Kong to detain a person for up to a year without trial and without reasons; on expiry, detention could be renewed (repeatedly) for a further year. Under Regulation 31, fifty-two leftist leaders were detained at the Victoria Road Detention Centre (the “White House”), many for over a year, in solitary confinement, and without trial.33 Among these was the secretary of the Hong Kong Chinese Reform Association, Choi Wei-hang 蔡渭衡, as well as Hong Kong film stars Fu Che 傅奇 and Shi Hui 石慧. The failed attempts to deport them to Mainland China generated great publicity and anti-British propaganda.34 The draconian nature of these measures led members of LEGCO to accuse the government of enforcing not the rule of law but the “law of the ruler,” a protest that in itself indicates that by this time some Hong Kong people were measuring the government against its own ideology. The Emergency Regulations were seen as a double-edged sword. Deemed necessary due to the emergency posed by the riots, if used indiscriminately the regulations would “infringe on Hong Kong’s civil liberties— our most cherished possession as a part of the free world.”35 The government responded that the regulations were a temporary response to the riots and would be relaxed “as soon as things returned to normal.”36 But it is testimony to the pervasive nature of the government’s rule of law ideology that LEGCO members saw the regulations as “alien to the Common Law of England.” One spokesman hoped they would remain “exceptional” powers and not acquire a permanent character as such leg33 

Gary Ka-wai Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed. In 2006, the South China Morning Post, the Apple Daily, and the Ming Pao all carried reports on the role of the “White House” in 1967. On the White House, see “East South West North.” 35  “Most Back New Emergency Laws,” Hong Kong Star, July 21, 1967. 36  See, for example, Woo Pak-chuen and Szeto Wai Wah, Hong Kong Star, July 21, 1967. 34 

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islation had in the past.37 In fact, many of the measures contained in the Emergency Regulations were enshrined in the Public Order Ordinance of 1967. They, moreover, have still been deployed post-1997 to enforce controls over public demonstrations; other “emergency” powers also found their way into the Sedition Ordinance and the Immigration Ordinance. Some regulations were gradually rescinded between 1968 and 1969, but the most draconian, Regulation 31, was not discontinued until 1971, long after the state of exception triggered by the riots had passed. Moreover, the Emergency (Principal) Regulations Ordinance was never revoked. Indeed, it was re-enacted by the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on July 1, 1997, and remains a feature of post-British Hong Kong. The wide discretionary powers permitted under section 2(i) have simply been transferred from the Hong Kong governor to the ­HKSAR chief executive. The Retrocession Years: 1984–1997 Throughout the British colonial period, those “exceptional” executive powers ran in tandem with the ordinary legal system that still promised to deliver rule of law ideals. As I have argued, the use of administrative measures allowed the British to appear to adhere to their rule of law ideology even while abrogating its principles. Moreover, the ideology seems to have remained intact despite some glaring colonial anomalies. For example, not until the 1990s, just prior to retrocession, was the lack of localization in the legal profession properly addressed. English remained the official language of the legal system even though 90 percent of those using the courts spoke Cantonese; even qualification as a juror remained tied to the ability to understand English. Taken together with the clear abrogation of rule of law principles between 1967 and 1971, it seems remarkable therefore that the public accepted the rhetoric of “even-handed application of law” and the “high standards of British justice” associated with the ideology of law. How, then, did the rule of law achieve such popularity that by 2004 it had become a key point in a charter of the territory’s “core values”? The organizers of the Hong Kong Core Values Declaration of 2004 were “greatly disturbed by the increasing erosion of Hong Kong’s core values. . . . The community is filled with a strong sense of helplessness and rising frustrations. . . . Our core values are being shaken. . . . The alarm has rung to defend Hong Kong’s core values.”38 Communal symbols such as the rule 37 

Albert Sanguinetti, Article in Hong Kong Star, July 21, 1967. Ambrose Leung, “Push to Defend City’s Core Values,” South China Morning Post, June 7, 2004. 38 

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of law were mobilized not just to uphold the rule of law but in defense of Hong Kong’s local identity, with which it had become inextricably associated. This was an identity increasingly honed in opposition to the “other,” that is, the Mainland. For many Hong Kong people, “Mainlandization” represents the breakdown of order and lack of regard for law, rules, and the prevailing social norms; in other words, the law-abiding culture, beliefs, values, and practices that have made Hong Kong successful. Belief in the rule of law has become a means of distinguishing Hongkongers from Mainlanders, a marker of their distinctive identity. At times of threat, such as destabilization and measures designed to force reintegration with the “motherland,” the rule of law has provided a common cultural symbol around which Hongkongers rally to demonstrate their defiance, their cohesion, and their social solidarity. This resistance is evident in massive street demonstrations as well as a multitude of alternative cultural formats that mobilize people around law, freedom, justice, and rights. A myriad of social groups participate, from schoolchildren and university students to the elderly, environmental campaigners, welfare workers, religious groups, social activists, trade unionists, and grassroots community organization members. Despite the fissures between them, all unite around the need to protect the rule of law, the last bulwark against “Mainlandization.” Where did this belief in the rule of law come from? Its roots lie partly in British colonial propaganda but also in the 1970s, when a Hong Kong government faced with riots at home and the threat of “Red China” on its doorstep developed policies designed to win over the hearts and minds of the population, including public housing, mass education, health programs, crackdown on corruption, and creating “clean” government. The elimination of corruption was key, since it reinforced the government’s ideological message that Hong Kong was now a society “open to talents,” where merit and hard work would reap rewards for all. The days of narrow privilege, nepotism, and cronyism were over. Central to this message was the rule of law. Maintaining a level playing field required the evenhanded application of the law to everyone, even the wealthy and the powerful; no one was to be above the law. Hong Kong people were granted improved legal rights as well as the means to enforce them through a vastly increased legal aid fund. The government could be brought to book by ordinary citizens exercizing these rights, either through the courts, newly created tribunals, or various new complaint procedures. Still not politically accountable because still undemocratic, the government nevertheless became vastly more accountable to the law.39 This mix of welfare colonial39 

Carol A. G. Jones, “Politics Postponed.”

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ism and legal accountability repaired much of the colonial regime’s weak legitimacy. However, this rule-by-legality strategy came unstuck in 1984, with the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty in 1997. The exclusion of Hong Kong people from this decision over their future underlined the fact that legal rights could only ever be second order rights: it was the rulers, not the ruled, who made the really important political decisions, against which there was no channel of challenge. In subsequent years, therefore, the calls for democracy grew. The outcry was further fueled by the events of June 4, 1989, which summed up the difference between Hong Kong, a “city of law,” and Beijing, a city of unbridled political power. In Beijing and other cities in Mainland China, pro-democracy protestors were killed or detained, often in secret; others were later executed. In Hong Kong, by contrast, a march of over a million people proceeded peacefully with minimum police intervention. The contrast handed the government an unlooked-for propaganda coup. The fear of capital flight from Hong Kong as 1997 approached, as well as mass out-migration, prompted the government to embark on several confidence-boosting policies designed to allay fears that the retrocession would see the end of Hong Kong people’s rights and freedoms. One of these was a Bill of Rights (BOR) introduced in 1990.40 The BOR incorporated into domestic law the rights contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.41 This stipulated a presumption of innocence in criminal law, equality before the law, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, the right to be informed (in a language the accused understood) of the reasons for the arrest and the charges laid, prompt appearance before a judge, trial in open court without delay and with legal representation, the right to cross-examine witnesses, and the right to request an appeal. Other articles provided for liberty of movement, freedom of thought and religion, as well as freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. Between 1991 and 1997, the BOR became a formidable weapon in the hands of human rights lawyers. Together with the power of judicial review, the law provided a powerful means to bring the government and its officials to account. An independent judiciary also finally began to fulfill its promise as a check on the abuse of power. Law lived up to its 40 

Laws of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance, cap 383, June 8, 1991. The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration promised that the existing provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights would remain in force after 1997. Article 39 of the Basic Law confirms this. 41 

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ideological rhetoric: it bestowed rights on even the lowliest (and often the most unpopular) groups in society, and gave them a voice sometimes so powerful that it defeated the government. Defending the rule of law became a focal point for local culture. The view that Mainland China would try to whittle away Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms was a constant theme in public discourse, kept alive by arguments over issues such as the composition of the Court of Final Appeal and the Basic Law Committee. Throughout the decade and a half before 1997, local people became hypervigilant for any sign of a Mainland incursion into the rule of law. In 1997, for example, when a PRC general surnamed Zhao attempted to cross the border into Hong Kong without any proper papers, some immigration officers in Hong Kong complained to a local radio phone-in program that “no-one was above the law” and that “even the Governor had to have the right papers.” Justice Pao (Bao qingtian 包青天), a fictional television show featuring a judge in imperial China who dispensed justice without fear or favor, was in such popular demand that it was shown twice nightly on two television channels. Faced with examples of Hong Kong’s rich and powerful flouting the rules, students donned T-shirts bearing the slogan, “no matter how high you are, no-one is above the law.” This tide of belief in the rule of law rose as confrontation with the PRC intensified after Christopher Patten’s appointment as the last governor in 1992. Public confidence in the longevity of Hong Kong’s political institutions fell. The sight of the commercial elites rapidly switching allegiance to Beijing made it clear that the elites could not be relied upon to defend Hong Kong. Fears surfaced about the future politicization of the civil service. The row with Mainland China over Patten’s reforms scuppered the promised LEGCO “through train”; it would now be replaced by Mainland China’s Provisional Legislative Council. The protective barriers around Hong Kong’s “way of life” were now more fragile. The rule of law filled this lacuna, aided by Patten’s constant reiteration of the centrality of the rule of law, representative government, free speech, independent courts, free trade, and a clean police force to Hong Kong’s success.42 In a remarkable series of speeches in the run-up to 1997, Patten argued that the rule of law was essential to Hong Kong’s continued prosperity, stability, and freedom, inextricably linked to its capitalist system, freedoms, values, and “way of life.”43 It guaranteed “stability and our fundamental freedoms”; it was the “glue by which millions of people of different ambitions, abilities and temperament may be joined together.” It “championed the rights 42  Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Conversations with History series, “Conversation with Chris Patten.” 43  Christopher Patten, Today’s Success, Tomorrow’s Challenges.

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of the individual against the collective, the rights of the weak against the mighty, the individual against the state, the vulnerable against the powerful.” It went “hand in hand with clean and competent government.” It was the “bedrock of your way of life.” It guaranteed fair and equitable treatment for everyone, kept crime and corruption under unremitting attack, and produced “a safe and secure environment for the individual, for families and for businesses to flourish.” Hong Kong was a “decent, open, plural society living in freedom under the rule of law.” No one was above the law, “no politician, no business leader, no Governor”; the law served everyone. The rule of law was the community’s “most prized possession.”44 British rule thus ended as it had begun, with a rhetorical flourish about the rule of law. By 1997, however, unlike 1844, the public had come to expect the law to live up to its claims. Successful BOR and judicial review cases had raised expectations; Patten himself had conveyed the message that Hong Kong’s survival depended upon the rule of law. All hopes were pinned on what elsewhere I have called the “wall of law” (the BOR, the Sino-­British Joint Declaration, and the Basic Law) surrounding Hong Kong after 1997.45 The rule of law had become the ruling idea of the time. 1997–2014: The Law Wars When Hongkongers talk of their “way of life,” one of the first things they mention is the rule of law. Since 1997, they have repeatedly risked the wrath of Beijing to defend it. Even minor everyday infractions of social norms by Mainland visitors are seized upon as the degradation of Hong Kong’s “way of life,” the “breakdown of the rule of law,” the fear that the “looming disorder” of life in the Mainland is seeping into Hong Kong.46 Some writers have likened the Mainland’s official attempts to encourage, entice, and pressure Hongkongers to forfeit their history and culture for a Mainland identity to the process of recolonization.47 Hongkongers’ resistance to these endeavors is a far cry from Mainland leaders’ assumption 44  For an analysis of Patten’s speeches, see John Flowerdew, The Final Years of British Hong Kong. 45  See Carol A. G. Jones, Lost in China. 46  It is perceived that “Mainlandization” encompasses Hong Kong’s increased economic dependence on China; the undermining of its core freedoms, rights, and values; PRC interference with the rule of law, the subordination of Hong Kong culture, the weakening of its political institutions; and the deterioration of everyday life. See Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, “The Mainlandization and Recolonization of Hong Kong.” 47  See, for example, Law Wing-Wah, “The Accommodation and Resistance to the Decolonisation”; William P. MacNeil, “Enjoy Your Rights!”; Stephen Vines, Hong Kong: China’s New Colony.

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that the Hong Kong people would eagerly embrace reintegration, as “lost children” returning to the “motherland.” Since 1997, public disenchantment with Hong Kong’s political class has accelerated. The promise made on July 1, 1997 by the first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa 董建華 (r. 1997–2005), that “Hong Kong people would rule Hong Kong” and for the first time be “masters of our own destiny,” turned out to be hollow. In the immediate aftermath of the Handover, the Hong Kong government consisted of a Beijing-backed chief executive and his tycoon supporters. Paradoxically for a “postcolonial” government, it was more socially and politically distant from the people it governed than the old British regime, whose implicit lack of legitimacy meant that it had always had to strive hard for grassroots support.48 Law and lawyers have played a pivotal role in the fight to define and defend Hong Kong’s way of life since 1997. As Mainland legal scholars have sought to impose a highly statist, literal, and “law and order” interpretation of law on Hong Kong, the liberal lawyers of the Common Law tradition have sought to moderate state power, defend judicial independence, and engage with civil society in mobilizations against attacks on Hongkongers’ rights and freedoms. In 1999, the first serious constitutional crisis arose when the case Ng Ka-ling v Director of Immigration reached the courts.49 In 1997, a test case on the right of abode in Hong Kong had come before the court of appeal. It held that, under the Basic Law, all children of Hong Kong citizens born on the Mainland had the right of abode in Hong Kong. The HKSAR government challenged the judgment, claiming that it would open the floodgates to at least 1.67 million Mainland migrants, overwhelming Hong Kong’s health, housing, transportation, and educational infrastructure, and pushing the population up to 10 million by 2011. It was enough to “make any normal person agree that the judges were out of their minds to let those people in.”50 Legal proceedings culminated in January 1999, when the Court of Final Appeal (CFA) declared that the children were entitled to the right of abode, whether they were the illegitimate or legitimate offspring of Hong Kong residents, and whether or not they were born before their parents had obtained the right of abode in Hong Kong. One commentator observed that the CFA’s judgment “is almost a

48 

Opinion polls showed that by the early 2000s, the popularity of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had fallen below that of the last governor, Christopher Patten. 49  Ng Ka Ling and The Director of Immigration (FACV No. 14 of 1998); Ng Ka Ling v Director of Immigration (No. 2); Tsui Kuen Nang v The Director of Immigration, The Director of Immigration v Cheung Lai Wah, and Chan Kam Nga v The Director of Immigration. 50  Jonathan Fenby, Dealing with the Dragon, 159.

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perfect demonstration of the rule of law.”51 The South China Morning Post called it “the best shot in the arm for the rule of law since the handover.”52 This view was shared neither by Beijing nor the Hong Kong government, which plunged the territory into a constitutional crisis by inviting the National People’s Congress Standing Committee to issue an interpretation of the Basic Law on the matter. The legal profession, in an unprecedented show of political backbone, organized a silent march whose symbolism was not lost on the Hong Kong public. The pro-Beijing fraction of the profession lambasted the judiciary; several Mainland legal experts backed the government’s move, leaving no one in any doubt as to Beijing’s view. The law, and who had a right to determine it, became part of a politically charged conflict over who ruled Hong Kong. Politics won. Ordered by the NPCSC to “revisit” its judgment, the CFA was forced to backtrack on its assumption that, in certain matters, it had the power to interpret the Basic Law. The shot in the arm for the rule of law became a devastating wound. Commentators spoke of the “death of the rule of law”; WikiLeaks later revealed that the judges on the CFA had contemplated resigning en masse over the case.53 According to one report, the fact that the “surgery” performed by the NPCSC proved so painful was seen by Beijing as a necessary evil: “If there is a lot of pain, so be it. At least there will be no more attempts at independence.”54 In the following years, the government sought three further interpretations of the Basic Law from the NPCSC, leading some to rename the Court of Final Appeal the “Court of Semi-Final Appeal.” One newspaper carried a cartoon showing Tung Chee-hwa jumping up and down over the prostrate body of the rule of law. The Apple Daily reported that Hong Kong citizens’ approval rating of PRC rule had dropped drastically from 60 percent in 1998 to 42 percent after the CFA case.55 The law had become a principal political battleground of the “retrocession” and “recolonization,” a proxy war over sovereign rule. In 1999, further fears of Mainland interference in Hong Kong’s due process of law were aroused when a PRC court tried and executed a Hong Kong criminal (“Big Spender”) for crimes committed in Hong Kong itself. A similar outcome occurred in another 51 

Yash Ghai, “Abode Verdict a Resounding Victory for the Rule of Law.” “Two Systems.” 53  Gary Cheung and C. Ip, “All City’s Top Judges ‘Considered Quitting.’” The US cable from Cunningham to the State Department was dated August 28, 2007. 54  “NPC Will Have ‘Final Say’ on Basic Law.” 55  “Citizens’ Approval Rating for Chinese Rule Drastically Drops.” The Apple Daily commissioned the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong to conduct the poll. 52 

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case (i.e., the Telford Garden’s case). Though in both cases the expected procedure would have been extradition and trial before courts in Hong Kong, it transpired that no rendition agreement existed between the two jurisdictions. As the media pointed out, perhaps more worrying was the fact that Hong Kong’s Department of Justice made no effort to bring the accused back to Hong Kong for trial. The spectacle of a Hong Kong criminal being publicly sentenced to execution in Mainland China sent a powerful message as to who had the right to rule. The year 1999 was, therefore, a bad one for the ideology of the rule of law, an ideology long regarded by communism as a “bourgeois tool” to mask inequality. The principle of equality before the law was again spectacularly breached when the HKSAR’s secretary for justice declined to prosecute Sally Aw Sian 胡仙 for conspiracy to defraud. Aw was chair of the Sing Tao publishing group, a member of the PRC’s Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, and a friend of the then chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa.56 Her two co-conspirators were convicted. A LEGCO “No confidence” vote in the secretary for justice tabled by legislative councilor Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee 吳靄儀 was only narrowly defeated. There was also the conspicuous failure to prosecute the Xinhua News Agency for breaching the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance, despite the complainant (Emily Lau Wai-hing 劉慧卿), then a legislative councilor, producing clear evidence that it had done so. Another significant attack on (and public defense of) the rule of law occurred in late 2002, when the government issued a consultation paper on anti-subversion legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law. The Beijing government required the HKSAR to enact laws to “prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region [Hong Kong], and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign organizations or bodies.” Opinion polls in December 2002 indicated that 54 percent of Hongkongers opposed the Article 23 legislation.57 Most of the offenses were already covered by existing laws. There were also significant misgivings about Beijing’s definition of subversion, sedition, and secession. Margaret Ng argued that the way in which the Article 23 proposals were handled would be a crucial test

56 

Danny Gittings, “Changing Expectations.” Ma Ngok, Political Development in Hong Kong, 212, citing Ming Pao Daily News, December 14, 2002. 57 

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of the “one country, two systems” formula.58 There was, she said, hardly anything “more crucial to the preservation of Hong Kong’s separate systems and way of life” than the rights and freedoms people in Hong Kong enjoyed, which include, “in particular, a free press, the free flow of information, freedom of speech and of association, and free and open debate of political, religious or cultural views, no matter how distasteful they may be to government. . . . It is universally appreciated that this should remain unchanged after reunification, and that the situation in the rest of China should not spread to the SAR [the HKSAR].”59 The government pressed ahead with the proposals. The public responded on July 1, 2003, when 500,000 people demonstrated against Article 23 in what political scientist Ma Ngok describes as “the largest indigenous social movement in Hong Kong’s history.”60 The turnout reflected deep discontent with the Hong Kong government, concern as to how the overbroad national security legislation would be used, and the general distrust of the Mainland government. As opposition continued, the government eventually announced that it would postpone the legislation. Neither Beijing nor the Hong Kong government appear to have learned any lessons from this attempt to force through what many perceive as a “Mainlandization” policy. A similar climb down occurred in 2012, when proposals to introduce “patriotic education” into the school curriculum also triggered mass protests. The threat to the rule of law became a lightning rod around which discontent with the increasing Mainland Chinese presence in Hong Kong coalesced. Fostering patriotism has been a theme of the PRC’s policy toward Hong Kong since 1997. Mainland officials were surprised at the lack of enthusiasm displayed by Hongkongers for reunion with the motherland. By 2012, surprise had turned to anger as anti-Mainland protestors raised the old colonial flag to symbolize their discontent. The mission of the Hong Kong City-State Autonomy Movement, moreover, is to “safeguard Hong Kong’s autonomy” by pushing for greater separation from the Mainland.61 Its existence owes much to the development, since 1997, of a local identity partly founded on a sense that Hong Kong’s core values are under attack by the Mainland government. One of these core values is freedom of expression. The first major blow to this occurred in 1998, when Ng Kungsiu 吳恭劭 and Lee Kin-yun 利建潤 were convicted of publicly desecrating and willfully defiling both the national and regional flags. Their acts, they 58 

Margaret Ng, “Draconian Measures Threaten Hong Kong Freedoms.” Margaret Ng, “Draconian Measures Threaten Hong Kong Freedoms.” 60  Ma Ngok, Political Development in Hong Kong, 210. 61  Stuart Lau, “Crusade for Hong Kong.” 59 

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defended, represented the exercise of their freedom of expression. The Court of Appeal agreed and overturned the convictions, arguing that the defendants’ actions were protected under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and under Article 27 of the Basic Law. The government disagreed and took the case to the CFA. On December 15, 1999, the chief justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang 李國能 delivered its judgment. In a speech redolent with the full rhetoric of liberal rule of law, he stated: “This freedom includes the freedom to express ideas which the majority may find disagreeable or offensive and the freedom to criticize governmental institutions and the conduct of public officials. . . . The Basic Law contains constitutional guarantees for the freedoms that are of the essence of Hong Kong’s civil society.”62 It is commonplace among lawyers that the rule of law is “breached more oft” in the honor than in the observance. In this case, the CFA decided that some degree of restriction was justified, since protecting the dignity of the national and regional flags was a legitimate matter of community interest. Freedom of expression could be restricted for the protection of national security or of public order (ordre Public), a concept new to Hong Kong law.63 The convictions were reinstated. Hong Kong people were used to some of the legal arguments, not least when “the scholarly, reasonable Chief Justice” quoted at length in his judgment from the sayings of President Jiang Zemin 江澤民 of the PRC, and the chairman of the Basic Law Drafting Committee. These arguments reminded the population that the five stars on the HKSAR flag “symbolise the fact that all Hong Kong compatriots love their motherland.”64 One local journalist lauded the judiciary for defending the right to protest and the right of people not to be arbitrarily arrested and detained, and for having done so “freely, fearlessly and in strict accordance with law.”65 The requirement, under the Public Order Ordinance, of applying to the commissioner of police for permission to demonstrate has since been repeatedly criticized as giving him an administrative veto over political protests. The CFA went some way to retrieve its reputation in 2005, when it considered a case involving the Falun Gong,66 which was banned as a quasireligious cult on the Mainland. In 2002, members of the group were arrested by the Hong Kong police for causing an obstruction during a peaceful dem62   

HKSAR v Ng Kung Siu and Lee Kin Yun. The term ordre Public was defined as meaning “public order” in the 2005 case of Leung Kwok Hung and Others v HKSAR. 64  Elihu Lauterpacht, C. J. Greenwood, and A. G. Oppenheimer, International Law Reports, vol. 122, 582. 65  Cliff Buddle, “Falun Gong Ruling Is in the Interests of Us All.” 66  Yeung May Wan v HKSAR. 63 

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onstration outside the Mainland government’s liaison office. Appealing their conviction, they argued that they were defending human rights and the rule of law, and that the charges against them were malicious persecutions due to pressure from the Mainland.67 The case was seen as “a key test of judicial independence under Chinese rule.”68 Although the Falun Gong demonstrators had obstructed a public place, the CFA argued that, “[w]hen obstruction results from persons exercising the constitutional rights to demonstrate, the importance of that fundamental right must be given substantial weight in deciding whether the obstruction is reasonable.”69 Causing an obstruction by demonstration did not automatically constitute an offense, nor was obstructing a public place serious enough to muzzle demonstrators exercising their right to free speech. The police had failed to pay due regard to the importance of the demonstrators’ right to protest. Their arrest was thus unlawful and they were entitled to use reasonable force to resist. In July 2005, the CFA also stipulated that the policing of demonstrations must be done in a way “which fully protects . . . the precious right to protest.”70 The police response to such street demonstrations is often seen as a barometer of the state’s political character. Since 1997, however, the police force has become increasingly politicized, undercutting its public legitimacy. Initially, although post-1997 Hong Kong remained a semiauthoritarian state, an opinion poll conducted in 2006 showed people’s satisfaction with the police to have reached a record high.71 Every year since 2003, mass pro-­democracy rallies have taken place on July 1, the anniversary of the Handover; other demonstrations have been everyday events. However, relations between the police and the public have gradually deteriorated, and public support has been damaged by a series of incidents. The police used harsh tactics during the 2005 World Trade Organization meeting protests, leading many locals to sympathize with the protestors and offer them aid and food.72 More complaints followed in subsequent years about the police’s increasingly rough handling of protestors, in particular at demonstrations outside the PRC liaison office. On April 1, 2012, for example, a protest took place outside the liaison office, where the national flag was allegedly desecrated. Over fifteen months later, a young woman, Yau Ka-yu, was detained and charged for her part in the unlawful assembly, drawing allegations of political harassment of activists. The police 67 

“Falun Gong Followers Begin Appeal over Convictions.” Y. K. Lai, “Top Court Overturns Criminal Convictions against Falun Gong Followers.” 69  Danny Gittings, “Changing Expectations.” 70  Editorial, South China Morning Post, July 12, 2005. 71  Public Opinion Programme, University of Hong Kong, Press Release, October 3, 2006. 72  Carol A. G. Jones and Jon Vagg, Criminal Justice in Hong Kong, 529–552. 68 

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were seen less as neutrally “holding the ring” between political groups than as protecting their political masters. This was spectacularly evident in their violent anti-riot tactics deployed against the Occupy Central protestors in 2014, when police use of tear gas and pepper spray against unarmed, peaceful demonstrators sparked worldwide controversy. The police have countered that their tactics remain unvaried, that no political pressure influences their handling of protests, and that the Hong Kong public is simply now more vociferous regarding its rights and freedoms. However, the Independent Police Complaints Council did censure senior officers for their conduct in protests during the visit of the PRC vice-premier Li Keqiang 李克強 to Hong Kong in 2011; sixteen complaints were made and thirteen police officers were punished. In that incident, Wong Kin 黃健 was removed by force by five officers from the police’s VIP protection unit as he appeared outside his home wearing a Tee-shirt with the words “Vindication for June 4” printed on the back. He complained that the officers had assaulted him.73 Moreover, in 2013, a US human rights report documented “an increase in arbitrary arrest or detention and other aggressive police tactics hampering the freedom of assembly.”74 It further read: [The] police admitted using pepper spray canisters with more powerful jets at close range against protesters and even some journalists during [PRC] President Hu Jintao’s July visit [in 2012]. Activists and some lawmakers expressed concern about the lack of guidelines as to whether a person arrested on assault charges related to public demonstrations would be charged under the Police Force Ordinance (PFO) or the Offences Against the Person Ordinance (OAPO). Both criminalize assault on a police officer on duty, but while the PFO carries a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment and a HK$5,000 (US$644) fine, the OAPO carries a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment. Some activists also alleged that police faced no penalty for making arrests that ultimately were not prosecuted or were dismissed by the courts, allowing them to use arrest to intimidate and discredit protesters. The Civil Human Rights Front NGO alliance reported that law enforcement charged an increasing number of protest participants under the tougher OAPO.75

73 

“Action Taken over Police Handling of Li Keqiang Visit.” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “2012 Country Report on Human Rights Practices.” 75  Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “2012 Country Report on Human Rights Practices.” 74 

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Following the Occupy Central protests, the police were also found to have given misleading evidence against those accused of public order offenses; they were widely censured for an assault on one protestor that was caught on camera. Though it is likely that many police officers themselves sympathized with the aims of the Occupy Central Movement, their structural position in the politicolegal machinery of governance and absence of individual constabulary power means that, in extremis, even sympathetic officers are arms of government rather than servants of the people. The government’s adherence to the principle that no one is above the law has also suffered a series of blows since 1997. In 2003, for example, the financial secretary, Antony Leung Kam-chung 梁錦松, had to resign after it was discovered that he had purchased a Lexus car shortly before he himself had raised the tax on luxury cars in the budget. Donald Tsang Yam-kuen 曾蔭權 (r. 2005–2012), who succeeded Tung Chee-hwa as chief executive, was also severely criticized for allegedly accepting favors from tycoon friends, such as flights in their private jets, trips on their yachts, and the lease of a luxury Shenzhen penthouse at a discounted rent. Tsang’s successor, Leung Chun-ying 梁振英 (r. 2012–2017), was also accused of breaching the law by adding illegal structures to his home, an offense for which he had publicly lambasted his rival in the race for the chief executive position. In 2012, 2013, and 2014, successive scandals emerged involving government ministers, high-ranking officials, and the former commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the latter arguably inflicting the most damage on Hong Kong’s reputation as a city of law. These persistent stories of malfeasance took Hongkongers back to the “bad old days” of crony colonialism, in the 1960s, before the rule of law attacked the nepotism and “connections” (guanxi 關係) that had so skewed society in favor of the rich and powerful. This was exactly what Hongkongers fear: Mainland ways undermining Hong Kong’s core values. In fact, such incidents both undermined and reaffirmed the power of rule of law discourse, for while they revealed an administration whose members clearly thought themselves above the law, their censure simultaneously suggests that there were some still determined to ensure that the rule of law remained the standard by which the rulers could be called to account. However, in June 2012, a pessimistic law professor at the University of Hong Kong argued that the rule of law was in continuous decline.76 An opinion poll on the eve of the fifteenth anniversary of the Handover in 2012 revealed that Hong Kong people’s mistrust of the Mainland government stood at 37 percent, the lowest trust rating since 1997, when it 76 

Stuart Lau, “Rule of Law Declined under Tsang.”

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stood at 44 percent.77 The walls of law that it was once thought would protect Hong Kong after 1997, though still standing, have been repeatedly breached by Mainland incursions. The irony is that law and order, qualities of life that make Hong Kong attractive to Mainlanders and to overseas investors, are under threat from Mainland Chinese intervention. Conclusion In August 2014, Beijing issued its sternest warning to Hong Kong. In a white paper, the PRC’s State Council stated in no uncertain terms that Mainland China controlled Hong Kong, that “some people” had a “confused or lopsided” understanding of the “one country, two systems” formula, and that the central government held comprehensive jurisdiction over the HKSAR. According to the white paper, Hong Kong is the subordinate party; it enjoys only the degree of autonomy that Beijing allowed, and this could even be taken away. Its politicians, administrators, and judges must all put the interests of “one country” first and accept the supervision of the central authorities.78 It would therefore seem that, on the face of it, the rule of law is dead in Hong Kong. Paradoxically, however, rule of law ideology remains a particularly powerful counter-discourse. Whatever its shortcomings in practice, it offers a fairer legal system than the Mainland’s summary process driven apparently by the caprice and arbitrariness of politics. A system that delivers justice some of the time is better than one that delivers no justice at all. For as long as Mainland China’s legal system continues to fall far short of universally acknowledged due process standards, it is thus likely that Hong­ kongers will come to the defense of the rule of law. Promoted in the past as a remedy for the British colonial government’s democratic deficit, it has become a ruling idea in the transition years, seizing the public imagination and becoming a core value, the territory’s principal shield against Mainland depredations but also central to a Hong Kong identity that resists PRC rule. Rule of law ideology and institutions (especially the independence of the judiciary) have hindered PRC rule over Hong Kong. As if to acknowledge this, in 2012, Beijing’s supporters in Hong Kong called for all judges to be Chinese nationals, a move that would sever the territory’s links with the Common Law world and exclude foreign judges from the CFA. Local law professor Eric Cheung Tat-ming observed that “there are tensions between Hong Kong and the mainland . . . and those in authority are not 77 

A. Cheng, “Action Needed to Quell Rising Hong Kong-Mainland Tension.” The poll was conducted by the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme. 78  State Council, People’s Republic of China, “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy.”

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defending our beliefs.”79 As the year drew to an end, the CFP judge Kemal Bokhary observed that there was “a storm of unprecedented ferocity” gathering over the rule of law in Hong Kong.80 This storm intensified in 2014, when pro-democracy activists stepped up their protests against Beijing’s continued failure to deliver universal suffrage. Occupy Central’s program of peaceful civil disobedience was regarded by Beijing and its supporters in Hong Kong as illegal. There were even fears of a violent Tiananmen-type crackdown. The head of Beijing’s liaison office, Zhang Xiaoming 張曉明, declared that it would have long-term repercussions.81 In 2015, the weakness of the walls of law was again obvious when five owners of a bookshop selling books critical of Chinese communist leaders “disappeared” from Hong Kong to re-emerge in detention in Mainland China. However, if there is a lesson from Hong Kong’s British colonial history, it is twofold: first, Hongkongers are well versed in how to resist “colonization,” and second the “colonizer” can greatly enhance its hegemony by embracing the rule of law. Karl Marx knew this, the British learned it, and Beijing might usefully contemplate how a foreign colonial government, short on legitimacy, achieved more by its tolerance of the June 4, 1989, demonstrations than by any other single act in its 150-year rule. References “Action Taken over Police Handling of Li Keqiang Visit.” South China Morning Post. December 19, 2012. Aldrich, Richard J. GCHQ: The Uncensored History of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency. London: HarperPress, 2010. ———. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2002. Buddle, Cliff. “Falun Gong Ruling Is in the Interests of Us All.” South China Morning Post. May 15, 2005. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. “2012 Country Report on Human Rights Practices.” April 19, 2013. Available at http://www. state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2012/eap/204197.htm. Chan, Wai Kwan. The Making of Hong Kong Society: Three Case Studies in Class Formation in Early Hong Kong. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Chan Kam Nga v Director of Immigration. 1 HKLRD 304. 1999. 79 

“Safeguard Judicial Independence.” A. Chiu, “Retiring Court of Final Appeal Judge Kemal Bokhary Warns of Legal Turmoil.” 81  Emily Tsang and Joshua But, “Beijing’s Man Tough on Occupy Central,” South China Morning Post, July 17, 2013. 80 

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Cheng, A. “Action Needed to Quell Rising Hong Kong-Mainland Tension.” South China Morning Post. June 23, 2012. Cheung, Gary Ka-wai. Hong Kong’s Watershed: The 1967 Riots. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Cheung, Gary, and Chris Ip. “All City’s Top Judges ‘Considered Quitting.’” South China Morning Post. September 8, 2011. Chiu, A. “Retiring Court of Final Appeal Judge Kemal Bokhary Warns of Legal Turmoil.” South China Morning Post. October 25, 2012. “Citizens’ Approval Rating for Chinese Rule Drastically Drops.” Apple Daily. March 2, 1999. Committee of Review, Annual Reports 1959 and 1960; First Schedule and Second Schedule, Memo, Chairman of Committee of Review to Colonial Secretary. January 24, 1961. HKRS 179-1-5 and HKRS 179-1-6. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. The Director of Immigration and Cheung Lai Wah. FACV No. 16, 1998. January 29, 1999. “East South West North.” Available at http://www.zonaeuropa. com/20060508_2.htm. Editorial. South China Morning Post. July 12, 2005. “Falun Gong Followers Begin Appeal over Convictions.” South China Morning Post. September 3, 2003. Fenby, Jonathan. Dealing with the Dragon: A Year in the New Hong Kong. London: Little, Brown, 2000. Flowerdew, John. The Final Years of British Hong Kong: The Discourse of Colonial Withdrawal. London: Macmillan, 1998. Ghai, Yash. “Abode Verdict a Resounding Victory for the Rule of Law.” South China Morning Post. January 31, 1999. Gilley, Bruce. “Ferment in Asia’s Den of Spies.” The Canberra Times. October 27, 1997. Cited in S. G. Rioni, ed., Hong Kong in Focus: Political and Economic Issues, 151, footnote 64. New York: Nova Science, 2002. Gittings, Danny. “Changing Expectations: How the Rule of Law Fared in the First Decade of the Hong Kong SAR.” Available at https://papers. ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2373860. HKSAR v Ng Kung Siu and Lee Kin Yun. Court of Final Appeal, FACC No. 4 of 1999. December 15, 1999. Hong Kong Government. 1938 Sedition Ordinance, no. 13, section 3; Sedition Amendment Ordinance, no. 28. Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Conversations with History series. “Conversation with Chris Patten.” Interview. 1999.

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Jones, Carol A. G. “Politics Postponed: Law as a Substitute for Politics in Hong Kong and China.” In Kanishka Jayasuriya, ed., Law, Capitalism and Power in Asia: The Rule of Law and Legal Institutions, 46–68. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. Lost in China? Law, Culture and Identity in Post-1997 Hong Kong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ——— and Jon Vagg. Criminal Justice in Hong Kong. London: Routledge, 2007. Lai, Y. K. “Top Court Overturns Criminal Convictions against Falun Gong Followers.” South China Morning Post, cited from Associated Press. May 5, 2005. Lau, Stuart. “Crusade for Hong Kong to Keep Its Distance from Beijing Picks Up.” South China Morning Post. October 11, 2012. ———. “Rule of Law Declined under Tsang, Says Scholar.” South China Morning Post. June 25, 2012. Lauterpacht, Elihu, C. J. Greenwood, and A. G. Oppenheimer. Interna­ tional Law Reports. Vol. 122. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Law, Wing-Wah. “The Accommodation and Resistance to the Decolonisation, Neocolonisation and Recolonisation of Higher Education in Hong Kong.” Comparative Education 33, no. 2, special issue 19, Education and Political Transition: The Implications of Hong Kong’s Change of Sovereignty (1997): 187–209. Laws of Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance, cap 383. June 8, 1991. Leung, Ambrose. “Push to Defend City’s Core Values.” South China Morning Post. September 7, 2004. Leung Kwok Hung and Others v HKSAR. Court of Final Appeal. July 8, 2005. Lo, Sonny Shiu-Hing. “The Mainlandization and Recolonization of Hong Kong: A Triumph of Convergence over Divergence with Mainland China.” In Joseph Y. S. Cheng, ed., The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in Its First Decade, 179–231. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2007. Lowe, Kate, and Eugene McLaughlin. “An ‘El Dorado of Riches and a Place of Unpunished Crime’: The Politics of Penal Reform in Hong Kong, 1877–1882.” Criminal Justice History 14 (1993): 57–89. Ma, Ngok. Political Development in Hong Kong: State, Political Society, and Civil Society. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007. MacDonnell to Kimberley, April 1872. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Original Correspondence: Hong Kong, 1841–1951, Series 129, CO 129. London: The National Archives.

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MacNeil, William P. “Enjoy Your Rights! Three Cases from the Postcolonial Commonwealth.” Public Culture 9 (Spring 1997): 377–393. “Most Back New Emergency Laws.” Hong Kong Star. July 21, 1967. Munn, Christopher. “‘Scratching with a Rattan’: William Caine and the Hong Kong Magistracy, 1841–1844.” Hong Kong Law Journal 25, part 2 (1995): 213–238. ———. Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841– 1880. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Ng, Margaret Ngoi-yee. “Draconian Measures Threaten Hong Kong Freedoms.” South China Morning Post. October 14, 2002. Ng Ka Ling and The Director of Immigration. FACV No. 14 of 1998. 1 HKLRD 315. 1999. Ng Ka Ling v Director of Immigration (No. 2). 1 HKLRD 577. 1999. Norton-Kyshe, James William. History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong from the Earliest Period to 1898. Vol. 1. London: 1898. Reproduction, Hong Kong: Vetch & Lee, 1971. “NPC Will Have ‘Final Say’ on Basic Law.” Hong Kong Standard. February 10, 1999. Patten, Christopher. Hong Kong: Today’s Success, Tomorrow’s Challenges. [Address by the Governor the Right Honourable Christopher Patten at the Opening of the 1993/94 Session of the Legislative Council.] Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1993. Public Opinion Programme, University of Hong Kong. Press Release. October 3, 2006. Qian Yin. “Beijing’s Fifth Column and the Transfer of Power in Hong Kong, 1983–1997.” In Robert Ash et al., eds., Hong Kong in Transition: The Handover Years, 113–132. London: Macmillan, 2000. “Safeguard Judicial Independence.” South China Morning Post. October 28, 2012. Sanguinetti, Albert. Article in Hong Kong Star. July 21, 1967. State Council, People’s Republic of China. “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.” June 10, 2014. Available at http://​www​.fmcoprc​.gov​.hk/​eng/​ xwdt/​gsxw/t1164057​.htm. Tang, James T. H. “From Empire Defence to Imperial Retreat: Britain’s Post-War China Policy and the Decolonisation of Hong Kong.” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 2 (1994): 317–337. Tsang, Emily, and Joshua But. “Beijing’s Man Tough on Occupy Central.” South China Morning Post. July 17, 2013. Tsang, Steve. “Target Zhou Enlai: The ‘Kashmir Princess’ Incident of 1955.” China Quarterly 139 (September 1994): 766–782.

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———, ed. A Documentary History of Hong Kong: Government and Politics. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1995. Tsui Kuen Nang v The Director of Immigration, The Director of Immigration v Cheung Lai Wah, and Chan Kam Nga v The Director of Immigration: 2 HKCFAR 4 (1999), 1 HKLRD 315 (1999), 1 HKC 291 (January 29, 1999). “Two Systems.” South China Morning Post. February 8, 1999. Vines, Stephen. Hong Kong: China’s New Colony. London: Orion Business, 1999. Wesley-Smith, Peter. “Anti-Chinese Legislation in Hong Kong.” In Ming K. Chan, ed., Precarious Balance: Hong Kong between China and Britain, 1842–1992, 91–105. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. Woo, Pak-chuen, and Szeto Wai Wah. Article in Hong Kong Star. July 21, 1967. Yan Lu. “Limits to Propaganda: Hong Kong’s Leftist Media in the Cold War and Beyond.” In Zheng Yangwen, Liu Hong, and Michael Szonyi, eds., The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds, 95–118. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Yeung May Wan v HKSAR. 2 HKLRD 212. 2005.

Part II. Hong Kong, Britain, and China(s)

FOUR

From Cold War Warrior to Moral Guardian: Film Censorship in British Hong Kong

ZARDAS SHUK-MAN LEE

On November 7, 1966, the same year the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) launched the Cultural Revolution and detonated its second nuclear device, a British Hong Kong government official slipped into a cinema. The cinema was Nanyang Theatre in Wan Chai, whose management, in 1967, supported communists in their violent struggle against the colonial government. The film the official watched was Chairman Mao Joins a Million People to Celebrate the Great Cultural Revolution (Mao zhuxi he baiwan wenhuageming dajun zai yiqi 毛主席和百萬文化革命大軍在一起). Sitting in the darkened room, the government official peered around. Only 40 percent of the seats were occupied. As the film began to roll, his attention was on the reaction of the audience. “Sporadic clapping,” he noted. Later, he would include this in a confidential report to his supervisor—Nigel J. V. Watt, the director of Information Services in Hong Kong.1 The British Hong Kong government had been anxious about any forces that could destabilize local society. Geographically located between the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan and the PRC, which were respectively supported by the United States and the Soviet Union, Hong Kong became a potential battlefield between the “Free World” (or “capitalist bloc”) and the “communist bloc” during the Cold War. To maintain political stability, from the 1940s to the 1960s, the Hong Kong government subtly suppressed influence from both communists and the Free World, including their films. As films were (and still are) a popular source of entertainment in Hong Kong, the British government was worried about their effect on society. 1 

Nigel J. V. Watt, Commissioner for Television and Films, to Director of Home Affairs, November 9, 1966, HKRS 1101-2-13.

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After short films and mobile film projectors were introduced in Paris in 1895, they soon spread to every corner of the world. In Hong Kong, as early as the early 1900s, theaters originally showing Cantonese operas, such as the Tung Hing Theatre and the Ko Shing Theatre (founded around 1867 and 1870, respectively), also projected films. From the late 1900s onward, cinemas gradually replaced mobile projectors. By the 1950s, more than fifty cinemas had been built in Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island.2 In the early 1950s, the total population in Hong Kong was two and a half million but the annual cinema attendance was sixty-seven million.3 Box office receipts in 1963 even reached seventy million Hong Kong dollars, which means on average each citizen watched six to thirteen films a year.4 Considering that so many people were interested in and might be influenced by films, the Hong Kong government was determined to censor them.5 In this chapter, censorship refers to the government practices of banning films and removing scenes. Admittedly this definition is relatively narrow, as censorship does not occur only in censorship boards, but also in judicial courts and media production enterprises, to name but a few.6 Moreover, this approach, which Annette Kuhn might describe as the “prohibitive/institutional model,” cannot address the productive power of censorship.7 Yet, since censorship serves in this chapter as a way for us to understand how Cold War politics shaped local policy, this chapter will focus only on how the Hong Kong government hindered film distribution and exhibition. To this date, only Kenny K. K. Ng has published extensively on film censorship in Cold War Hong Kong.8 I agree with Ng’s studies that Hong Kong’s film censorship targeted both communist and anti-communist 2 

Zhong Baoxian, Xianggang yingshiye bainian, 44, 47–48. Extract from Report of Conference of Public Relations Officers, June 1951, CO 875/51/4. 4  The calculation is based on information from box office receipts and the cost of film tickets provided by Zhong Baoxian. See Xianggang yingshiye bainian, 161–163. According to Zhong, on average every Hong Kong resident spent HK$20 to watch films. Because a film ticket cost from HK$1.5 to HK$3.5, a person would have watched approximately six to thirteen films each year. 5  The Hong Kong government was not the first or only one in the British Empire to worry about the influence of cinemas over the colonized. As early as the 1920s, the governments in India, Kenya, Zanzibar, and the West Indies had investigated the impacts of films, which contributed to censorship regulations in these British possessions. See James Burns, Cinema and Society in the British Empire, 57–58. 6  For definitions of censorship, see Daniel Biltereyst and Roel Vande Winkel, Silencing Cinema, 4; Robert Darnton, Censors at Work, 86. 7  Annette Kuhn, Cinema, Censorship, and Sexuality, 4. 8  Wu Guokun, “Lengzhan shiqi Xianggang dianying,” 53–70; Kenny K. K. Ng, “Inhibition VS. Exhibition.” 3 

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films in order to maintain neutrality between the PRC and the ROC. I also agree that the Hong Kong government changed its policies toward PRC films from the early Cold War period to the 1970s, and that local communists successfully pressured the government into exempting a PRC national day film from censorship in 1965. Yet, the current literature falls short of explaining intricacies in the development of strategies to politically censor films. The Colonial Office, as this chapter will show, played an important role in helping the Hong Kong government tactfully suppress PRC films. This chapter also discusses moral censorship in Cold War Hong Kong, which is largely absent in the current scholarship.9 Over the past two decades, some studies of the Cold War have turned away from the traditional approach of studying how the great powers’ diplomacy was formed. Rather, they investigate state propaganda and its local reception, and how the Cold War influenced daily life, street-level politics, and even our natural environment.10 These studies have enriched the study of the cultural Cold War. Some have even argued that the victory of the Free World on the cultural front caused the political defeat of the communists.11 Inspired by the recent approach of studying the Cold War both politically and culturally, I argue that Cold War politics in many ways determined local policy. The first part of my chapter investigates how two different Cold War tensions—intercolonial tensions within the British Empire and tensions between the Hong Kong and US governments—led to the rise of political censorship in the early Cold War period. The second part argues that international Cold War politics brought out the foreign relations of censorship policy. Because of threats from local communists, Hong Kong government officials were worried that continuing suppression of PRC films would worsen Anglo-PRC relations, and the government gradually adjusted its policy toward PRC films. The third part shows that as Cold War tensions started to subside in Hong Kong in the late 1960s, the government became less interested in censoring politics and gradually transformed into the moral guardian of its colonial subjects by keeping up morality in films. Accompanying the changing nature of film censorship was 9  The current literature does not pay much attention to moral censorship of films. See, for example, Maria Barbieri, “Film Censorship in Hong Kong”; Chan Yu-cheong, “Film Censorship Policy in Hong Kong”; So Mei-fong, “The Feasibility of Implementing Industry Self-Regulation.” 10  Jeffrey A. Engel, Local Consequences of the Global Cold War; Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney and Fabio Lanza, De-Centering Cold War History; Hans Krabbendam and Giles Scott-Smith, The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe; Patrick Major and Rana Mitter, Across the Blocs. 11  See Peter G. Boyle, “The Cold War Revisited,” 488; Jeremy Black, War and the Cultural Turn, 120.

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the increasing autonomy of the Hong Kong government from its metropole in London. Cold War Tensions and the Emergence of Political Censorship, 1940s–1950s Only two weeks after World War II ended, the Hong Kong government had already considered resuming film censorship.12 Government officials worried that films spreading Cold War ideologies would intensify the existing conflicts between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) supporters in Hong Kong. They feared that films might even inspire people to overthrow the colonial government.13 Thus, government officials upheld film censorship as a necessary measure to avoid social disorder. The government formally resumed film censorship in 1947, and the Film Censorship Regulations were introduced in 1953.14 The Hong Kong government considered communist films a social threat. The distribution network of communist films was dangerous to the British colonial governments in Asia, including the one in Hong Kong, not only because the network spread across many British possessions, but also because the Soviet government would find it easy to collect intelligence under the veil of film production companies.15 Sovexportfilm in Moscow was the head of the communist film distribution network. It had two main offices in Mainland China and two in India. The main offices in China were in Shanghai and Nanjing, with three branch offices. The Southern Film Corporation in Shanghai, Andar Company in Hong Kong, and Silver Star Motion Pictures in the ROC were the primary distributing agencies of Soviet films in Asia. Andar also established branch offices in Kuala Lumpur, Saigon, Bangkok, Hanoi, and Singapore. After receiving films from the Shanghai and Nanjing offices and Southern Film, Andar in Hong Kong would distribute them to subagents in Siam and Singapore.16 In 1949, Southern Film established a branch office in Hong Kong. One year later, the Southern Film Corporation (Hong Kong) replaced Andar as the sole distributor of communist films in Hong Kong.17 In the late 1950s, the 12  D. J. Sloss, Civil Information Department, to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong, September 10, 1945, HKRS 161-1-52. 13  B. C. K. Hawkins, Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Hong Kong, to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong, July 27, 1956, HKRS 160-1-50. 14  Secretary of Panel of Film Censors to Board of Film Censors, August 10, 1948, HKRS 41-1-3870. 15  Security Intelligence Far East to Foreign Office, Great Britain, September 3, 1948, FO 1110/124. 16  Security Intelligence Far East to Foreign Office, Great Britain, September 3, 1948, FO 1110/124. 17  Xu Dunle, Kenguang tuoying, 20.

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Hong Kong government was still very cautious about anyone involved in the distribution network of communist films. When two Sovexportfilm representatives visited Hong Kong in 1957, the government scrutinized them throughout their visit.18 Because Soviet and PRC films glorified life under their own regimes, Hong Kong government officials were worried that their content would disrupt social order. The Hong Kong government regarded PRC films as more subversive since the characters were all Chinese and not of “whiterace,” and local audiences might imitate the Chinese film characters. Thus, Governor Alexander Grantham (r. 1947–1957) felt that PRC films were likely to have a “disturbing effect” in Hong Kong.19 By mid-1949, although PRC films censored in Hong Kong did not directly clamor for the overthrow of the government, Grantham believed there was a possibility that local viewers might be inspired to struggle against the Hong Kong government.20 By 1953, no PRC films had passed censorship in Hong Kong, while only a hundred Soviet films had been shown in cinemas since 1946.21 The Hong Kong government attempted to suppress all communist media as early as before the establishment of the PRC in October 1949. In April 1949, Chinese communists attacked the British frigate HMS Amethyst on the Yangzi River on its way to Nanjing. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, the Xinhua News Agency and communist-controlled newspapers had been condemning the British and American policy of the Atlantic Pact.22 Grantham saw the military conflict in Mainland China as a good pretext to close down the communist media in Hong Kong. This drew opposition from the British ambassador in Nanjing, who argued that Grantham’s plan would prevent the Amethyst and its crew from leaving the Yangzi safely and worsen Anglo-PRC relations.23 Consequently, the Hong Kong government could not but tolerate the communist media. In late July 1949, the Amethyst escaped from the Yangzi to Hong Kong. Grantham did not give up his heavy-handed policy toward the communist media. His government looked for support from the governments of the Federation of Malaya and Singapore to ban all communist films. In mid-July 1949, Grantham ordered Hong Kong’s public relations officer to raise the question of whether to ban all communist films at the Conference 18 

Xu Dunle, Kenguang tuoying, 26–27. Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, July 12, 1949, HKMS 184-1-151. 20  Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, July 12, 1949, HKMS 184-1-151. 21  Xu Dunle, Kenguang tuoying, 20. 22  Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, April 23, 1949, CO 537/4824. 23  Nanking to Foreign Office, Great Britain, April 25, 1949, CO 537/4824. 19 

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of Information Officers and Public Relations Officers in Singapore.24 Both the representatives from Singapore and Malaya stated that all communist films were banned in their territories. In the conference, it was concluded that PRC films, if not all communist films, should be prohibited in British possessions in Southeast Asia, which, in terms of the British imperial administrative system, included Hong Kong.25 Although the regional conference seemed to provide Grantham with support to ban communist films, the Colonial Office opposed the ban in Hong Kong. The situations in the Federation of Malaya and Singapore were in fact different from that in Hong Kong. The Malayan government declared a state of emergency in June 1948, when the war between the government and the Malayan Communist Party broke out. Communism was prohibited in the federation under the Emergency Regulations, and the controller of publications “suspended” all communist films.26 The censorship policy in Malaya and Singapore could have been applicable to Hong Kong only if the Hong Kong government had resorted to similar emergency regulations. The Colonial Office, however, did not see the necessity of declaring an emergency in Hong Kong in 1949.27 Secretary of State for the Colonies Oliver Lyttelton reminded Grantham that the governor himself had been reluctant to issue emergency regulations if they were not necessary. Eventually, the Colonial Office opposed Grantham’s plan to ban all communist films.28 Grantham, however, did not consider that the Colonial Office was capable of handling Hong Kong affairs. “Practically every major issue that arose in Hong Kong, and on which London had to be consulted,” he wrote in his memoirs, “was a matter of foreign policy, but we had to deal with the Colonial Office and not the Foreign Office. Not only did this make for delay; there was also less basic understanding of the issues involved.” Grantham regarded Hong Kong’s relationship with the PRC as the most fundamental problem for governance, thinking that the Foreign Office was more suitable than the Colonial Office to advise on Hong Kong affairs.29 Besides, the secretary of state for the colonies was not as important 24  Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, July 12, 1949, HKMS 184-1-151. 25  Conference of Information Officers and Public Relations Officers–South East Asia, July 14–15, 1949, Extract, HKMS 184-1-151. 26  W. S. Morgan to Hong Kong, July 20, 1949, HKMS 184-1-151; Report of Film Censorship in the Colonies, February 14, 1952, CO 875/51/4. 27  W. S. Morgan to Hong Kong, July 20, 1949, HKMS 184-1-151. 28  Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, July 31, 1949, HKMS 184-1-151. 29  Alexander Grantham, Via Ports, 105; Gavin Ure, Governors, Politics, and the Colonial Office, 23. Also see Norman Miners, Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, 28–42.

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as other cabinet ministers in London, for example those in the Foreign Office and the Treasury. Most of the secretaries of state for the colonies had limited political influence. “Rightly or wrongly,” Grantham wrote, “we believed that that Colonial Office was brushed aside by the other departments in Whitehall.”30 Against the Colonial Office’s recommendation, in 1949 the Hong Kong government introduced the Emergency Regulations. Although the government contradicted the Colonial Office regarding the Emergency Regulations, it accepted the latter’s advice on film censorship, which the regulations did not cover. After opposing a complete ban on communist films, in July 1949 the Colonial Office mobilized the Hong Kong government to suppress them. W. S. Morgan of the Colonial Office reminded the government to remain neutral toward the CCP and the KMT. He suggested that instead of banning only all communist films, the government add a clause in the “Terms of Reference for Film Censors” to resist political propaganda films that distorted “facts” concerning communist countries and the Free World.31 Lyttelton also advised Grantham to amend the “Terms of Reference for Film Censors.” Yet, he did not explain the amendment, and reminded the government to remain neutral. Lyttelton wrote, “I should not wish this to be interpreted so as to impose a complete ban on all communist films, but merely so as to assist you in controlling their number and type.”32 Still, there was no significant difference between the attitudes of Lyttelton and Grantham toward communist films. As previously mentioned, Grantham did not welcome films that glorified communist countries and encouraged social disorder. For him, these films could be categorized as political propaganda. Lyttelton was more tactful in strategically directing the Hong Kong government’s attention to propaganda films from communist countries. Accepting the Colonial Office’s advice, the Hong Kong government revised the “Terms of Reference for Film Censors” and named the new guide the “Directive for Film Censors” in 1950. The content of the 1950 directive was largely the same as that of the “Terms of Reference for Film Censors”; each item was only further elaborated. The striking difference between the two guides was that the 1950 directive included a new item targeting political propaganda: “Pure political propaganda is not to be encouraged. A propaganda film may be defined as one dedicated to a particular political system and which seeks to convey an impression of that system’s superiority over all others to the complete exclusion of all others.”33 Ap30 

Alexander Grantham, Via Ports, 105. W. S. Morgan to Hong Kong, July 20, 1949, HKMS 184-1-151. 32  Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, July 31, 1949, HKMS 184-1-151. 33  Film Censorship–Hong Kong, Directive for Film Censors, date unknown, HKRS 163-1-1159. 31 

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parently, this item seems to be unbiased and included propaganda films from any country. The events resulting in the formulation and insertion of this particular clause, however, make it evident that the Hong Kong government had learned to suppress communist films, especially PRC ones, more strategically. Although the Hong Kong government was not under intense pressure from the Colonial Office, the interactions between the two helped the Hong Kong government to develop its film censorship policy toward the PRC in the early Cold War period. Grantham described the government’s attitude toward the PRC thus: “On the one hand we did not want to be provocative; on the other we did not want to appease or appear to do so, to give away to unreasonable demands.”34 He did not develop this principle himself. Grantham had a strong wish to suppress all communist forces. As discussed before, he attempted to suppress all communist media during the HMS Amethyst incident. He had searched for support from the British colonial governments of Singapore and the Federation of Malaya to ban all communist films in Hong Kong. Only after the Colonial Office advised Grantham in July 1949 to stay neutral and handle communist films strategically did the Hong Kong government gradually develop a tough but nonprovocative strategy toward PRC films. Approaching the 1950s, the Hong Kong government encountered a new challenge: how to form a policy toward the official films of foreign governments produced for psychological warfare. The Hong Kong government used as a model the Singaporean government in examining official films, as the two governments had been exchanging information since they had resumed film censorship. From April to June 1947, they exchanged censorship guides.35 The directive for censors in Singapore then became a document that Hong Kong film censors had to study before examining films.36 In 1951, the public relations officers in Hong Kong and Singapore discussed the issues of, for example, the purpose of censorship and how much power the censors should maintain.37 This information helped the Hong Kong government draft the Film Censorship Regulations, which were introduced in 1953. In March 1951, Public Relations Officer John L.

34 

Alexander Grantham, Via Ports, 139. George Thomson, Public Relations Officer, Singapore, to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong, April 21, 1947, HKRS 41-1-2254; K. M. A. Barnett to Public Relations Officer, Singapore, July 8, 1947, HKRS 41-1-2254. 36  Publicity Coordinating Committee, Minutes of meeting held at the Colonial Secretariat, March 22, 1950, HKRS 163-1-1159. 37  Crown Counsel, UK, to Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, September 8, 1951, HKRS 160-1-51. 35 

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Murray wrote: “I think we should march in step with Singapore in any action taken about the official films of foreign powers.”38 In November 1953, the Singaporean government had even consulted the Hong Kong government on how to handle official films produced by the Information Service of the United States (USIS). A Hong Kong government official replied that censors examined USIS films in the same way they did commercial films. Sometimes they even prohibited the showing of the USIS films that were considered dangerous to social stability.39 Yet, this response was confusing to the Singapore government. As told by the Singaporean branch of the USIS, its films shown with mobile cinema projectors were not censored in Hong Kong.40 The exchange of ideas between the Hong Kong and Singaporean governments was in fact disorganized and confusing, which contributed little to censorship policies on official films in either colony. It remains unclear why the Singaporean branch of the USIS had different ideas from the Hong Kong government about censorship, but it is clear that since the early 1950s the government had had conflicts with the Hong Kong branch of the USIS. The Hong Kong branch of the USIS produced and spread anti-communist materials in Chinese, including leaflets, radio programs, and films.41 It also supported filmmakers who produced anti-communist films in Hong Kong.42 The USIS’s use of Hong Kong as a base to spread anti-PRC propaganda agitated Grantham, who did not wish to provoke any military attack from the PRC. In January 1951, the Hong Kong government terminated the Voice of America broadcasts on Radio Hongkong without any warning because Grantham believed that the USIS programs attacked the PRC government. Another conflict occurred in May 1953, when the government seized leaflets that the Hong Kong branch of USIS planned to distribute to local Chinese workers.43 Although the Hong Kong government disapproved of the USIS’s work, the US government pressured the British administration to exempt official films of the Free World from censorship. The US State Department demanded in 1956 that the Hong Kong authorities respect the principle of reciprocity in diplomacy. Since British official films could be shown in the 38  John L. Murray, Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong, March 8, 1951, HKRS 160-1-51. 39  S. S. Knowles, Acting Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, to George Thomson, Public Relations Officer, Singapore, November 16, 1953, PRO 587/53. 40  George Thomson, Public Relations Officer, Singapore, to S. S. Knowles, Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, January 1, 1954, PRO 587/53. 41  Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War, 37. 42  Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, China Confidential, 107. 43  Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War, 198, 201.

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United States at that time without federal censorship or police permits, the governments of Britain and its possessions should treat USIS films in a similar way. Murray was worried that the Hong Kong government “would be getting into deep water” if it refused the US government’s demand.44 A diplomatic crisis could arise between Britain and its ally if the Hong Kong government insisted on examining official films from every country. Although the government wished to maintain neutrality between communists and the Free World, the principle of diplomatic reciprocity superseded this goal. From 1956, the Hong Kong government stopped censoring USIS films. The commissioner of police allowed the showing of USIS films after he read brief descriptions only. He soon applied the same practice to official films produced by the British Commonwealth and countries friendly to Britain.45 Three Communist Offensives against Film Censorship, 1950s–1960s After the Hong Kong government confirmed its policy toward the official films of foreign governments from the late 1950s to 1960s, it had to counter the Chinese communists’ agitation regarding the suppression of PRC films. In 1958, 1965, and 1967, supporters of the Chinese Communist Party launched opposition campaigns against film censorship in Hong Kong. In 1958, the Xinhua News Agency, Southern Film (Hong Kong), and a number of left-wing film workers accused the Hong Kong government of banning the national flag, national emblem, and political leaders of the PRC in films. For example, Woman Basketball Player No. 5 (Nülan wuhao 女籃五號) was banned because it contained scenes playing the PRC national anthem and a statue of Chairman Mao Zedong. However, the ROC films Taiwan Today (Jinri baodao—Taiwan 今日寶島—台灣) and Voice of the Free World (Ziyou zhenxian zhi sheng 自由陣線之聲) passed censorship although they depicted the ROC flag and ROC President Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石.46 Pro-communist film actress Xia Meng 夏夢 claimed that every local film worker opposed the Hong Kong government for plotting a “two-Chinas conspiracy.”47 In 1965, CCP supporters in Hong Kong once again campaigned against film censorship since the Hong Kong government forbade showing films about the national day of the PRC (October 1). Nigel J. V. Watt, director of Information Services from 1961 to 1972, admitted that the censors had 44 

John L. Murray, Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, to Attorney General, Hong Kong, May 12, 1956, HKRS 41-2A-45. 45  John L. Murray, Director of Information Services, to Political Adviser, Hong Kong, April 18, 1961, HKRS 41-2A-45. 46  Xu Dunle, Kenguang tuoying, 46; Ta Kung Pao, August 24, 1958. 47  Ta Kung Pao, August 26, 1958.

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been banning those films because of “the risk of provoking public disorder in Hong Kong cinemas,” which were visited by viewers of different political backgrounds.48 Since the late 1940s, the Hong Kong government had feared that allowing the public viewing of PRC films would infuriate KMT supporters and encourage them to attack the local communists. “The danger of violent right-wing reactions to left-wing propaganda is a very real one here,” Governor David Trench (r. 1964–1971) wrote in September 1965.49 Southern Film (Hong Kong) claimed that most PRC films could be shown without any cuts in other places, for example, Macau and Southeast Asia.50 This sole distributor of communist films in Hong Kong found it difficult to accept that the Hong Kong government had banned a number of PRC films since the late 1940s, an official measure that was different from those in other Asian regions. The local communist campaigns in 1958 and 1965 adopted similar strategies of threatening the Hong Kong government over continued suppression of PRC films, arguing that such censorship would worsen relations between Britain and the PRC. In 1958, Southern Film (Hong Kong) accused the government of disrespecting the PRC when the censors banned the poster of Braving Winds and Waves (Chengfeng polang 乘風破浪) that portrayed three female sailors wearing sailor caps in the pattern of the PRC flag. To many CCP supporters in Hong Kong, this clearly proved that the Hong Kong government had insulted the PRC, which Britain had already diplomatically recognized in 1950.51 In 1965, the film distributor blamed the Hong Kong government for disregarding diplomatic relations between the PRC and Britain. “Over a decade,” the company’s deputy manager Xu Dunle 許敦樂 explained, “the fundamental reason why many Chinese films could not be shown in Hong Kong was that British Hong Kong’s film censorship authorities neglected the fact that the People’s Republic of China had established diplomatic relations with Britain. The Hong Kong government followed the United States in plotting for ‘twoChinas’ and discriminating against Chinese films.”52 By amplifying the consequences of film censorship, the local communist campaigns in 1958 and 1965 succeeded in forcing the British Hong Kong government to relax the censorship of PRC films. After the 1958 campaign, the government’s Panel of Film Censors invited Southern Film 48  Director of Information to Wong Ling and Wong Chun from Ta Kung Pao, date un­ known, CO 1030/1543. 49  David Trench, Governor of Hong Kong, to the Colonial Office, September 11, 1965, CO 1030/1543. 50  Xu Dunle, Kenguang tuoying, 45. 51  Ta Kung Pao, August 26, 1958. 52  Ta Kung Pao, September 19, 1965.

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(Hong Kong) for a meeting. After the meeting, Xu Dunle claimed that because the censors were intimated by the PRC minister of Foreign Affairs, they gradually allowed PRC films to show the national flag, emblem, anthem, and leaders after the 1958 campaign.53 Government records in the 1970s affirm this change of attitude toward PRC films. Watt recalled that political censorship of films had relaxed since the mid-1950s, and censors had treated PRC and ROC films with “broadly the same standards.”54 The government further relaxed the censorship of PRC films after the 1965 campaign. Thereafter, the Film Censorship Board of Review allowed in 1965 the showing of A Glorious Festival (Guanghui de jieri 光輝的節日), a film celebrating the PRC’s national day. During and after the 1965 campaign, the government revised the guidance for the Panel of Film Censors and the Board of Review. A new line was added to the “General Principles for Guidance of Film Censors and the Film Censorship Board of Review,” dated 1965, stipulating that “it is also necessary to bear in mind particular sensitivities on both sides of the camp to implied recognition of ‘Two Chinas.’”55 Two years later, in the fervent political atmosphere of the 1967 Riots, CCP sympathizers launched the last opposition campaign against film censorship in Hong Kong. The 1967 Riots originated from workers’ protests. In early May, workers at the Hong Kong Artificial Flower Factory in San Po Kong went on strike and demanded a safe working environment as well as better wages. After the police suppressed the protests, CCP supporters established the All Circles Anti-Persecution Struggle Committee. Meanwhile, there were also anti-British demonstrations in Beijing and Guangzhou, which CCP supporters in Hong Kong regarded as the PRC government’s approval to expand the extent of the protests against the British colonial government.56 The riots lasted until December 1967. The campaign against film censorship was only a small part of the 1967 Riots, which may explain why it lacked strong leadership and coordination. Southern Film (Hong Kong), a natural leader in anti-censorship campaigns, was usually responsible for releasing information about the banning and cutting of films as well as drafting detailed complaints. In 1967, however, it was preoccupied with many local protests. For instance, it had to cooperate with left-wing filmmakers and cinemas to protest the government’s withdrawal of the license of the Silver Theatre on June 15. 53 

Xu Dunle, Kenguang tuoying, 46. Nigel J. V. Watt, Director of Information Services, to D. C. Bray, Chairman of Film Censorship Board of Review, October 27, 1970, HKRS 1101-2-13. 55  Film Censorship Board of Review, “A Statement of the General Principles,” November 20, 1965, HKRS 1101-2-13. 56  Ray Yep, “The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong,” 22. 54 

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It denounced the government for “kidnapping” or imprisoning left-wing film industry workers such as Fu Che 傅奇, Shi Hui 石慧, Ren Yizhi 任意之, and Liu Yat Yuen 廖一原.57 The campaign’s leader and followers had more urgent tasks than attacking film censorship. When the representatives of Southern Film (Hong Kong) and the leftwing film workers met Director of Information Services Nigel J. V. Watt, they briefly demanded allowing The East Is Red (Dongfang hong 東方紅) and The Great Victory of Mao Zedong’s Ideology—Acclamation to Our Country with Three Successful Atomic Bomb Detonations (Mao Zedong sixiang de weida shengli—Huanhu woguo sanci hebao chenggong 毛澤東思想的偉大勝利–歡呼我國 三次核爆成功) to be shown without any cuts in cinemas. They submitted a complaint letter, which focused on questioning why the government had imprisoned the Hong Kong Artificial Flower Factory workers and those who wore Mao Zedong badges. It also condemned the government for oppressing the CCP supporters and colluding with the United States and the ROC. Only a few sentences in the letter concerned censorship of the two films: the communists asked why the government had banned the films but immediately answered the question themselves—they believed that films glorifying Mao Zedong were banned because his ideas terrified the Hong Kong government.58 The two-day campaign in 1967 showed no clear planning, strategy, or persistence. With such weak opposition, perhaps it is not surprising that the Hong Kong government ignored the campaign. The Localization of Film Censorship and the Increasing Autonomy of Hong Kong Despite the 1967 Riots in Hong Kong and the Vietnam War (1954–1975), Britain sought to normalize diplomatic relations with the PRC. In 1971, Britain supported the PRC’s admission into the United Nations. One year later, the two countries even exchanged ambassadors (their diplomatic relations had remained at a chargé level since 1950).59 As Watt asserted, the “friendly relations” between Britain and the PRC affected political censorship of films in Hong Kong. The improving Anglo-PRC relations and easing Cold War tensions made Hong Kong officials favor PRC films over those of other countries. Since the late 1960s, while the Hong Kong government had banned ROC films that referred to Chinese communists as “bandits,” it had allowed PRC films that demeaned ROC President Chiang

57 

Wen Wei Po, May 16, June 12, and November 16, 1967. Ta Kung Pao, May 18, 1967. 59  Ray Yep, “The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong,” 24; Mark Chi-kwan, “Vietnam War Tourists,” 7. 58 

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Kai-shek in the same way.60 The government protected the PRC’s films and its image. For example, in examining the US film The Selling of the Pentagon in 1972, the Panel of Film Censors ordered the film distributor to remove such dialog as: “Red China’s Battle Plan,” and “Communist China now plans to dominate Asia by mass murder and to destroy civilization.”61 Not only did tensions in Anglo-PRC relations relax, but conflicts between CCP and KMT supporters in Hong Kong also eased gradually. Denis C. Bray, acting secretary of home affairs and chair of the Board of Review, claimed that there would not be any opposition from KMT supporters even if cinemas showed films that insulted the ROC government.62 This attitude further prompted the Hong Kong government to favor PRC films over other films, particularly ROC films. Meanwhile, after the social unrest in the 1960s, Hong Kong government officials realized the urgency to respond to the needs and social conditions of the local population to maintain legitimacy. Murray MacLehose (r. 1971–1982), a year after becoming governor, announced the Ten Years Housing Scheme that aimed at eliminating squatter areas and providing more public housing.63 He also introduced free and compulsory nine-year education in 1978.64 During the social reforms in the aftermath of the 1967 Riots, the Hong Kong government increasingly engaged the local Chinese population in policy making. In 1969, it changed the title of the secretary for Chinese affairs to the secretary for home affairs, which implied an attempt to create a closer relationship between the local Chinese population and the government. Another example of this effort to “close the gap” is that, after university students demanded making Chinese an official language from 1967 to 1969, the Hong Kong government established the Division of Chinese Language in 1972 under the Secretariat for Home Affairs. Two years later, the government recognized the legal status of the Chinese language as an official language.65 The urge to maintain legitimacy and the easing Cold War tensions ultimately drove the Hong Kong government to localize the nature of film 60  Nigel J. V. Watt, Director of Information Services, to D. C. Bray, Chairman of Film Censorship Board of Review, October 27, 1970, HKRS 1101-2-13. 61  William Hung, Chief Film Censor, to Assistant Political Adviser, Hong Kong, November 1, 1972, HKRS 70-3-72; [Anonymous] to South China Morning Post, November 10, 1972, TOQ 1220/10, HKRS 70-3-72. 62  D. C. Bray, Acting Secretary for Home Affairs, to Nigel J. V. Watt, Director of Information Services, November 3, 1970, HKRS 1101-2-13. 63  Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, 205. 64  Liu Shuyong, Jianming Xianggang shi, 310. 65  John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 160; Hong Kong Government, Official Languages Ordinance, June 30, 1997.

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censorship. What made the 1970s different from the early Cold War period was that censors examined films according to domestic concerns rather than external relations. The localization of censorship took place in 1973 when the government launched the Fight Violence Campaign against corruption and crime in the colony. Right before this campaign, Watt, now commissioner for television and films, urged film distributors to learn how censors examine violent elements from the government publication titled Film Censorship Standards in Hong Kong. He even demanded that distributors and cinema managers restrict showing violent films during the campaign.66 From 1973 on, censors and government officials focused more on domestic social issues than the reactions from foreign governments or from CCP or KMT supporters. As film censorship was related to domestic concerns, the British government gave the Hong Kong government an increasingly free hand to deal with the issue. By the mid-1960s, because censorship helped curb communism, a common concern across the British Empire, the Colonial Office had intervened when the Hong Kong government drafted policies toward communist films and the “Directive for Film Censors of 1950.”67 While the censorship of the PRC film A Glorious Festival by the Hong Kong government in 1965 ignited debates between the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office, there is no concrete evidence to show that the debates affected the Hong Kong government’s final decision over the film.68 Since film censorship responded to local issues particular to Hong Kong’s interest in the 1970s, the British government in London did not intervene in the censorship. Nor did the Hong Kong government consult London on censoring films on moral grounds. The Hong Kong government maintained its autonomy in moral censorship of films, which the Colonial Office threatened in the early 1950s. In 1952, the Colonial Office attempted to gather government representatives from all the British possessions to establish six Regional Censorship Boards. These boards, whose members were mostly unofficial, would set general censorship standards for the colonial governments in the regions. They would judge whether the censored films would “impair morals,” “offend reasonable public opinions,” or “cause a public disturbance.” Although there would still be a local licensing authority in each British possession, the Colonial Office expected the local authorities to follow 66 

Nigel J. V. Watt, Commissioner for Television and Films, May 9, 1973, HKRS 1101-2-15. For details on how the governments in British possessions suppressed communist films, see Report of Film Censorship in the Colonies, February 14, 1952, CO 875/51/4. 68  D. K. Timms, Far Eastern Department, to A. St. J. Sugg, Colonial Office, September 23, 1965, CO 1030/1543; W. S. Carter, Colonial Office, Great Britain, to E. Bolland, Foreign Office, Great Britain, October 4, 1965, CO 1030/1543. 67 

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decisions made by the Regional Censorship Boards.69 Because the Hong Kong government strongly defended its autonomy regarding censorship, the Far East Regional Censorship Board was not established even though the governments of Singapore, the Federation of Malaya, and North Borneo had agreed to join.70 Hong Kong Public Relations Officer John Murray argued that it was impossible to apply the same censorship standards to all the British territories in the region given their different political conditions. If the regional board were located in Singapore, Hong Kong film producers would have to submit films to Singapore before they could be shown in Hong Kong. Murray found this procedure “ridiculous and unwieldy in practice.”71 Since the Hong Kong government insisted on autonomy in film censorship, the scheme proposed by the Colonial Office was not realized. Throughout the 1970s, the Hong Kong government was exempt from intervention from London and other British colonial governments in censoring films on moral grounds. As the Hong Kong government enjoyed a free hand from London, the Hong Kong officials who were Chinese and the Hong Kong Chinese population at large were empowered in film censorship. The first round of censorship was conducted in the Panel of Film Censors, and the Board of Review was responsible for deciding the guides for censors and reviewing the panel’s decisions once appeals arose. Since the mid-1950s, the chairperson of the Board of Review had been the secretary for Chinese affairs. The other board members included the director of education, director of social welfare, and commissioner of police. By the 1970s, it was rare that a government official who was Chinese participated in the meetings of the Board of Review.72 In the early 1970s, British officials still dominated the board. Amid the social reforms engineered by Governor MacLehose, the Board of Review underwent drastic changes. Some local Chinese were finally 69 

Oliver Lyttelton, Circular Despatch 384/52, April 23, 1952, CO 875/51/4. John L. Murray, Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, August 11, 1952, HKRS 160-1-51; Governor of North Borneo to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, August 28, 1952, CO 875/51/4; High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, December 18, 1952, CO 875/51/4; Governor of Singapore to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, January 5, 1953, CO 875/51/4. 71  John L. Murray, Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, August 11, 1952, HKRS 160-1-51. 72  The only exception was in 1968, when Paul Tsui Ka-cheung 徐家祥 was the acting secretary for Chinese affairs. As the chairperson of the Film Censorship Board of Review, he discussed with his British colleagues the principles of censoring sex, nudity, and violence. However, his colleagues put him down throughout the discussion. For more details, see Zardas Shuk-man Lee, “From Cold War Politics to Moral Regulation.” 70 

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allowed to participate in film censorship. In 1972, a Chinese senior official began representing the director of social welfare on the Board of Review to censor films. The board incorporated more Chinese opinions by recruiting three members from the Chinese community in 1976 and 1977.73 In 1977, Li Fook-kow 李福逑 was appointed secretary for home affairs, which further strengthened Chinese voices in making policies concerning film censorship. Aside from changing the composition of the Board of Review, in 1976 the government established a Public Advisory Panel that introduced some one hundred Chinese members to examine films with the censors on sex, violence, and foul language.74 Conclusion: Film Censorship beyond the Cold War Foul language has been one of the major targets in film censorship since the 1980s. In the 1970s, censors rarely received complaints from the general public or the media about bad language in films. Even the Mandarin film Warlord (Dajunfa 大軍閥), which contained “vulgar” Shandong slang (as confessed by its producer), did not lead to any discontent or complaint when it was screened in August 1972.75 In contrast, since the introduction of film classification in 1988, censors have classified a number of films as category III (films restricted to people above eighteen years) because they contain Cantonese foul language. For example, the local documentary The Way of Paddy (Daomi shi ruhe liancheng de 稻米是如何鍊成的), which depicts some youngsters committed to organic farming after the high speed rail controversy in Hong Kong from 2009 to 2010, was put in category III in January 2013.76 Compared to the censorship of foul language, political censorship is less conspicuous. In 1973, the Hong Kong government distributed “Film Censorship Standards: A Note of Guidance” to the film industry and the public. In the guide, the government admitted that films were being censored on political grounds.77 In contrast, the most recent “Film Censor73 

Hong Kong Government, Press Release: “Public Membership of Film Censorship Board of Review,” September 4, 1976, HKRS 70-8-1369; Norman T. L. Chan, on behalf of Secretary for Home Affairs, to Director of Information Services, January 10, 1977, HKRS 70-8-1370; D. C. C. Luddington, Secretary for Home Affairs, Hong Kong, Memo No. 76, March 20, 1973, HKRS 1101-2-14. 74  Nigel J. V. Watt, Commissioner for Television and Films, to Director of Home Affairs, April 9, 1976, HKRS 1101-2-15; Hong Kong Government, Press Release, May 19, 1977, HKRS 70-8-1369. 75  South China Morning Post, August 27, 1972; William Hung, Chief Film Censor, to Hong Kong Standard, August 25, 1972, HKRS 70-3-72. 76  Hong Kong In-Media, “ ‘Sanji’ jilupian shi zenyang liancheng de.” 77  Television and Films Division, Secretariat for Home Affairs, “Film Censorship Stan-

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ship Guidelines for Censors” (1999) includes no clause related to political censorship.78 The censors have seldom deleted commentary or scenes on political grounds; one exception is a film that humiliated Hong Kong’s high officials in the mid-2000s.79 This chapter has shown how the Hong Kong government, in the name of maintaining political and social stability, controlled what its colonial subjects could receive from films—a popular source of entertainment— from the 1940s to the 1970s. Cold War politics contributed to the rise of political censorship of films and the intervention of the Colonial Office over the censorship of communist films, particularly those imported from the PRC. As Cold War tensions subsided in the late 1960s, the Hong Kong government found itself superfluous as a “Cold War warrior” in cinemas. To uphold its legitimacy, it turned its focus to moral censorship. This allowed the British Hong Kong government to enjoy considerable autonomy from the metropole, which was less interested in the domestic issues of its overseas possessions than the affairs of external relations. The decline of political censorship and the prevalence of moral censorship can be traced back to the 1970s, when Cold War tensions were cooling down and relieved the Hong Kong government from its decades-long efforts to censor politics in films. References [Anonymous] to South China Morning Post. November 10, 1972. TOQ 1220/10, HKRS 70-3-72. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Barbieri, Maria. “Film Censorship in Hong Kong.” M.Phil. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1998. Barnett, K. M. A., to Public Relations Officer, Singapore. July 8, 1947. HKRS 41-1-2254. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Biltereyst, Daniel, and Roel Vande Winkel, eds. Silencing Cinema: Film Censorship around the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Black, Jeremy. War and the Cultural Turn. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012. Boyle, Peter G. “The Cold War Revisited.” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 3 (2000): 479–489.

dards: A Note of Guidance,” May 1973, HKRS 1101-2-15. 78  Office for Films, Newspaper, and Article Administration, “Film Censorship Guidelines for Censors.” 79  Anonymous, Interview by author, June 25, 2013. The identity of the interviewee has to be kept confidential.

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Bray, D. C., Acting Secretary for Home Affairs, to Nigel J. V. Watt, Director of Information Services. November 3, 1970. HKRS 1101-2-13. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Burns, James. Cinema and Society in the British Empire, 1895–1940. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Carroll, John M. A Concise History of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007. Carter, W. S., Colonial Office, Great Britain, to E. Bolland, Foreign Office, Great Britain. October 4, 1965. Great Britain, Colonial Office and Commonwealth Office. Far Eastern Department and Successors: Registered Files, Series 1030, CO 1030/1543. London: The National Archives. Chan, Norman T. L., on behalf of Secretary for Home Affairs, to Director of Information Services. January 10, 1977. HKRS 70-8-1370. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Chan, Yu-cheong. “Film Censorship Policy in Hong Kong.” M.A. thesis, City University of Hong Kong, 2000. Conference of Information Officers and Public Relations Officers–South East Asia. July 14–15, 1949. Extract. HKMS 184-1-151. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Crown Counsel, UK, to Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong. September 8, 1951. HKRS 160-1-51. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Darnton, Robert. Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature. London: British Library, 2014. Director of Information to Wong Ling and Wong Chun from Ta Kung Pao. Date unknown. Great Britain, Colonial Office and Commonwealth Office. Far Eastern Department and Successors: Registered Files, Series 1030, CO 1030/1543. London: The National Archives. Engel, Jeffrey A., ed. Local Consequences of the Global Cold War. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2007. Extract from Report of Conference of Public Relations Officers. June 1951. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Public Relations Department, Later Information Department: Registered Files, Series 875, CO 875/51/4. London: The National Archives. Film Censorship–Hong Kong, Directive for Film Censors. Date unknown. HKRS 163-1-1159. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Film Censorship Board of Review. “A Statement of the General Principles.” November 20, 1965. HKRS 1101-2-13. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Governor of North Borneo to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London. August 28, 1952. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Public Relations

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Department, Later Information Department: Registered Files, Series 875, CO 875/51/4. London: The National Archives. Governor of Singapore to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London. January 5, 1953. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Public Relations Department, Later Information Department: Registered Files, Series 875, CO 875/51/4. London: The National Archives. Grantham, Alexander. Via Ports: From Hong Kong to Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965. Grantham, Alexander, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London. April 23, 1949. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Confidential General and Confidential Original Correspondence, Series 537, CO 537/4824. London: The National Archives. Grantham, Alexander, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London. July 12, 1949. HKMS 184-1-151. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Grantham, Alexander, Governor of Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London. July 31, 1949. HKMS 184-1-151. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London. December 18, 1952. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Public Relations Department, Later Information Department: Registered Files, Series 875, CO 875/51/4. London: The National Archives. Hawkins, B. C. K., Secretary for Chinese Affairs, to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong. July 27, 1956. HKRS 160-1-50. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Hong Kong Government. Official Languages Ordinance. June 30, 1997. Available at http://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_pdf.nsf. ———. Press Release. May 19, 1977. HKRS 70-8-1369. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———. Press Release: “Public Membership of Film Censorship Board of Review.” September 4, 1976. HKRS 70-8-1369. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Hong Kong In-Media 香港獨立媒體. “ ‘Sanji’ jilupian shi zenyang liancheng de?” “三級” 紀錄片是怎樣煉成的? [How are documentary films rated as III?]. Available at http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1015517. Hung, William, Chief Film Censor, to Assistant Political Adviser, Hong Kong. November 1, 1972. HKRS 70-3-72. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———, Chief Film Censor, to Hong Kong Standard. August 25, 1972. HKRS 70-3-72. Hong Kong: Public Records Office.

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Knowles, S. S., Acting Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, to George Thomson, Public Relations Officer, Singapore. November 16, 1953. PRO 587/53. Singapore: National Archives of Singapore. Krabbendam, Hans, and Giles Scott-Smith, eds. The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960. London: Frank Cass, 2003. Kuhn, Annette. Cinema, Censorship, and Sexuality, 1909–1925. London: Routledge, 1988. Lee, Zardas Shuk-man. “From Cold War Politics to Moral Regulation: Film Censorship in Colonial Hong Kong.” M.Phil. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2013. Liu Shuyong 劉蜀永. Jianming Xianggang shi 簡明香港史 [A brief history of Hong Kong]. Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1998. Luddington, D. C. C., Secretary for Home Affairs, Hong Kong. Memo No. 76. March 20, 1973. HKRS 1101-2-14. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Lyttelton, Oliver. Circular Despatch 384/52. April 23, 1952. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Public Relations Department, Later Information Department: Registered Files, Series 875, CO 875/51/4. London: The National Archives. Major, Patrick, and Rana Mitter, eds. Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History. London: Frank Cass, 2004. Mark, Chi-kwan. Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-American Relations, 1949–1957. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. ———. “Vietnam War Tourists: US Naval Visits to Hong Kong and British-American-Chinese Relations, 1965–1968.” Cold War History 10 (February 2010): 1–28. Miners, Norman. Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, 1912–1941. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987. Mooney, Jadwiga E. Pieper, and Fabio Lanza, eds. De-Centering Cold War History: Local and Global Change. London: Routledge, 2012. Morgan, W. S., to Hong Kong. July 20, 1949. HKMS 184-1-151. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Murray, John L., Director of Information Services, to Political Adviser, Hong Kong. April 18, 1961. HKRS 41-2A-45. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———, Public Relations Officer to Attorney General, Hong Kong. May 12, 1956. HKRS 41-2A-45. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———, Public Relations Officer to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong. March 8, 1951. HKRS 160-1-51. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Nanking to Foreign Office, Great Britain. April 25, 1949. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Confidential General and Confidential Original Correspondence, Series 537, CO 537/4824. London: The National Archives.

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Ng, Kenny K. K. “Inhibition VS. Exhibition: Political Censorship of Chinese and Foreign Cinemas in Postwar Hong Kong.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 2, no. 1 (2008): 23–35. Office for Films, Newspaper, and Article Administration. “Film Censorship Guidelines for Censors.” Available at http://www.ofnaa. gov.hk/document/eng/code/filmcensorship.pdf. Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong. March 8, 1951. HKRS 160-1-51. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, London. August 11, 1952. HKRS 160-1-51. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Publicity Coordinating Committee. Minutes of meeting held at the Colonial Secretariat. March 22, 1950. HKRS 163-1-1159. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Report of Film Censorship in the Colonies. February 14, 1952. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Public Relations Department, Later Information Department: Registered Files, Series 875, CO 875/51/4. London: The National Archives. Secretary of Panel of Film Censors to Board of Film Censors. August 10, 1948. HKRS 41-1-3870. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Security Intelligence Far East to Foreign Office, Great Britain. September 3, 1948. Great Britain, Foreign Office, Information Research Department, Series 1110, FO 1110/124. London: The National Archives. Sloss, D. J., Civil Information Department, to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong. September 10, 1945. HKRS 161-1-52. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. So, Mei-fong. “The Feasibility of Implementing Industry Self-Regulation of Film Censorship in Hong Kong.” M.P.A. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2006. South China Morning Post. 1972. Ta Kung Pao 大公報. 1958, 1965, and 1967. Television and Films Division, Secretariat for Home Affairs. “Film Censorship Standards: A Note of Guidance.” May 1973. HKRS 1101-215. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Thomson, George, Public Relations Officer, Singapore, to Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong. April 21, 1947. HKRS 41-1-2254. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———, Public Relations Officer, Singapore, to S. S. Knowles, Public Relations Officer, Hong Kong. January 1, 1954. PRO 587/53. Singapore: National Archives of Singapore. Timms, D. K., Far Eastern Department, to A. St. J. Sugg, Colonial Office. September 23, 1965. Great Britain, Colonial Office and Commonwealth

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Office. Far Eastern Department and Successors: Registered Files, Series 1030, CO 1030/1543. London: The National Archives. Trench, David, Governor of Hong Kong, to the Colonial Office. September 11, 1965. Great Britain, Colonial Office and Commonwealth Office. Far Eastern Department and Successors: Registered Files, Series 1030, CO 1030/1543. London: The National Archives. Tsang, Steve. A Modern History of Hong Kong. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004. Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf. China Confidential: American Diplomats and SinoAmerican Relations, 1945–1966. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Ure, Gavin. Governors, Politics, and the Colonial Office: Public Policy in Hong Kong, 1918–58. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. Watt, Nigel J. V., Commissioner for Television and Films, to Director of Home Affairs. April 9, 1976. HKRS 1101-2-15. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———, Commissioner for Television and Films. May 9, 1973. HKRS 11012-15. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———, Director of Information Services, to D. C. Bray, Chairman of Film Censorship Board of Review. October 27, 1970. HKRS 1101-2-13. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———, Director of Information Services, to Political Adviser, Hong Kong. November 9, 1966. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Wen Wei Po 文匯報. 1967. Wu Guokun 吳國坤 [Kenny K. K. Ng]; Wei Ling 衛靈, trans. “Lengzhan shiqi Xianggang dianying de zhengzhi shencha 冷戰時期香港電影的政治 審查” [Political censorship of films in Cold War Hong Kong]. In Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲 and Lee Pui-tak 李培德, eds., Lengzhan yu Xianggang dianying 冷戰與香港電影 [The Cold War and Hong Kong films], 53–70. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying ziliaoguan, 2009. Xu Dunle 許敦樂. Kenguang tuoying 墾光拓影 [Pioneer of lights and shadows]. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations, 2005. Yep, Ray. “The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong: The Domestic and Diplomatic Fronts of the Governor.” In Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, eds., May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, 21–36. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Zhong Baoxian 鍾寶賢 [Stephanie Po-yin Chung]. Xianggang yingshiye bainian 香港影視業百年 [The motion pictures industry in Hong Kong]. Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2004.

FIVE

The Roots of Regionalism: Water Management in Postwar Hong Kong

DAVID CLAYTON Hong Kong, a product of Britain’s desire to trade with China, has always been highly reliant on international commerce. Until the 1960s, this citystate, comprised of an urban core and a small agrarian hinterland, was self-reliant in an essential commodity: fresh water. Since then Hong Kong governments, monopoly suppliers of water, have sought to balance regionalism (an increasing reliance on water supplied from the Mainland) and localism (a continuing desire for water security).1 Since 1960, Mainland water has come from a reservoir in Shenzhen, near the border with Hong Kong, and from the East River (Dongjiang 東江) in Guangdong Province.2 The relationship between Hong Kong’s socioeconomic dependence on Guangdong and its administrative autonomy ignites considerable interest today. The Hong Kong government, aware that the rapid economic development of South China has led to water stress in Guangdong, has sought to augment local water infrastructures in preparation for a future of climate change–induced droughts. But Hong Kong remains dependent on the supply of water from Guangdong at preferential rates, which civil society groups have criticized.3 Asit K. Biswas, a world authority on water governance, has damned water management in Hong Kong as being worse than in “many Third World Countries” and one characterized by excessive waste, low consumer confidence in the quality of piped water,

1  The use of “localism” here captures a desire for self-sufficiency in water. It does not convey a sense of collective belonging to a place, Hong Kong, or a movement for constitutional reform. 2  Mainland China is defined here as the PRC. Hong Kong government documents often refer to supplies from Kowloon and the New Territories to Hong Kong Island as being from the “mainland.” 3  Liu Su, Liquid Assets IV.

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and an unnecessary reliance on imported supplies.4 There is an urgent need for historical perspectives on this situation. Scholarship on the history of Hong Kong water is developing fast, with new scholars entering the field, including Nelson K. Lee, who has written a landmark study. Lee conceptualizes two periods of water management under late British colonialism: from 1959 to 1978, when Hong Kong developed an expedient trading relationship with the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) while investing heavily in the local water infrastructure to defend its position as a colonial city-state; and post-1978, when the British colonial administration, during a period of managed decolonization, prioritized regionalism.5 This chapter qualifies Nelson K. Lee’s thesis by arguing that mutually beneficial exchange relations between Hong Kong and Guangdong were established in the 1960s. This was a routine trade in water that created strong path-dependent effects, locking in regionalism as a long-term solution to Hong Kong’s water problem. The chapter addresses three themes central to this volume: the socioeconomic interdependence of Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland; the impact of the Cold War that complicated regionalism, since the PRC did not recognize the legitimacy of British rule; and the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by the British colonial administration, which formulated and implemented public policies with minimal interference from the London government. This chapter begins by detailing water insecurity in Hong Kong. It then outlines water diplomacy in three stages: the initial negotiations in 1960 to supply water from the Shenzhen reservoir; dialogs that led to an agreement to pump water from the East River to Hong Kong; and the disruption to water provision caused by the revolutionary politics of 1967 in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Four subsequent sections explore the material benefits and social and environmental costs of regionalism. The final section concludes and outlines implications for today’s policy makers in Hong Kong. Water Insecurity in Hong Kong Hong Kong, for most of its history, suffered from endemic water scarcity because its natural hydrosphere was unsuitable for mass settlement.6 Large-scale rivers bringing rainwater from distant water basins and meltwater from glacier-clad mountains do not run through Hong Kong. Lo4 

Asit K. Biswas, “Time to Overhaul Hong Kong’s Water Supply System.” Nelson K. Lee, “The Changing Nature of Border.” 6  L. A. Mills, British Rule in Eastern Asia, 479–484. 5 

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cal geology also limits groundwater supplies. Unlike other parts of the Mainland, Hong Kong has never been able to use drilling and pumping technologies to tap abundant groundwater.7 The water authority of British Hong Kong, supported by the Public Works Department and other agencies of the colonial state, pursued a three-prong strategy to deal with water shortages. It invested in local rainwater-capture technologies, encouraged consumers to practice water conservancy, and created a dual-supply network that used vast quantities of seawater for flushing away waste and as a coolant for energy generation.8 Aided by the importation of water-intensive products such as foodstuffs and raw materials, the public water authority delivered a reasonable supply of clean water.9 Until 1960, the Hong Kong government had relied almost exclusively on the use of reservoirs to draw water from local water basins during the wet months, April to November, when 80 percent of local rainfall fell. In contrast, in 1971, only 1 percent of the people of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon gained water for drinking from wells.10 Hong Kong’s people and industries usually did not go thirsty, but as systems for capturing rainwater became ever more technologically advanced, supplies of drinking water became more expensive.11 The first major local reservoir scheme in the postwar period was at Tai Lam Chung, one that was designed to end endemic water shortages by the late 1950s.12 A population explosion meant that this scheme failed to deliver water security, and in the mid-1950s the government commissioned a dam on the Shek Pik River on Lantau Island. This vast project, costing HK$200 million, was scheduled to increase local storage capacity by 50 percent within seven to eight years. Within a few years, however, industrialization and rising private affluence (which increased demand for wet sanitation) had dramatically altered predictions about future demand. Government estimates of Hong Kong’s supply requirements made in the late 1940s and early 1950s had proved to be far too conservative. 7 

By the late 1950s, for example, wells provided only 400,000 gallons per day, an insignificant amount when considering Hong Kong’s need. See Great Britain, Colonial Office, Letter from D. H. Reed (Colonial Office) to Major C. A. Pogson [a consulting water diviner offering his services to Hong Kong], late May or early June 1963, CO 1030/1658. 8  Ho Pui-yin, Water for a Barren Rock. 9  Kimberly Warren-Rhodes and Albert Koenig, “Escalating Trends in the Urban Metabolism of Hong Kong.” 10  A. Aston, “Water Resources and Consumption in Hong Kong,” 333. 11  Ho Pui-yin, Water for a Barren Rock, 17–47, 70–108, 151–182. 12  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong [Sir Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong] to the Secretary of State for Colonies [A. T. Lennox-Boyd], 530, November 27, 1953, CO 1023/199.

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This forced the government to commission a colossal and technically challenging project, reclaiming a sea inlet at Plover Cove to create a new reservoir. This project, which cost HK$641 million, was scheduled to treble local water-storage capacity and secure self-sufficiency in water by 1970. Before then, water shortages were chronic.13 Hong Kong’s final major domestic scheme was the High Island Reservoir, commissioned in the late 1960s. It augmented Hong Kong’s storage capacity by a third.14 Hong Kong embarked on these expensive local schemes because the Cold War complicated the implementation of an obvious solution to chronic water shortages: building conventional reservoirs some distance from urban areas, over the border in Communist China. The next three sections explore how this political problem was overcome. Water Diplomacy, 1959–1961 On November 15, 1959, the PRC invited three hundred guests from Hong Kong to attend a ceremony that marked the beginning of the construction of a reservoir at Shenzhen.15 On arrival at the site, these Hong Kong residents were informed that the reservoir would be able to supply a city of three million people for seven months of the year. In January 1960, the Guangdong government organized excursions to the construction site for the Hong Kong Chinese Reform Association as well as journalists from the Wen Wei Po, the Ta Kung Pao, the New Evening Press, and the Xinhua News Agency.16 The PRC was sending a message to the water-starved people of Hong Kong: Mainland China could alleviate their suffering.17 This development created a political problem for the colonial administration in Hong Kong. If the PRC’s message was the opening salvo in a propaganda war, how would the government respond at a time of water shortages in Hong Kong? The Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), which will be detailed later, was characterized by unsustainable development. It was fueled by propaganda, outlandish claims about the PRC’s economic capacity. Yet, private conversations between Hong Kong and PRC officials 13  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Letter from J. F. Saunders, the UK Trade Commissioner in Hong Kong (UKTC), to T. Sharp, Board of Trade (BT), July 22, 1960, CO 1030/1280. 14  Nelson K. Lee, “The Changing Nature of Border,” 912–913. 15  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Extract from the Hong Kong Special Branch Report, November 1959, CO 1030/1280. 16  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Extract from the Hong Kong LIC Monthly Report, January 1960, CO 1030/1280. 17  Nelson K. Lee, who has used files in the Guangdong Provincial Archives, suggests that pro-PRC elites in Hong Kong first propagated the idea of a reservoir at Shenzhen with the colonial government and with the Guangdong authorities. See “The Changing Nature of Border,” 909.

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reassured the Hong Kong government that the PRC was not engaging in a publicity stunt.18 In January 1960, an employee of the China Resources Company, a PRC agency that organized trade between Mainland China and Hong Kong, approached John Clague, a director of John D. Hutchinson and Co. and an unofficial member of the Legislative Council, and Arthur Clarke, the financial secretary in the Hong Kong government.19 Formal talks soon followed, culminating in an agreement to connect the reservoir at Shenzhen to Hong Kong.20 Throughout the five-month negotiations, the British officials in London and Hong Kong expected that the PRC would use the premise of “water diplomacy” to augment its influence within Hong Kong. It was anticipated that the PRC would use the negotiations to request a political representative in the territory and the resumption of through trains from Guangzhou.21 It was also expected that the PRC would launch a sustained propaganda campaign. As the event turned out, PRC negotiators did not ask for political concessions, nor did they exploit the propaganda potential of the agreement. Although two Chinese Communist Party–aligned journalists attended the opening ceremony, the Hong Kong Information Services Department provided far more comprehensive coverage of this event than the communist-aligned press in Hong Kong.22 The PRC did not even insist that the full text of the agreement be published.23 From the perspective of the colonial administration, this water diplomacy had been “remarkably cordial.”24 The provincial authorities in Guangdong had built a reservoir, proclaimed publicly that its water would be supplied to Hong Kong, and then opened up talks.25 This sequence gave 18  Great Britain, Colonial Office: Telegrams from Hong Kong (Black) to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Macleod], 35 and 61, January 9 and 18, 1960; Far Eastern Department, Colonial Office, Submission to Ministers, Chinese Water Supply to Hong Kong, January 21, 1960, CO 1030/1280. 19  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong (Black) to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Macleod], no. 40, January 14, 1960, CO 1030/1280. 20  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Extract from the Hong Kong Special Branch Summary, June 1960, CO 1030/1280. 21  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Water Shortage in Hong Kong, undated Memorandum for submission to the Minister of State, CO 1030/1655. 22  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Extract from Peking Fortnightly Summary 23 for the period ending November 20, 1960, CO 1030/1281; Telegram from Hong Kong (Black) to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Macleod], 882, November 15, 1960, CO 1030/1280. 23  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong (Black) to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Macleod], 867, November 7, 1960, CO 1030/1281. 24  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Sandys], 2593, December 27, 1962, CO 1030/1281. 25  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Letter from Murray MacLehose to H. Stewart, March 14, 1960, CO 1030/1280.

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the Hong Kong government hope that it could gain additional supplies of water from Mainland China. In London, Foreign Office officials were concerned that the water diplomacy would have two detrimental effects. First, it might augment the power base of the PRC in British Hong Kong. Second, it might provide the PRC with an opportunity to raise the issue of Hong Kong’s sovereignty during talks about the exchange of water.26 Governor Robert Black (r. 1958–1964) of Hong Kong, however, disagreed. He believed that the political risks of engaging in the water diplomacy with the PRC would be low. He was vindicated. Water Diplomacy, 1963–1964 From 1963, the government of Hong Kong developed lines of communication with the PRC with the intention of securing emergency water supplies from the Mainland. In May 1963, the Hong Kong government broached the issue of new arrangements to bring water to Hong Kong with the Xinhua News Agency, the PRC’s de facto representative in Hong Kong. In June 1963, E. Wilmot-Morgan of the Public Works Department asked Tseng Shen 曾生 (Zeng Sheng), the deputy governor of Guangdong, about the prospect of bringing water from the Pearl River (Zhujiang 珠江) and the East River to Hong Kong. While Tseng sanctioned the shipment of water from the Pearl River, the effects of which will be explored later, the Beijing government had to approve negotiations for a deal to pipe water from the East River.27 This created a diplomatic impasse. In May and June 1963, the local Hong Kong press was reporting obsessively on what the government had declared to be a “water emergency,” a period of acute water stress that will be studied closely in a later section. This pressured the government to act. On June 13, Governor Black requested that the British government approach the PRC government in Beijing.28 Progress on the East River scheme was slow. The arrangement to bring water from the East River was hampered by information asymmetries. Hong Kong wanted exploratory talks to exchange geological and hydrological data so that it could provide the authorities in Guangdong with a detailed engineering plan. The Guangdong authorities, by contrast, wanted to know how much water Hong Kong wanted and over what 26 

Great Britain, Colonial Office, Letter from Murray MacLehose to H. Stewart, March 14, 1960, CO 1030/1280. 27  Hong Kong Record Series, Hong Kong Water Emergency 1963: Report on Discussion with Guangdong Authorities in Canton, June 5, 1963, HKRS 287/1/343. 28  Hong Kong Record Series, Copy of Telegram from the Governor of Hong Kong to Duncan Sandys, Secretary of State for the Colonies, June 13, 1963, HKRS 287/1/343.

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period before they would open up talks.29 Hong Kong officials suspected that the Guangdong authorities were hesitant due to the fear that if Hong Kong secured water, the authorities would back out of the scheme. If this happened, the PRC would have wasted scarce resources laying pipelines to the border. To break the impasse, Hong Kong officials considered offering to meet all the capital costs of the project incurred in Guangdong.30 In the end the Hong Kong government did not make this offer, and it is extremely unlikely that the PRC would have agreed to terms that would have symbolized Mainland China’s dependence on Western technical and financial aid. Throughout 1963, public interest in Hong Kong about a new pipeline from the Mainland grew and pressure on the Hong Kong government intensified.31 The colonial administration maintained dialog with the provincial authorities in Guangdong and used diplomatic channels in Beijing to put pressure on the PRC. In November, Lo Fan-Chun (Chinese characters for name unknown), the vice-governor of Guangdong, met T. W. Garvey, from the office of the British chargé d’affaires in Beijing. Lo confirmed that a pipeline was under consideration and that Guangdong was “anxious to do its best for Hong Kong.”32 But in December, Ho Yin (Chinese characters for name unknown), a Macau-based “communist millionaire” with good contacts in Beijing, reported to the colonial administration that the PRC would insist on the establishment of an official representative office in Hong Kong as a condition for a settlement.33 This would have been unacceptable to Hong Kong. Just when a deal began to look unlikely, the provincial government in Guangdong, acting “from their consistent stand of cooperation and help,” presented an engineering plan to bring water from the East River to Hong Kong without attaching political preconditions.34 Governor Black was so surprised and delighted by this “altruistic” act that he suspected the PRC would ultimately request a “worthwhile quid

29  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Peking (T. W. Garvey) to Foreign Office, 435A, June 18, 1963, CO 1030/1654. 30  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Letter from E. G. Willan to Garvey, October 3, 1963, CO 1030/1656. 31  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Black to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Sandys], 672, August 14, 1963, CO 1030/1655. 32  Great Britain, Foreign Office, Telegram from Peking to Foreign Office, 882, November 22, 1963, FO 371/170648. 33  Great Britain, Foreign Office, Letter from E. G. Willan to Garvey, December 20, 1963, FO 371/175908. 34  Great Britain, Foreign Office, Extract from LIC Monthly Intelligence Report, January 1964, CO 1030/1655; Telegram from Peking to Foreign Office, 77, January 21, 1964, FO 371/175908.

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pro quo.”35 Garvey, however, believed that this was a “unilateral act of benevolence” designed to enhance Mainland China’s image as Hong Kong’s “generous and unselfish neighbour and protector.”36 Garvey’s judgement was sound. In 1964, Lo Kwan-hung 羅君雄, a left-leaning Hong Kong– based filmmaker, shot on location in Guangdong an iconic documentary film, Water Comes over the Hills from the East (Dongjiang zhi shui yueshan lai 東江之水越山來).37 Three quarters of a million people watched this “boxoffice sensation” when it was screened in Hong Kong in 1965.38 The film augmented the PRC’s symbolic power in the British colony, but PRC publicity was muted. Its local activists were “torn between the need not to advertise this too blatantly and the natural desire to obtain maximum credit for their achievement.”39 Mark Chi-kwan has argued that in the mid-1960s, the PRC was playing a long game with respect to Hong Kong. Ultimately it wanted to enter into negotiations to secure the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty. In the meantime, the PRC wanted to maintain “the status quo.”40 This required the embedding of regionalism. Friendly water diplomacy was the upshot. Water Diplomacy in 1967 Between 1960 and 1967, rising imports of water heightened anxiety in Hong Kong about water insecurity. The provision of clean water was now dependent on harmonious political relations with a neighboring power that did not recognize the legitimacy of British rule. Ordinary people were acutely aware of the precariousness of this settlement. In February 1963, for example, the state broadcaster in Guangzhou mentioned that if supplies from the Shenzhen reservoir “halted,” the “water situation” of Hong Kong would become unbearable. According to the China Mail, a Hong Kong newspaper, this announcement was a veiled threat leading to “widespread bewilderment and concern.” The Hong Kong government responded by releasing a statement that it believed the authorities in Guangdong would adhere to an obligation to supply water under the

35 

Great Britain, Foreign Office, Telegram from Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Sandys], 98, January 22, 1964, FO 371/170648. 36  Great Britain, Foreign Office, Telegram from Peking to Foreign Office, 86, January 23, 1964, FO 371/170648. 37  Ian Aikten and Michael Ingham, Hong Kong Documentary Film, 57. 38  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Hong Kong Police Special Branch Monthly Summary, April 1965, CO 1030/1657. 39  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Extract from LIC Quarterly Intelligence Report, January 1 to March 31, 1965, CO 1030/1657. 40  Mark Chi-kwan, “Lack of Means or Loss of Will?,” 54.

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1960 “contract.”41 The reference to the “contract” was rhetorical. Governor Black recognized privately that the continuation of supplies hinged on the maintenance of good will.42 It was the revolutionary politics of 1967 in Mainland China and Hong Kong that provided the severest test of this informal arrangement. During the riots-cum-confrontation, local communist activists used strikes and violence to destabilize British rule. The colonial state suppressed unrest. The year 1967 also saw many water shortages. Rainfall was below average and Plover Cove was not fully operational. Moreover, as disturbances escalated, Hong Kong’s water security deteriorated. The PRC piped its contracted supply between October 1966 and June 1967, but relations between Hong Kong and PRC officials, hitherto cordial, broke down. Hong Kong’s water engineers were mistreated. Meetings to reconcile supply arrangements were canceled. Payments went into arrears.43 When Hong Kong officials, anticipating water shortages, requested additional supplies, the provincial authorities in Guangdong did not reply.44 This had not happened before. Trust dissipated. Governor David Trench (r. 1964–1971) feared that the PRC’s strategy had changed. Rather than alleviating acute water stress, it would exacerbate it. He became convinced that the PRC would not miss a “golden opportunity” to leave Hong Kong in a “very grave danger”: “waterless.”45 The Hong Kong government responded, rather desperately, by contacting governments in Japan, the Philippines, and Thailand about the prospects of shipping water from their rivers and reservoirs.46 Importing water across such distances would have been extremely expensive and push up water rates but would not have alleviated water shortages completely. The colonial administration admitted in private that only a combination 41 

“Will China Cut off Our Water?,” China Mail, February 27, 1963, HKRS 545/1/38. Great Britain, Colonial Office: Telegram from Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Great Britain, 1098, May 27, 1960, CO 1030/1280; Extract from the LIC Quarterly Intelligence Report, January 16 to April 15, 1961, CO 1030/1280. 43  Great Britain, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Telegram from Hong Kong to the Commonwealth Office, June 17, 1968, FCO 40/129. 44  Great Britain, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Letter from A. M. J. Wright (Water Authority, HK) to the Director, The East River, Shenzhen Water Supply Project, July 24, 1967, FCO 40/129. 45  Great Britain, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Letter from David [Trench] to Arthur [Goldsworthy], July 1963, FCO 40/129. 46  Great Britain, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Letter from R. B. Crowson (British Embassy, Tokyo) to T. K. K. Elliot (Political Adviser, Hong Kong), August 18, 1967, FCO 40/129; Telegram from Manila to the Foreign Office, 145, August 17, 1967, FCO 40/129; Telegram from Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs, Great Britain, 1301, August 24, 1967, FCO 40/129. 42 

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of abundant late-summer rain and the resumption of supplies from Mainland China would negate the need for draconian rationing. It put in place an emergency plan to provide households with access to running water for only five hours per week.47 This would have put an unprecedented burden on the people of Hong Kong. Thankfully for Hong Kong, the crisis soon ended. Governor Trench’s prediction had been poor. Late in 1967, Plover Cove began to fill with rainwater, providing additional supplies. And crucially, in October 1967, before the beginning of the dry season, the PRC met its supply obligations: the Shenzhen–East River scheme replenished Hong Kong’s supplies. The crisis of 1967 had two effects. First, as Nelson K. Lee notes, it restimulated localism: the High Island scheme, Hong Kong’s last great water-engineering project was commissioned; and pressure for the implementation of a preexisting plan for an expensive desalination plant intensified.48 Second, the quick resumption of exchange relations—the PRC had only turned off the taps for three months—restored confidence in regionalism. Yet, as shown later, what really made regionalism a compelling strategy for a fiscally conservative colonial state systematically underinvesting in the social and physical infrastructure was the price the PRC charged Hong Kong for water.49 Gains from Regionalism, I: Cheap Water When water is drawn from distant water basins, capital costs and water rates charged to households rise. In Hong Kong, due to the PRC’s pricing strategies, high prices for clean water are a relatively recent phenomenon.50 In the 1960s, the price of Mainland water was extremely low. Throughout the decade water rates in Hong Kong approximately doubled; and they were to increase again in the early 1970s. These price hikes resulted from high capital investment in nonconventional water capture technologies. It was believed that imported water reduced price inflation.51 The evidence for this supposition comes in the form of the price ratios between imported water and newly commissioned domestic supplies. During the 1960s, water piped from Shenzhen and the East River was cheap, cost47  Great Britain, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Memorandum for the Executive Council, Water Supply Position, August 5, 1967, FCO 40/129. 48  Nelson K. Lee, “The Changing Nature of Border,” 912. 49  David Clayton, “From Laissez-Faire to ‘Positive Non-Interventionism,’” 5, 8. 50  Liu Su’s Liquid Assets IV: Hong Kong’s Water Resources Management makes the useful distinction between rising prices for East River water and, due to the subsidization of saltwater for flushing, the low average per unit price of water. 51  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Letter from [Sir Arthur] Clarke [Financial Secretary] to Harding, March 31, 1960, CO 1030/1280.

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ing approximately HK$1 per thousand gallons, the same as the prevailing rate for domestic supplies, a strategy of “equivalent pricing” (see later).52 But the price of water from the Plover Cove scheme was predicted to be a third higher than Mainland water, and it was estimated in 1963 that water supplied by a desalination plant would be five times more expensive than Mainland water.53 Acquiring Mainland water was a low-tech and thus cheap solution to Hong Kong’s water stress. For example, the capital costs incurred by the Hong Kong government to link its existing supply network to that in Guangdong were small relative to those for the large projects documented at the beginning of this chapter. In 1964, Hong Kong’s Public Works Department budgeted for HK$4.5 million to link the new Shenzhen–East River water scheme to the Hong Kong network. Most of this expenditure was for buying and laying pipes, installing pumps, and amending or building new pumping stations; farmers in the New Territories also received compensation for the loss of crops and access to cultivated land.54 This expenditure was fiscally insignificant as it was only 1 percent of the cost of the Plover Cove scheme and 2 percent of the Shek Pik scheme. Before considering the hidden costs of this trade, it is worth pondering the PRC’s strategy of “equivalent pricing.” It is clear that during the 1960s, the PRC could have set higher prices and thus gained more foreign exchange from its unbalanced trade with Hong Kong. In 1963, the colonial administration in Hong Kong was desperate for emergency supplies of water and was contemplating bringing water by tanker from Japan and Southeast Asia.55 PRC negotiators could have held out for higher prices. They could have let Hong Kong reservoirs dry out before making final demands.56 Why did the provincial authorities in Guangdong not bargain harder?

52 

Great Britain, Colonial Office: Memorandum for the Executive Council, Development of Water Resources, October 1, 1963, CO 1030/1656; Telegram from Hong Kong (Information Department) to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Great Britain, April 22, 1964, CO 1030/1656; Extract of a speech by the Financial Secretary [Sir John Cowperthwaite] in the Legislative Council, February 28, 1962, CO 1030/1279. 53  Great Britain, Colonial Office: Calculations derived from estimates in an extract of a memorandum [probably for the Executive Council] (untitled and undated), CO 1030/1280; and in an extract of a letter from the Deputy Financial Secretary, October 14, 1963, CO 1030/1656. 54  Compensation made up 2 percent of the capital budget. See Director of Public Works (Water) to Deputy Financial Secretary, Hong Kong, August 12, 1964, HKRS 287/1/348. 55  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Letter from Willan to Garvey, July 30, 1963, CO 1030/1655. 56  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Black to Ian Macleod, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Great Britain, October 22, 1960, CO 1030/1280.

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Negotiations between Guangdong and Hong Kong followed a pattern. The provincial government in Guangdong would initially offer to provide water for Hong Kong free of charge.57 The Hong Kong government would then insist that any deal be on commercial terms. At this point, PRC officials would ask the Hong Kong government to set a price equivalent to prevailing prices in Hong Kong.58 The PRC pricing strategy did not reflect conditions of supply in Guangdong. All of the schemes to supply water to Hong Kong varied greatly. The PRC erected earthen dams just over the border that could be used to pump floodwaters into Hong Kong, constructed large-scale reservoirs, and built canals and dams to redirect water from the East River.59 Prices did not reflect the different costs of these schemes, a typical feature of the Maoist economy.60 In Mainland China, irrational decision-making eroded incentives for investment in productive projects. It did the same in Hong Kong, eroding the case for localism, for sustained investment in highly productive (but costly) unconventional schemes to deliver water security. Instead it strengthened the case for regionalism, reliance on low-tech communist schemes. Securing water from the Mainland was a quick fix. Local capital-­ intensive schemes took on average seven to eight years to augment domestic supplies. By comparison, in the 1960s the PRC supplied Mainland water within a few years. Gains from Regionalism, II: Mitigation of Acute Water Stress, 1962–1964 The breakdown in exchange during 1967 was exceptional. Normally the PRC was receptive to requests made by Hong Kong for supplementary and emergency supplies. The main evidence concerns conditions afflicting Hong Kong in 1963. In 1963, Hong Kong suffered from an unprecedented weather shock (with rainfall of only 40 percent of the average) at a moment when the colony’s reservoirs had already been depleted. In the spring of 1962, with rainfall 60 percent below average, Hong Kong reservoirs contained water

57  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong (Black) to Secretary of State for the Colonies [Iain Macleod], 151, February 21, 1960, CO 1030/1280; Hong Kong Record Series, Hong Kong Water Emergency 1963: Report on Discussion with Guangdong Authorities in Guangzhou, June 5, 1963, HKRS 287/1/343. 58  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong (O. A. G.) to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Macleod], 336, April 11, 1960, CO 1030/1280. 59  Hong Kong Record Series, E. Wilmot-Morgan, Assistant Director Waterworks, Meeting with Po On County Officials, November 26, 1963, HKRS 287/1/343. 60  Kent G. Deng, China’s Political Economy in Modern Times.

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sufficient only for a month’s consumption.61 And during the whole of 1962 Hong Kong received three quarters of its normal volume of rain.62 By 1963, Hong Kong was in a “period of extreme peril,” the government having no choice but to halve daily household consumption.63 In present-day Hong Kong, the average person consumes 130 liters of drinking-quality water per day, 220 liters of water per day in total, including saltwater for flushing.64 In 1963 and 1964, the ration was a tiny fraction of this level, perhaps as low as 30 liters per person per day.65 The precise ration was determined by the ability of households to prioritize the collection of water when the taps were switched on. Normally, in the 1950s and 1960s Hong Kong people enjoyed a 24-hour supply of water only when collected rainwater was plentiful; in 1960, this occurred on only 35 days. During dry spells, taps were typically turned off for twenty hours per day. During severely dry spells, consumers were only allowed access to water for four hours every second day.66 Rationing caused social inequities. Much of the burden fell on Hong Kong women, who, as part of their weekly work schedule, had to store water for drinking, cleaning, and cooking, while those without indoor pumping expended considerable amounts of time queuing at standpipes, public toilets, and bathhouses. Except for those lucky few with access to private wells, privation would have been intolerable without supplies from the Mainland. During the early and mid-1960s, Mainland China normally supplied between 20 and 30 percent of consumption needs in Hong Kong.67 The significance of Mainland water was greater during periods of acute crisis. In 1962, nearly 40 percent of Hong Kong’s freshwater derived from the 61  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Information Services Department, Hong Kong, Daily Information Bulletin, May 19, 1962, CO 1030/1280. 62  The long-term norm is 2,254mm/year, calculated from rainfall data for 1920 to 1980, excluding the period 1939–1946. The norm is derived from Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Statistics, 10; Hong Kong Blue Books, 1920–1938; Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics, 1970–1984. 63  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Extract from Governor’s Speech in Legislative Council, February 26, 1964, CO 1030/1656. 64  Water Supplies Department, Hong Kong, “Calculation of Per Capita Daily Water Consumption.” 65  This estimate was computed from the total annual consumption data that were converted from imperial to metric measures (one gallon equals 4.55 liters), and deflated by midyear population estimates to arrive at a figure of 50 liters per person per day. See Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Statistics, 84. A. Aston estimated that 55 percent of stored water was for domestic consumption, and so the final estimate is 30 liters per person per day. See “Water Resources and Consumption in Hong Kong,” 229. 66  Public Works Department, Hong Kong, The Water Problem in Hong Kong, 5. 67  Ho Pui-yin, Water for a Barren Rock, 217; Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Statistics, 84.

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Shenzhen scheme.68 The storage capacity at Shenzhen fell in 1963 because drought afflicted the entire region. Shenzhen’s capacity fell by two thirds, and the PRC cut its exports of water to Hong Kong.69 Liu Su’s claim that the “water stopped flowing” during this “great drought” is wrong.70 The Shenzhen scheme supplied nearly a fifth of Hong Kong’s needs during a period of severe water shortages. During 1963, the PRC also mitigated water shortages by agreeing to the shipment of water by tanker from the Pearl River. The “water lift” from the Pearl River, 603 round trips to Guangzhou during the last six months of 1963, supplied nearly 1,900 million gallons, a third of consumption needs during that period.71 During 1963, half of Hong Kong’s freshwater was derived from the Mainland. Hong Kong officials acknowledged in private that the Guangdong authorities had been “generous.”72 The UK trade commissioner in Hong Kong argued that the PRC had prevented a “disaster.”73 Governor Trench believed that the Shenzhen scheme had proven of “critical importance,” a boost to “public confidence and morale,” placing Hong Kong in a “position of dependence on the Chinese which was never envisaged” when the original agreement was drawn up.74 In short, the volume and value of Mainland water during the 1960s made regionalism an essential component of Hong Kong water management. As the final two sections describe, this calculation was not affected by the social and environmental costs of the trade. Costs of Regionalism, I: Labor Conditions in Guangdong The Shenzhen reservoir was built during the early years of the Great Leap Forward (GLF), a set of radical policies that contributed to a famine across the Mainland. The level of excess mortality varied from province to province. The degree of commitment by provincial administrations to the policies during the GLF also differed. For Guangdong, evidence suggests that 68  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from the Governor [Sir Robert Black] to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Duncan Sandys], December 27, 1962, CO 1030/1281. 69  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Reuters Cable 052740, May 1963, CO 1030/1654; DIB, October 17, 1963, CO 1030/1656. 70  Liu Su, Liquid Assets IV, 22. 71  Hong Kong Information Service, “Hong Kong and China Sign New Water Supply Agreement,” April 22, 1964, HKRS 545/1/382/1. 72  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Sandys], 912, October 25, 1963, CO 1030/1656. 73  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Letter from Arthur Woller (UKTC) to M. S. Trenaman (BT), June 28, 1963, CO 1030/1655. 74  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Sandys], 845, October 8, 1963, CO 1030/1656.

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the authorities were committed to the GLF, which made its people suffer. The amount of grain available per person in Guangdong fell in 1958, 1960, and 1961 due to crop failures and requisitioning, but Guangdong’s rate of GLF-related mortality was only 1.7 percent, compared to a national average of 5 percent.75 A key aspect of the GLF is the mass mobilization of peasants for water conservancy.76 Elsewhere in Mainland China, this activity contributed to famine conditions. Frank Dikötter has shown that water conservancy during the GLF reduced the amount of labor available for agricultural production and depleted the energy levels of construction workers, making them prone to malnutrition.77 At least 6,000 people worked day and night for one hundred days on the reservoir at Shenzhen. They also worked twenty-four hours per day through the rainy season to lay pipes from this reservoir to the border.78 Refugees from the famine-ravaged Mainland alleged that a considerable number of workers died during the construction of the dam.79 This scheme certainly exploited laborers.80 Nevertheless, it was small in scale compared to the vast schemes undertaken elsewhere on the Mainland. In Anhui, a province severely afflicted by famine, the PRC mobilized five million workers to construct gigantic projects to prevent floods and improve irrigation and transportation.81 Costs of Regionalism, II: Long-Term Environmental Damage Hong Kong was no different from other global mega cities that, from the nineteenth century, drew water over ever-greater distances. New York, for example, now relies on the watershed of the Delaware River, 125 miles from the city, high in the Catskill mountain range. The problem for Hong Kong was that there was greater uncertainty about the credibility of its distant supplier—the provincial government of Guangdong. This bred a short-term outlook. The British colonial state, as Nelson K. Lee has shown, continued to invest, for political rather than economic or ecological reasons, in the local water infrastructure, including a failed experiment with 75  Yang Jisheng, Tombstone, 325, 334, 396; G. H. Chang and G. J. Wen, “Communal Dining and the Chinese Famine,” 25. 76  Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature, 69–70. 77  Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine, 180. 78  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Memorandum: Shum Chun Reservoir Water Supply, November 15, 1959, CO 1030/1280. 79  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Extract from The Evening Standard, November 23, 1960, CO 1030/1280. 80  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Extract from Hong Kong LIC Monthly Intelligence Report, December 1959, CO 1030/1280. 81  Chen Yi, “Under the Same Maoist Sky,” 205–206.

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desalination.82 As this section documents, weak regional property rights also led to adverse technological choice and poor protection for the ecology of the region, problems that ultimately affected the quality of the water supplied from the Mainland to Hong Kong. In 1964, the colonial administration wanted to install a pipeline to bring water from the East River through Guangdong to the border with Hong Kong.83 Instead, the PRC constructed a pumping station to fetch water from the East River up one of its tributaries, the Stone Horse River (Shimahe 石馬河), and, via two other rivers and a new canal, into the Shenzhen reservoir. This open scheme reversed and widened natural river courses, created a network of 83 kilometers, and contained eight large pumping stations, six large dams, and 16 kilometers of canals.84 The PRC had maximized labor inputs and minimized capital inputs, reflecting prevailing product scarcities in its command economy. It was an optimal solution for the PRC.85 But during the 1980s, a period of rapid industrialization in Guangdong, the water carried by this open system became polluted.86 The contracts to supply water to Hong Kong in the 1960s were set up and run by the colony’s technocrats peddling engineering fixes to complex problems. Although these agreements became more sophisticated in later decades, environmental considerations were never given primacy. In hindsight, there should have been a long-term deal that sought to protect the ecology of the regional water basin. In the 1990s, New York, instead of paying for an expensive new filtration plant, improved the forests and soil surrounding its reservoirs.87 By contrast, there was a rush for growth in South China in the 1990s, causing pollution levels to rise and leading to a deterioration in water quality. Conclusions and Implications As highlighted in Gary Chi-hung Luk’s introduction and detailed in Leo F. Goodstadt’s chapter, there was considerable socioeconomic interdependence between British Hong Kong and China. The post-WWII PRC sold essential commodities to Hong Kong at below international market rates in return for valuable foreign exchange. This unbalanced trade subsidized living standards in Hong Kong, and, by reducing the inflationary pressure 82 

Nelson K. Lee, “The Changing Nature of Border,” 912–913, 916. Great Britain, Colonial Office, Telegram from Hong Kong (Black) to the Secretary of State for the Colonies [Sandys], 497, June 13, 1963, CO 1030/1654. 84  Derek Davies, “The East River Scheme,” 8–12. 85  Kenneth Pomeranz, “The Transformation of China’s Environment,” 136–142. 86  Liu Su, Liquid Assets IV, 32–33. 87  James Salzman, Drinking Water, 57–69. 83 

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for wage increases, sustained labor-intensive, export-orientated industrialization.88 As demonstrated in this chapter, exports of water from Mainland China embedded mutual economic dependency during the 1960s and beyond. As Carol A. G. Jones and Zardas Shuk-man Lee show in this volume, the Cold War had a profound effect on colonial state building. It created uncertainty about Hong Kong’s future status, which had a significant effect on water management because the social returns on investment in the water infrastructure required secure long-term property rights. As this chapter has shown, the British government feared that the PRC would exploit Hong Kong’s dependency on Mainland water to augment its symbolic power within the British colonial territory. But the colonial administration was far less concerned about these political consequences; it perceived negotiations with the PRC to secure water supplies from the Mainland as an absolute necessity. This strategy, formulated autonomously in response to acute water stress in 1963, paid off: during the 1960s the PRC provided Hong Kong with cheap water at a low political cost at a time of considerable need. These nascent exchange relations suffered a shock in 1967. The colonial state reacted to the crisis, most notably by commissioning a new reservoir, the High Island scheme. But 1967 was exceptional. Normally exchange relations were routine, and the day-to-day interactions between engineers and low-level officials built up trust. An implicit understanding emerged that Hong Kong could secure cheap, clean water from further up the water basin. These were the foundations for regionalism. Although competition for water that flows across borders is often predicted to become a source of international conflict, historically the type of cross-border cooperation described in this chapter has been the norm.89 The informal institutions that governed the Hong Kong–Guangdong cross-border trade, however, locked in suboptimal water management and led to environmental problems in South China. Hong Kong now needs local and regional institutions that create strong incentives for innovative human- and river-oriented strategies. The technologies of water management also need to change. The past provides an imperfect guide, but there are two, albeit general, lessons we can learn. Today, unlike in the past, institutions need to strengthen incentives to use low-carbon technologies in ways that will raise the “productivity” of rainwater and capture 88 

For the first scholarly account of this trade, see J. R. Schiffer, “State Policy and Economic Growth.” 89  United Nations, Human Development Report 2006, 201–233; Steven Soloman, Water, 384–416.

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wastewaters. And whatever mix of technologies are tested (and these may include a return to rationing and desalination), the organizations governing entitlements to water today must, unlike in the past, be inclusive, representing all end users of water. References Aston, A. “Water Resources and Consumption in Hong Kong.” Urban Ecology 2, no. 4 (1977): 327–353. Aikten, Ian, and Michael Ingham. Hong Kong Documentary Film, 1947– 1969. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Biswas, Asit K. “Time to Overhaul Hong Kong’s Water Supply System, as Lead Contamination Is Only Part of the Problem.” South China Morning Post. July 20, 2015. Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong. Hong Kong Statistics, 1947–1967. Hong Kong: Census and Statistics Department, 1969. ———. Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics. Hong Kong: Census and Statistics Department, 1970–1984. Chang, G. H., and G. J. Wen. “Communal Dining and the Chinese Famine of 1958–1961.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 46, no. 1 (1997): 1–34. Chen Yi. “Under the Same Maoist Sky: Accounting for Death Rate Discrepancies in Anhui and Jiangxi.” In Kimberly E. Manning and Felix Wemheuer, eds., Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine, 197–225. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010. Cheung, Siu-Keung. “Controlling Lives and Bodies: Water and Food Security in Hong Kong.” In Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, Lida Nedilsky, and Cheung Siu-Keung, eds., China’s Rise to Power: Conceptions of State Governance, 207–227. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Clayton, David. “From Laissez-Faire to ‘Positive Non-Interventionism’: The Colonial State in Hong Kong Studies.” Social Transformations in Chinese Societies 9, no. 1 (2013): 1–20. Davies, Derek. “The East River Scheme.” Far Eastern Economic Review 56, no. 10 (1964): 509–513. Davis, S. G. Hong Kong in Its Geographical Setting. London: Collins, 1949. Deng, Kent G. China’s Political Economy in Modern Times: Changes and Economic Consequences, 1800–2000. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012. Dikötter, Frank. Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62. London: Bloomsbury, 2010. Ho, Pui-yin. Water for a Barren Rock: 150 Years of Water Supply in Hong Kong. Trans. Lui Yuen Chung. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 2001.

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Hong Kong Blue Books. 1920–1938. Hong Kong Record Series (HKRS). Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Goodstadt, Leo F. Uneasy Partners: The Conflict between Public Interest and Private Profit in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Far Eastern Department and Successors: Registered Files, Series 1030 (CO 1030). 1960–1965. London: The National Archives. ———. Hong Kong and Pacific Department: Original Correspondence, Series 1023 (CO 1023). 1953. London: The National Archives. Great Britain, Foreign Office. General Correspondence, Series 371 (FO 371). 1963. London: The National Archives. Great Britain, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Hong Kong Departments: Registered Files, Hong Kong, British Honduras, British Indian Ocean Territories and the Seychelles, Series 40 (FCO 40). 1967. London: The National Archives. Lee, Nelson K. “The Changing Nature of Border, Scale and the Production of Hong Kong’s Water Supply System since 1959.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38, no. 3 (2014): 903–921. Liu Su. Liquid Assets IV: Hong Kong’s Water Resources Management under “One Country, Two Systems.” Trans. Adrian Lu. Hong Kong: Civic Exchange, 2013. Mark, Chi-kwan. “Lack of Means or Loss of Will? The United Kingdom and the Decolonization of Hong Kong, 1957–1967.” The International History Review 31, no. 1 (2009): 45–71. Mills, L. A. British Rule in Eastern Asia: A Study of Contemporary Government and Economic Development in British Malaya and Hong Kong. London: Oxford University Press, 1942. Pomeranz, Kenneth. “The Transformation of China’s Environment, 1500–2000.” In Edmund Burke III and Kenneth Pomeranz, eds., The Environment and World History, 118–164. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Public Works Department, Hong Kong. The Water Problem in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1960. Salzman, James. Drinking Water: A History. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2012. Schiffer, J. R. “State Policy and Economic Growth: A Note on the Hong Kong Model.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 15, no. 2 (1991): 180–196. Shapiro, Judith. Mao’s War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

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Solomon, Steven. Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. United Nations. Human Development Report 2006: Beyond Scarcity—Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Warren-Rhodes, Kimberly, and Albert Koenig. “Escalating Trends in the Urban Metabolism of Hong Kong, 1971–1997.” Ambio 30, no. 7 (2001): 429–438. Water Supplies Department, Hong Kong. “Calculation of Per Capita Daily Water Consumption.” Previously available at http://www.wsd. gov.hk/en/education/water_conservation/calculation_of_per_capita_ daily_water_consumption/index.html (accessed March 2014). Yang Jisheng. Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao’s Great Famine. London: Allen Lane, 2008.

SIX

Economic Relations between the Mainland and Hong Kong, an “Irreplaceable” Financial Center

LEO F. GOODSTADT

Why did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tolerate the continuation of British rule over Hong Kong after it came to power in 1949 while there were mass campaigns against capitalism and imperialism on the Mainland? Why does the Basic Law, Mainland China’s constitutional blueprint for post-Handover Hong Kong, preserve, with very little alteration, the legal, economic, social, and political arrangements of the bygone British colonial era? In this chapter I will argue that the motivation throughout has been Mainland China’s national interest. No matter how hostile the international environment or how troubled the Mainland economy, Hong Kong was the nation’s only city that could operate as an international financial center. The results were spectacular: • 1952–1978: The Mainland was a closed, state-planned economy. It had been subject to a draconian US financial and commercial blockade until 1971. Hong Kong became the Mainland’s biggest source of foreign currency, generating an annual US$741 million in export earnings.1 • 1979–2016: After the launch of Deng Xiaoping’s 鄧小平 “open door” and economic liberalization reforms in 1978, Hong Kong was the Mainland’s largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI), supplying an annual average of US$23 billion from 1979 to 2015.2

1  Cai Beihua, “Zhongguo neidi yu Xianggang,” 11, 12. The author was also a senior official at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. 2  HKTDC Research, “Economic and Trade Information on Hong Kong.”

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The City of Last Resort Historically, the Hong Kong economy––its financial sector especially––­ repeatedly helped to overcome serious challenges to China’s well-being. Under Kuomintang (KMT) rule, the Mainland’s currency and its banking system became more and more fragile because of Japanese hostilities, the civil war, and economic collapse. With Shanghai and other major Mainland cities increasingly unable to handle international financial transactions, this business shifted to Hong Kong.3 The colony’s financial role expanded again after the CCP came to power in 1949. The Mainland was now “socialized”: capitalist businesses were nationalized, and state planners took control of all industrial, commercial, and financial activities. There were campaigns to reduce the use of cash and even to abolish money altogether.4 Commercial banking disappeared in the 1950s and only re-emerged three decades later. Despite all this, the Mainland’s socialist economy was able to interact with the “capitalist” states that dominated international finance and trade, thanks to Hong Kong’s separate colonial and capitalist status. The extraordinary growth of the nation’s economy after 1978 did not diminish Hong Kong’s value to the Mainland. Nor did the end of British colonialism make Hong Kong redundant. On the contrary, it proved impossible to modernize the Mainland’s financial institutions fast enough to meet all the demands of sustained breakneck growth and the Mainland’s entry into the global economy. Hong Kong proved indispensable in bridging the gaps, as three PRC premiers have pointed out in this century.5 “Irreplaceable” Hong Kong: An Unbroken Record The following discussion will start with an overview of how the colony of Hong Kong acquired sufficient autonomy under British rule to operate as the Mainland’s center for its international financial business. It will review the evolution of Hong Kong’s political and economic relations with the Mainland during repeated episodes of political and economic turmoil during the last century. Finally, current controversies and future prospects 3  “Conditions of Banking in Hongkong,” Far Eastern Economic Review, November 19, 1947; Catherine R. Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre, 20, 25. 4  Leo F. Goodstadt, “China: Debating the Role of Money,” Far Eastern Economic Review, January 2, 1976. 5  “Central Government to Fully Back HK’s Development: Premier Zhu,” Renmin ribao, November 19, 2002; “Hong Kong’s Traditional Advantages as Int’l Financial Center Unchanged: Premier Wen,” Xinhua News Agency, March 14, 2011, “Chinese Vice Premier Li Delivers Keynote Speech at Forum in Hong Kong,” Xinhua News Agency, August 17, 2011. Li Keqiang 李克強 was appointed premier in 2013.

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will be explored. PRC national interest, I argue, will continue to make Hong Kong an invaluable resource for China, although serious strains are already occurring as political pressures grow for Hong Kong’s integration into the national economy. The chapter delineates five historical stages in order to track how the foundations for the international financial center were laid, how Hong Kong’s credentials were established with the country’s rulers from one decade to another, and how a working relationship was developed with the CCP leaders. • 1918–1937: In this period of world recession, Hong Kong achieved extensive financial and commercial autonomy.6 Its banking system was truly international and, unlike those of most colonies, not subordinated to London. Hong Kong won the right to link its currency to China’s silver standard (rather than the pound sterling), and it managed to avoid being locked into the British Empire’s emerging currency and trade blocs (i.e., the Sterling Area and Empire/Commonwealth Preference). • 1937–1949: the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the civil war (1945–1949) caused severe fiscal and banking disruption on the Mainland. Hong Kong (except during the Japanese occupation) became the nation’s sole source of safe, stable, and efficient financial services. After Japan was defeated, financial disruption on the Mainland worsened. The ruling KMT blamed Hong Kong for the Mainland’s financial disasters and sought to curtail the colony’s banking and commercial autonomy. • 1949–1978: China under communist rule suffered a prolonged economic blockade because of the Cold War and the Sino-Soviet split. The CCP grasped how Hong Kong banks could help in circumventing international embargoes and trade sanctions. Beijing created a financial and commercial network within Hong Kong to import Mainland food, consumer goods, and raw materials for which Hong Kong’s breakneck export performance was boosting demand. Export earnings from Hong Kong financed almost 30 percent of the Mainland’s annual import bills during the most troubled years before the death of Chairman Mao Zedong 毛澤東 in 1976. • 1978–2000: Deng Xiaoping’s “open door” policy and economic liberalization won an enthusiastic response from Hong Kong. Its banks provided the largest share of the Mainland’s FDI, and Hong 6 

See Norman Miners, “Industrial Development in the Colonial Empire.”

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Kong’s industrialists relocated their entire manufacturing capacity to the Mainland. • 2000–2016: The PRC leadership continued to identify Hong Kong as crucial to meeting Mainland China’s international banking requirements and in promoting globalization of the renminbi (RMB). The economic relationship increased in complexity as well as in scale, although the Mainland was now jettisoning the Hong Kong manufacturing model as unsuited to its ambition to become an advanced economy.7 Colonial Heritage Throughout British rule, the United Kingdom accepted that the colony’s survival depended on being able to adapt to the Mainland’s changing political and economic circumstances. Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, Hong Kong was permitted to develop currency and financial arrangements quite different from the rest of the British Empire.8 British colonial territories had formed a financial and trading bloc centered on London’s financial markets. Banks in these territories were, almost always, branches of London banks, which meant that colonial economies became to a large degree extensions of the UK’s own economy “in much the same way as a state of the USA is part of the Union.”9 Hong Kong’s banks were not ruled by London, however. In fact, not until 1972 did a major UK bank open a branch in the colony. HSBC was the dominant Hong Kong bank. It was set up under the colony’s own legislation in 1866 and was not governed by UK banking laws. The Bank of England had no control over HSBC, which consistently put profits before patriotism. In addition, an extensive Chinese bank network flourished in the colony, and there was a large presence of leading European and US banks. Hong Kong’s currency, in marked contrast to the UK’s, was issued exclusively by three commercial banks. They adjusted the supply of banknotes to economic conditions in the colony and southern China.10

7  Because the analysis of this chapter is focused exclusively on Hong Kong’s relationship with the Mainland, its bank runs, corporate scandals, corruption, and colonial incompetence, which so often marred Hong Kong’s financial services up to 1986, are ignored here. The less savory side of their history is recounted in Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics, and Panics. 8  On the early origins of Hong Kong’s special treatment, see Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics, and Panics, 210–212. 9  Anthony Latter, “The Currency Board Approach to Monetary Policy,” 27. 10  Hong Kong’s special situation and its beneficial consequences are noted in G. L. M. Clauson, “The British Colonial Currency System,” 17–21, 22.

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In the 1920s, global recession had led to serious disruption of world trade and currencies, and governments were turning to protectionism. The United Kingdom was hard hit but had remained committed to laissez-­ faire and free trade, as had been its colonial territories, until 1932. London then launched a “free trade area” in which British dominions, colonies, and associated states would enjoy mutual tariff concessions. This trading alliance stimulated measures to strengthen the shared currency links, leading to the creation of the “Sterling Area.” Hong Kong, however, was treated as a special case because of its dependence on China. The colony retained its own currency arrangements and remained a laissez-faire, open economy, a free port without tariffs. It was also allowed to conduct its own international trading relations.11 On the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Sterling Area became an important economic weapon. To maximize the British Empire’s economic resources to defeat Germany and Japan, tight controls were imposed on all foreign trade and on ownership of and access to foreign currencies and other overseas assets. Once again, Hong Kong was treated as an exceptional case. Because of its crucial role in the Mainland’s international finances, the colony was granted extensive exemptions from trade and exchange controls, with additional concessions for Chinese residents.12 After World War II, Hong Kong’s financial autonomy increased still further. The colonial administration successfully avoided demands to enforce the United Kingdom’s statutory controls on foreign exchange transactions.13 Hong Kong colonial officials made no effort to defend the pound sterling against devaluation and were almost contemptuous in their rejection of London’s requests for cooperation.14 As a result, the Mainland and its state banks in Hong Kong were able to use sterling as a convertible currency and thus circumvent the economic embargo that the United States imposed on the Mainland from 1950 until 1971.15 The final stage in the evolution of Hong Kong as a free-standing international financial center despite its colonial status came in 1967, after the British pound sterling devalued and the Sterling Area began to topple. 11 

David Meredith, “The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy,” 456–458. Hong Kong Hansard, October 12, 1939, 146–147; Douglas M. Kendrick, Price Control and Its Practice in Hong Kong, 188. 13  Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics, and Panics, 81–84, 89, 97–99. 14  See Catherine R. Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre, 85–87; Economic Secretary Minute to Financial Secretary, May 17, 1952 (79); J. J. Cowperthwaite Letter to W. F. Searle (Chief Statistician, Colonial Office), June 8, 1955 (80); Searle Letter to Cowperthwaite, June 28, 1955, Trade: Balance of Payment Statistics, “Policy regarding preparation of . . . ,” HKRS 163-9-88. 15  Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics, and Panics, 81–84, 89, 97–99. 12 

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Hong Kong won the right to fix its own exchange rates.16 In 1971, the UK Treasury acknowledged that the Hong Kong dollar enjoyed “autonomy” and “independence”—a remarkable concession to a colonial territory.17 1918–1937: A Chinese Dependency Between the two World Wars, Hong Kong developed an impressive capacity to adapt to radical changes on the Mainland, both financial and political. In this period, a deteriorating political environment inflicted heavy damage on China’s banking system. The ruling KMT, in its desperate efforts to finance military operations against warlords and the CCP’s forces, turned to extorting funds from Mainland commercial banks.18 Hong Kong’s separate, colonial status sheltered it from these chaotic developments. The performance of the colony’s banks in financing trade and industry was virtually unaffected even during the early 1930s when its own economy suffered a severe recession.19 In this period, Hong Kong also proved both realistic and robust politically. On the Mainland, mounting resentment of imperialism made it impossible for the United Kingdom to maintain its privileged position and the exemptions from Chinese laws and taxes that, previously, British citizens and businesses had enjoyed in “treaty port” cities.20 Both government officials and business leaders in British Hong Kong took a thoroughly realistic view of relations with China: Hong Kong was totally reliant on the Mainland. A colonial government report on the economy defined this dependence in the frankest terms in 1935: “Hong Kong . . . is not an economic entity even in the most restricted sense of the word. . . . As a community and as a trade centre it is a portion of China from which it is separated by political barriers. It shares in the strength or weakness of its neighbour’s conditions and institutions.”21 Hong Kong’s attitude to the United Kingdom was strikingly cynical. The same official report warned that London could not be relied on to protect the colony’s interests in international trade forums. Hong Kong, it declared, had to achieve commercial autonomy.22 This mistrust of British goodwill was justified. Within the Colonial 16 

Ronen Palan, “Trying to Have Your Cake and Eating It.” Alastair Mackay, British Treasury, to Financial Secretary, July 22, 1971, HKRS 163-9-217. 18  See Parks M. Coble Jr., “The Kuomintang Regime and the Shanghai Capitalists,” 6–15, 17–18; Leonard T. K. Wu, “China’s Paradox,” Far Eastern Survey, March 27, 1935; Cheng Linsun, Banking in Modern China, 94–95, 99­–101. 19  Report of the Commission, 103. 20  Study Group of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Political and Strategic Interests of the United Kingdom, 208–211, 218, 222. 21  Report of the Commission, 71. 22  Report of the Commission, 83, 85–86. 17 

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Office in London, it became taken for granted that “United Kingdom trade interests should rank first” in any conflict with a colony, “whether in the field of industry or tariffs.”23 Hong Kong’s reaction was to struggle for recognition as a separate trade and tariff administration. It won this status despite British concerns about “unfair competition” from the colony.24 A no less important feature of the colony’s financial autonomy was, as already mentioned, the independent management of its currency. The United Kingdom recognized that because of the colony’s dependence on the Mainland economy, the Hong Kong dollar ought to follow the China National Currency.25 Only after the KMT failed to prevent the collapse of the currency in 1935 did Hong Kong reluctantly link itself to sterling, retaining, nevertheless, the right to relink to the Mainland if the national currency recovered its stability.26 The importance of Hong Kong’s autonomy was well understood by its bankers. The previous section has explained how the colony’s banks were not under London’s control. Their freedom was put to the test early in the 1920s. In 1922, the United Kingdom was still struggling with economic reconstruction in the aftermath of World War I (1914–1918). To hold down the costs of new investment capital for British companies, the Bank of England banned foreign borrowers from raising funds in the London market. HSBC ignored this directive and arranged a loan in London for Thailand. This act of defiance brought the Bank of England embargo to an abrupt end.27 The disregard for UK priorities persisted. In 1982, HSBC’s plans to take over a Scottish bank were rejected by the British authorities after the Bank of England warned that HSBC would always put the colony first, above the United Kingdom.28 1937–1949: A World at War As the Mainland’s banking woes intensified with the outbreak of open Japanese hostilities in 1937, the colony became the last stable financial and

23 

David Meredith, “The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy,” 498. David Meredith, “The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy,” 485, 498– 499; Lennox A. Mills, British Rule in Eastern Asia, 456–458. 25  China had been on a silver standard until the mid-1930s, while the British Empire as a whole was on the gold standard. See Tim Wright, “Coping with the World Depression,” 651–652. 26  On Hong Kong’s currency arrangements, see Tony Latter, “Hong Kong’s Exchange Rate Regimes in the Twentieth Century.” 27  John Atkin, “Official Regulation of British Overseas Investment,” 329–330. 28  Monopolies and Mergers Commission, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 88, 90. 24 

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business center in southern China. Its economy had boomed until December 1941, when Japan’s assault on Hong Kong began.29 During the brutal Japanese occupation that lasted until 1945, Hong Kong became, it was said, “the most looted city in the world.”30 Almost 75 percent of the prewar population of two million was forcibly expelled. The financial sector, however, survived in good shape.31 A high priority for the Japanese was to outlaw black market and “underground” currency activities, but the occupying forces were unable to suppress the flow of banking transactions between Hong Kong and the Mainland despite “employing unlimited powers of punishment.”32 After Japan’s surrender in August 1945, it seems that Chinese banks in Hong Kong resumed normal business faster than any other sectors of the economy, and they were swamped by a flood of China National Currency remittances from the Mainland.33 Japan’s defeat did nothing to halt the disastrous disruption of the Mainland’s banking system. In response, the KMT introduced at the end of 1946 sweeping foreign exchange controls on all financial transactions with the rest of the world. Shanghai could no longer transact overseas business.34 Devaluation of the China National Currency accelerated, accompanied by unparalleled inflation, which made it impossible for the Mainland’s commercial banks to remain solvent. Mainland bankers and their funds sought refuge in Hong Kong.35 The KMT blamed the colony for the collapse of the currency, the hyperinflation, and the extensive black markets that plagued the Mainland. The KMT threatened to bring Hong Kong’s economy to a halt unless the colonial administration agreed to outlaw all currency and commercial transactions that did not comply with KMT laws and regulations.36 The colonial administration reluctantly agreed to impose controls on Hong Kong’s

29  William W. Lockwood Jr., “Hong Kong—Empire Bulwark or Hostage to Fortune,” Far Eastern Survey, February 2, 1938, 25–29; Annual Medical Report for the Year 1939, M. 7. 30  Andrew Whitfield, Hong Kong, Empire, 218. 31  See, for example, Elizabeth Sinn, Growing with Hong Kong, 70–72. 32  Commander in Chief, Hong Kong, Top Secret Telegram to Admiralty, September 15, 1945, HKRS 169-2-26. 33  Commander in Chief, Hong Kong, Letter to British Ambassador Chungking, October 6, 1945, HKRS 169-2-26; Commander in Chief, Hong Kong, Top Secret Telegram to Admiralty, September 15, 1945, HKRS 169-2-26. 34  John Ahlers, “Postwar Banking in Shanghai,” 392–393. 35  Acting Financial Secretary, Minute to Attorney General, January 28, 1948, HKRS 163-1440; Catherine R. Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre, 20, 25. 36  A full record of the negotiations can be found in “China Trade and Commerce Aide Memoire re Closer Cooperation between China and Hong Kong in Connection with Trade and Exchange Control,” HKRS 163-1-402/3.

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banks and its free currency market.37 Although KMT rule collapsed soon afterward, the legislation had remained on the statute book until 1964, even though it was enforced very minimally.38 1949–1978: Surviving the Cold War Unlike the KMT, the CCP was well placed to grasp Hong Kong’s value as an international financial center and how it could help to circumvent Cold War embargoes and economic sanctions.39 Hong Kong had already been a familiar territory for even the highest echelon of CCP leaders, such as Premier Zhou Enlai 周恩來. The foundations for Hong Kong’s future relationship with the party had been laid during the 1930s, when the CCP was struggling for survival against the KMT and battling with Japanese military forces. The CCP developed a clandestine (and unlawful) structure in Hong Kong to organize financial and commercial support for political and military activities on the Mainland. After the defeat of Japan, a number of leading CCP members moved to Hong Kong, which acted as a CCP “base area” in the final struggles against the KMT.40 Thus, when the CCP came to power in 1949, it had already built up a substantial presence in the colony. The party controlled a complex network of state-owned organizations including banks, transport, and warehouse facilities as well as wholesale and retail distributors. These stateowned enterprises benefitted from the colony’s political neutrality: they were subject to no interference from the colonial administration as long as they complied with Hong Kong laws and regulations.41 The CCP established a command economy on the Mainland where private enterprise was replaced by state and collective ownership. Hong Kong’s colonial and capitalist businesses were expelled. Management of the economy and its financial system was transformed. Hyperinflation was halted. Black marketeers, smugglers, and currency speculators were suppressed.

37  (2) Aide Memoire from the Chinese side, October 27, 1947, HKRS 163-1-402; (165) Letter from Chinese side, August 15, 1947, transmitting the finalized “Memorandum of Agreement,” HKRS 163-1-402; Exchange of Notes. 38  For details of the failure to enforce this legislation, see Leo F. Goodstadt, “Dangerous Business Models,” 9. 39  On the development of the relationship, see Robert Black, Governor of Hong Kong, Dispatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Great Britain, March 16, 1964, CO 1030/1590. 40  Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing, 10–11, 190–200; Kevin Lane, Sovereignty and the Status Quo, 62; James T. H. Tang, “World War to Cold War,” 115–117. For an explanation of “base areas,” see Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 1, 169–170. 41  Y. C. Jao, “Hong Kong’s Role in Financing China’s Modernization.”

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But hostilities were about to resume. During the Korean War (1950– 1953), the United Nations and the United States imposed severe restrictions on the PRC’s international finance and trade. The CCP’s initial solution was to replace its traditional US and Western European partners with its new allies, the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe. Before 1949, trade with Soviet Bloc states had made up less than 1 percent of China’s total trade. By 1953, three-quarters of the Mainland’s foreign trade was with these countries.42 This new partnership was facilitated by financial and technical aid provided by the Soviet Union and by the Soviet Bloc’s readiness to engage in barter trade.43 Trade fell off later in the 1950s as ideological disputes flared up between Beijing and Moscow and economic relations deteriorated sharply. The People’s Daily (Renmin ribao 人民日報, the CCP’s mouthpiece) later claimed that “the perfidious Soviet revisionist renegade clique suddenly stopped its economic and technical assistance to [Mainland] China [at the end of that decade] and withdrew the Soviet experts, causing great losses to [Mainland] China’s economy.”44 By this time, the Mainland economy had suffered dire calamity. The 1958 Great Leap Forward had collapsed, and famine killed as many as forty million people in the three years of natural disasters that followed. For the PRC, there was an urgent need to switch from the Soviet Bloc to world trade and global financial markets. The Cold War made this move difficult. The United States enforced a comprehensive embargo against all transactions in which Mainland agencies or individuals participated, even indirectly. The UK’s pound sterling offered a potential solution. It still had the international status of a “reserve currency.” But from 1939, as explained earlier, the British Empire and its Sterling Area had imposed tight controls on foreign trade and foreign currency transactions. Hong Kong, however, already had sufficient autonomy to be able to sell pounds sterling to the Mainland free from restrictions. The colony had an ample supply of foreign currency because its domestic exports were increasing at an annual rate of well over 100 percent during the 1950s.45 Cooperation between Hong Kong and Mainland banks made it possible for Beijing to conduct international transactions through London and its financial markets, regardless of the US embargo and Sterling Area exchange controls.46 Hong Kong officials helped by ignoring or covering up 42 

Shao Wenguang, China, Britain and Businessmen, 65, 68. See China Committee for the Promotion of International Trade, New China’s Economic Achievements, 22–23, 163, 239–240, 242–243. 44  Tsai Cheng, “Victory for Chairman’s Great Principle,” 10. 45  Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics, and Panics, 68. 46  M. 13 AS(EM) to Financial Secretary, August 29, 1968, Exchange control monthly and 43 

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the breaches of UK exchange control legislation and regulations that were often involved.47 The role of Hong Kong as the Mainland’s international financial center commanded political support at the highest level. It was endorsed in 1957 by Premier Zhou Enlai, who ensured it remained a permanent feature of national policy toward Hong Kong despite bitter ideological opposition within the CCP.48 In 1963, Zhou instructed that Hong Kong be guaranteed ample food supplies at stable prices. This measure reduced inflationary pressures in the colony, on wages in particular, which helped to maintain the competitiveness of the labor-intensive textile and other manufactured exports on which the prosperity of Hong Kong depended.49 The CCP found that these arrangements suited its command economy. It controlled both Mainland export prices and the RMB’s exchange rate against the Hong Kong dollar. The state planners were in a position, therefore, to undercut potential competitors in the Hong Kong market and to achieve specific targets for earnings from Hong Kong. This they did with increasing success throughout the 1960s and 1970s.50 This strategy proved of special value between 1966 and 1973, when the annual “sterling offtake” from the British colony was enough to finance a third of the Mainland’s yearly import bills. These were the most chaotic years of the 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in the PRC. Normal diplomatic relations with most foreign governments broke down in 1967. Beijing withdrew all but one of its ambassadors, and armed clashes took place along the border with the Soviet Union.51 Hong Kong’s political neutrality proved its worth once more. Despite the sustained anticolonial demonstrations, strikes, and even bombs in Hong Kong in 1967, the annual “sterling offtake” from 1967 to 1973 remained firmly higher than the figure for 1965,

half-yearly statistics of foreign exchange transactions from January 1961, HKRS 163-1-2660. 47  For example, see M. 13 AS(EM) to Financial Secretary, August 29, 1968, Exchange control monthly and half-yearly statistics of foreign exchange transactions from January 1961, HKRS 163-1-2660; (34) Statistics Office (London) Secret Memo, September 20, 1956; Trade: Balance of Payment Statistics (Hong Kong)—Working papers and miscellaneous correspondence re preparation of . . . , HKRS 163-1-1230. 48  Lawrence C. Reardon, The Reluctant Dragon, 79–83, 147, 182. 49  Commission on Strategic Development, “Hong Kong’s Relationship with the Central Authorities/the Mainland,” Annex 2, “Supply of Fresh Water and Food,” 2014, 4. 50  Beijing’s learning curve for the management of the exchange-rate/export-price equation can be followed from the Far Eastern Economic Review coverage “Hongkong Notes and Reports,” August 21, 1958; “Value Judgment,” November 23, 1967; “What Price Sterling,” November 30, 1967; Leo F. Goodstadt, “Currencies: The HK$ Compromise,” July 15, 1972; “China: Stability, Conservatism and Ingenuity,” April 25, 1975. 51  Greg O’Leary, The Shaping of Chinese Foreign Policy, 231–232.

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the year before the Cultural Revolution started.52 This favorable outcome followed intervention by Premier Zhou in 1967 to ensure that food and other essential supplies continued to reach Hong Kong despite the chaotic state of Mainland transportation, thus protecting Mainland China’s much needed foreign exchange earnings from Hong Kong.53 The worst of the Cold War between Communist China and the United States came to an end in 1971 with the visit to Beijing of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, his meetings with Premier Zhou, and the ending of the US boycott of all business with the Mainland. Afterward, the CCP adjusted its financial strategy for Hong Kong to cope with the turmoil in foreign currency markets triggered by the collapse of the Sterling Area, the fading fortunes of the US dollar, and the end of fixed exchange rates.54 Hong Kong became the testing ground for initiatives to transform the RMB into an international currency. The first move had already been taken after the colony’s currency was devalued in 1967. The Mainland had used this event to switch from the Hong Kong dollar to the RMB in invoicing exports to the colony on the grounds that Hong Kong could no longer guarantee the stability of its own currency. The next step was to promote wider offshore use of the RMB with a range of overseas trading partners throughout the 1970s.55 In parallel, Mainland banks in Hong Kong successfully launched a variety of RMB financial products (mostly based on savings deposits).56 Ideology was also involved in these moves. Chairman Mao Zedong personally insisted on very conservative fiscal policies, and the CCP clung to “self-reliance” and balanced budgets in the 1970s.57 Deficit financing and foreign loans, on which foreign governments relied, were denounced as recipes for disaster, of which the United States and the Soviet Union were cited as prime examples.58 But the Mainland needed to raise foreign funds to finance an ambitious drive, which began in 1971, to import Western technology.59 The initial steps taken in Hong Kong toward globalizing 52 

For the annual statistics, see Leo F. Goodstadt, “Painful Transitions,” table v, 22. Commerce and Industry Department, Hong Kong, “Memorandum for the Trade and Industry Advisory Board,” 5, 7. A detailed analysis of Mainland China’s efforts to maintain supplies to Hong Kong was recorded in the original draft of this document. 54  Leo F. Goodstadt, “Banking in Asia: China: Mao’s Eyes and Ears,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 1, 1972. 55  Leo F. Goodstadt, “Banking in Asia.” 56  See Christopher Lewis, “China’s Banks: The Communist Capitalists,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 1, 1974. 57  On Mao’s conservatism, see Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 1, 144–145. On his fiscal attitudes in the prereform era, see Xinhua News Agency, September 23, 1974. 58  See, for example, the attacks on foreign loans in Xinhua News Agency, September 6 and 16, 1976. On US fiscal and financial failings, see David Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist. 59  Lawrence C. Reardon, The Reluctant Dragon, 160–165, 169–170, 185–202. 53 

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Mainland China’s currency during this decade helped to circumvent the serious objections to foreign borrowings within the CCP. 1978–2000: China Goes Global Once Deng Xiaoping had persuaded the CCP in 1978 to pursue economic liberalization, Hong Kong was identified both as the model for the PRC’s export industries and as the most accessible source of funding for its industrial takeoff.60 For the first time since the CCP came to power, Hong Kong entrepreneurs and investors would be able to own and operate enterprises on the Mainland, although initially on a joint venture basis with local governments. But mistrust of capitalism and colonialism was still rampant there. Even though state planning was drastically reduced after 1978, Hong Kong firms faced significant hostility.61 Hong Kong’s investors persisted, nevertheless. They adopted whatever stratagems were required, however informal or illegal, to win the cooperation of Mainland officials.62 While long-term returns on Mainland investments were not outstandingly attractive, by 1997 virtually the entire manufacturing sector of Hong Kong had been relocated to Guangdong Province.63 Between 1979 and 2001, Hong Kong invested US$79 billion in the province and created an industrial hinterland that employed more than five million workers.64 A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development applauded the part played by Hong Kong’s banks in this astonishing transfer of industrial capacity. Guangdong’s own banks had only limited experience of manufacturing for export or of foreign trade in general. Mainland banking reforms were inadequate, while foreign ­exchange

60  Article by Xi Zhingxun, Provincial First Party Secretary, Nanfang ribao, August 12, 1979; Article by Liu Nianzhi, All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce Vice-Chairman, Xinhua News Agency, November 30, 1979. 61  Ruan Ming, Deng Xiaoping, 29–37; Kalpana Misra, From Post-Maoism to Post-Marxism, 6–8; Yang Qinquan and Jiang Zhiyuan, “Guangzhou duiwai jingji hezuo,” 35–37. 62  Sung Yun-Wing, Explaining China’s Export Drive, 16–22, 26. 63  Li Feng and Li Jing, Foreign Investment in China, 56–61. A 1993 survey by the Federation of Hong Kong Industries found that while 11 percent of the respondents described their Mainland operations as “very profitable,” 33 percent described them as only “potentially profitable” or “not profitable.” See Federation of Hong Kong Industries, Investment in China, 26–27. 64  John Tsang Chun-wah, Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, November 8, 2003; Andrew Leung, London HKETO Director General, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, October 11, 2002.

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controls were extensive and oppressive.65 Thus, it was left to Hong Kong banks to process––offshore––the bulk of the financial transactions generated by Mainland export orders and by its imports of raw materials and machinery. Hong Kong banks also provided the working capital needed onshore by Guangdong’s new industrial base.66 2000–2015: Global vs Local With the end of the British colonial era came a serious test of Hong Kong’s strength as an international financial center and of the quality of its regulatory management. During the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998, overseas speculators launched an attack on both Hong Kong’s currency and its stock exchange. Would the CCP leave responsibility with Hong Kong for managing this crisis? The Basic Law has actually increased Hong Kong’s autonomy in managing currency and financial affairs compared with the British colonial era.67 At the working level, Mainland and Hong Kong officials established the Confidential Financial Arrangement in 1987, which provided a highly confidential forum for regular consultations on currency, banking, and related issues.68 Thus, the Hong Kong government was free to take charge of defeating the speculators. In August 1998, it launched a US$15 billion scheme to support the stock market, which was so successful that it had earned the government a net profit of US$11 billion by 1999. This market intervention was subsequently hailed by a distinguished economist as “almost unique” in “size, scope and intensity.”69 For the most part, however, Hong Kong’s humiliating defeat of the currency speculators was denounced as a dangerous violation of free market principles. The critics included US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the legendary Milton Friedman, and most academic and media commentators.70 65 

Randall S. Jones, Robert E. King, and Michael Klein, “Economic Integration between Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Coastal Provinces of China,” 126–127. 66  See Y. Y. Kueh and Raymond C. W. Ng, “The Interplay of the ‘China Factor,’” 408. 67  Joseph Yam Chi-kwong, Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, April 10, 1999. 68  Joseph Yam Chi-kwong, “Hong Kong’s Monetary Affairs—20 Years On.” 69  Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, Financial Secretary, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, September 23, 1999; Charles Goodhart and Lu Dai, Intervention to Save Hong Kong, 2, 4. 70  Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Testimony before the US House of Representatives; Edmund R. Thompson, “Dangers of Differential Comprehensions,” 707; Alkman Granitsas et al., “Politics and the Peg: Hong Kong Fends off Speculators at the Price of Credibility,” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 27, 1998; Louise Lucas, “Hong Kong: State Defence of Currency under Attack,” Financial Times, August 29, 1998.

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The CCP preferred a positive view of Hong Kong. A PRC leader declared in 2000 that Hong Kong had engineered and financed Mainland China’s dramatic emergence as a global economy: “Over half of [Mainland] China’s exports and imports have either gone through or come from Hong Kong [since 1978], and so it is with the capital influx. Without Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland could not have accessed the global markets and sent its commodities to every corner of the world as smoothly as it has for the past 20 years.”71 In addition to these traditional functions allocated to Hong Kong, the CCP was to make Hong Kong the leading player in implementing the PRC’s ambitious program to become a major force in the world’s financial affairs and to make the RMB a global currency.72 The results were impressive: • Between 2000 and 2015, the Mainland received some US$700 billion in FDI from Hong Kong, approximately half of the total inflow. • Mainland firms had been able to launch shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 1993, and these “initial public offerings” had raised US$190 billion by 2015.73 • As the RMB became more widely used in international trade, Hong Kong was handling 75 percent of total transactions worldwide in 2015.74 Nevertheless, a radical change had been advocated in Beijing for Hong Kong’s future development. Its international financial business should continue. But there were growing CCP pressures for it to participate in projects to promote new financial markets and institutions on the Mainland.75 Several programs were announced, the best known of which was the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA).76 In 2003, PRC leaders had approved this scheme in order “to phase out tariffs and non-tariff barriers” that restricted Hong Kong’s 71 

Li Ruihuan, Politburo member and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman, quoted in “Li Ruihuan on HK’s Role,” China Daily, November 7, 2000. 72  A good summary of Hong Kong’s foundational role is presented in Chen Xiaoli and Cheung Yin-Wong, “Renminbi Going Global.” 73  Leung Chun-ying, Chief Executive, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, January 19, 2015. 74  John Tsang Chun-wah, Financial Secretary, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, April 8, 2015. 75  Leung Chun-ying, Chief Executive, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, March 22, 2013. 76  “Hong Kong’s Traditional Advantages as Int’l Financial Center Unchanged: Premier Wen,” Xinhua News Agency, March 14, 2011; K. C. Chan, Hong Kong Hansard, March 18, 2015; Chou Mo and Celia Chen, “SAR, Qianhai Cheek by Jowl in RMB Boost,” China Daily, May 9, 2015.

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access to Mainland markets.77 Premier Wen Jiabao 溫家寶 warned that CEPA would be “neither a big gift nor a free lunch.”78 He was right. The results were to be unimpressive, and the original pledges turned out to be declarations of intent rather than action plans. • 2003: CEPA’s beneficiaries would include banking, securities, and insurance, it was officially announced.79 • 2009: Hong Kong’s banks were still being offered reassurance that they would be allowed to operate on the Mainland.80 • 2011: Vice-Premier Li Keqiang revealed that 2015 was C ­ EPA’s deadline for “a full liberalization of trade in services.”81 • 2013: Only five Hong Kong banks had been approved to open subbranches in Guangdong Province by this date.82 • 2014: Mainland officials explained that CEPA’s implementation would continue to be subject to some “bans and restrictions.”83 Putting this timeline in context, Hong Kong was not the only victim of official announcements of ambitious goals followed by frequent postponements. Some comfort could be taken from Shanghai’s experiences. In 2009, the State Council approved that city’s proposals for an “international trading board” to enable “foreign firms to sell RMB-denominated shares in China.” In 2012, the project was abandoned because Shanghai had failed to solve problems of “trading, law, accounting and regulations.” Undeterred, Shanghai battled on and was granted permission in 2013 to establish a Free Trade Zone, which would be “a testing ground for financial reform” starting with significant exemptions from foreign exchange controls. Although this project had first been proposed in 2003, work on the necessary legislation and administrative procedures was still at a preliminary stage in late 2013. The project was of special importance because it was intended to create a “stock link” to Hong Kong for Mainland investors. Years would still be needed, it was officially announced, to 77 

“Wen: CEPA Is Special Arrangement under ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Principle,” Renmin ribao, June 30, 2003. 78  Report, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, June 30, 2003. 79  “Economic Integration Advances through Pact: Analysis,” Renmin ribao, June 30, 2003. 80  Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, October 9, 2009. 81  “Li Announces Measures to Boost HK’s Growth,” China Daily, August 17, 2011. 82  Leung Chun-ying, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, July 17, 2013. 83  Zhuang Rui, Beijing University of International Business and Economics Deputy Dean, and Sun Tong, Ministry of Commerce Deputy Director-General, reported in Li Jiabao, “Agreement with HK Likely to Try out ‘Negative List,’” China Daily, January 24, 2014.

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create “efficient supervision and a sound legal environment.”84 Finally, in 2015, disillusionment set in, with an official confession that “one year after the Mainland allowed . . . citizens to directly trade Hong Kong shares for the first time, enthusiasm has turned to apathy.”85 Guangdong, too, was allowed to establish a “stock link” between the Shenzhen stock exchange and Hong Kong. This project also encountered difficulties in solving regulatory and related problems. As its launch approached in 2016, the official media were reporting continuing anxiety about “accountancy malpractices and corporate governance problems” in Shenzhen.86 These delays and setbacks are in sharp conflict with the repeated calls from government leaders in Beijing as well as Hong Kong to make integration with the Mainland economy an urgent priority in order to guarantee future growth and prosperity. In practice, attempts to set up Mainland operations have encountered serious obstacles ever since economic reforms began in 1978. Hong Kong investors and entrepreneurs have been blocked by Mainland officials, who fail to implement formal agreements on cooperation with Hong Kong, either deliberately or through inefficiency. Not even the showpiece CEPA program has escaped the sustained bureaucratic sabotage, one Hong Kong minister lamented.87 Although Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying 梁振英 (r. 2012–2017) had openly made similar complaints, the only remedy he was able to suggest was to lobby local governments on the Mainland for “clearer procedures” and “better co-operation.”88 In the meantime, Hong Kong’s role remains confined very largely to its international business activities, and here it excels, as this chapter has 84  Han Zheng, Shanghai Mayor, quoted in “Not Now for Int’l board: Shanghai Mayor,” Xinhua News Agency, March 6, 2012; “Securities Regulator Dismisses Near-Future Launch of Int’l Board,” Xinhua News Agency, November 11, 2012; “Chinese Domestic Banks Can Conduct Offshore Business,” Xinhua News Agency, September 28, 2013. On later progress, see Zhou Xiaoyan, “A New Growth Engine”; “Rules for Shanghai FTZ Expected Next Quarter: Report,” Xinhua News Agency, November 11, 2013; “China Adjusts Measures in Shanghai FTZ,” Xinhua News Agency, January 6, 2014; Wei Tian, “Panel to Push Financial Reform in FTZ,” China Daily, January 4, 2014; Ceajer Chan Ka-keung, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, April 28, 2015. 85  Bloomberg report, “Mainland Investors Go Missing from Stocks Link,” China Daily, November 18, 2015. 86  Luo Weiteng, “High Valuation ‘an Obstacle’ for Shenzhen-HK Stock Connect,” China Daily, May 5, 2016. 87  Rita Lau Ng Wai-lan, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Hong Kong Hansard, November 18, 2009. The Mainland obstructionism complained of in this paragraph refers to CEPA and its slow-paced implementation. 88  Leung Chun-ying, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, November 29, 2012.

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already made clear. The truth is that Hong Kong’s history has shown (as have earlier sections of this chapter) that its economy will always thrive in a competitive market, even when the political and social environment is very unpromising. Hong Kong would find it hard to flourish under state controls and state planning, as PRC leaders have recognized with their vigorous endorsement of its free and open market economy in the past.89 The unfavorable Mainland environment is not deliberate discrimination against Hong Kong. It is a nationwide result of the deeply entrenched protectionism adopted by the Mainland’s regional administrations to suppress competitive threats to their local businesses. As long ago as 1997, President Jiang Zemin 江澤民 ordered action to “remove obstacles to market development, break through regional blockades and sectoral monopolies.”90 This directive was largely ignored. President Xi Jinping 習近平 launched a new drive in 2013 to create a nationwide market that would be open and competitive.91 Progress toward that goal, however, has been slow.92 In theory, the obvious remedy would be for the national-level authorities to enforce the reforms on which market competition depends. The CCP’s leadership, it must be noted, believes that reforms have their limits, as President Xi made clear in 2014: “The decisive role of the market cannot replace or negate the role of the government.”93 Nevertheless, there is an important exception to President Xi’s dictum: the market must prevail in the case of Hong Kong. “The status of an international financial center [like Hong Kong] is established not by a government decision but through market competition,” Premier Wen Jiabao had warned. He listed the criteria that had enabled Hong Kong to flourish as an international financial center: “a long history of financial management, extensive channels of 89 

For example, President Hu Jintao 胡錦濤 stated that Hong Kong “has all along been considered as the most free and open economy and one of the most competitive and dynamic regions of the world. . . . Hong Kong has continued to make a unique contribution to the reform, opening-up and modernization drive in the mainland of China.” See Xinhua News Agency, July 1, 2012. 90  “Hold High the Great Banner of Deng Xiaoping Theory for an All-round Advancement of the Cause of Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ into the 21st Century,” Report delivered at the Fifteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, September 12, 1997. 91  “Xinhua Insight: Further Reforms Needed to Build Unified Market, Improve Efficiency,” Xinhua News Agency, October 27, 2013. 92  “Full Text of Chinese Premier’s Teleconference Address on Streamlining Administration Procedures, Cutting Red Tape,” Xinhua News Agency, May 22, 2015. 93  Nevertheless, the president promised not to micromanage the economy. President Xi’s remarks at a Chinese Communist Party Politburo “collective study” session were reported in “Xi Stresses Market-Gov’t Coordination,” Xinhua News Agency, May 27, 2014.

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financial operation, a full-fledged legal system and a rich pool of financial expertise.”94 No Mainland city matches these requirements or seems likely to do so in the near future if my assessment in this chapter is well founded. Furthermore, on the Mainland, it is state policies that prevail whenever the CCP chooses, overriding free market forces, as President Xi made clear. The results of this CCP policy have been costly, I have already noted, for Hong Kong’s investors and entrepreneurs on the Mainland, from the adverse measures imposed on the Guangdong industrial base to the bureaucratic obstacles obstructing CEPA’s implementation. In the case of Hong Kong’s financial services, the scope for cooperation with the Mainland economy––let alone integration––would be seriously constrained even if there were unconditional support from provincial and lower level administrations. The gap is too wide between the sophistication of the technical, legal, accounting, and professional infrastructure on which Hong Kong’s success is based and the primitive conditions that prevail on the Mainland. Premier Li has denounced the backwardness of its business environment. “According to the 2015 World Bank Doing Business Report,” he said, “China ranks 90th out of 189 economies” (in “overall ease of doing business”). The cause was a dictatorial bureaucracy “which undermines justice and equity of a society, dampens entrepreneurship and innovation and, worst of all, suppresses productivity.”95 This World Bank survey ranked Hong Kong the third out of the 189 economies. It is hard to resist the conclusion that the gains to Hong Kong from integration initiatives will continue to be very limited.96 Indeed, according to an International Monetary Fund report, greater financial integration with the Mainland could come at a serious cost to Hong Kong. Its economy, the IMF declared in 2005, “will be vulnerable to cyclical and structural shocks emanating from the Mainland.”97 The validity of this warning was demonstrated in 2015 when a crisis overtook the Mainland’s stock markets, highlighting once again the serious deficiencies in the nation’s financial infrastructure. A World Bank study, which had State Council participation, had earlier warned that “the Chinese financial system remains repressed, unbalanced, costly to 94 

Premier Wen Jiabao, quoted in “Premier: Chinese Economy Shows Signs of Positive Changes,” Xinhua News Agency, April 12, 2009. 95  “Full Text of Chinese Premier’s Teleconference Address on Streamlining Administration Procedures, Cutting Red Tape,” Xinhua News Agency, May 22, 2015. 96  Report on “Policy Recommendations for Further Liberalisation and Deepening of CEPA during the 12.5 Period.” 97  International Monetary Fund, “People’s Republic of China—Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”

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maintain and potentially unstable.”98 This verdict proved all too accurate, as Beijing made desperate efforts to halt investors’ mounting panic. The People’s Bank responded in classic central bank style, with ample injections of credit and mobilization of support from the rest of the banking system. But these conventional measures were not enough. To halt the dramatic fall in share prices, Beijing felt forced to return to a command economy role. State-owned enterprises and major corporations were prohibited from selling off their share portfolios; state pension managers were ordered to buy up shares; and the major listed companies were mobilized to follow suit.99 To add to the financial confusion, the RMB was devalued in 2015 just when the PRC was in the final stage of a bid for the RMB to qualify as one of the world’s leading currencies through gaining IMF classification as having Special Drawing Rights (SDR). Liberalization of exchange controls halted, although an effort was made to minimize the retreat from full convertibility of the RMB.100 The PRC managed to achieve SDR status, but the painful stock market drama continued into 2016 despite the sustained attempts of the PRC leadership to restore normality. An attempt to calm fresh outbreaks of investor panic with a stock market “circuit breaker” had actually intensified the stock markets’ instability.101 The lesson for Hong Kong was that it remained untouched by these failures of policy, regulation, and crisis management principally because its direct involvement in Mainland financial institutions was limited. The financial challenges that emerged in 2015 served as reminders to Mainland policy makers of Hong Kong’s unique and continuing contribution to financial reform and economic growth. In announcing that Guangdong Province would follow Shanghai in setting up a stock market link with Hong Kong in 2016, Premier Li drew attention to its special role, as he and his three predecessors had done in the past: “The roll-out of the Shenzhen-HK Stock Connect after the one between Shanghai and Hong Kong marks another concrete step for China’s capital market in becoming

98 

World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, People’s Republic of China, China 2030, 117. 99  “Central Bank Vows Rich Liquidity for Securities Firms,” Xinhua News Agency, July 8, 2015; “China Pension Fund Allowed to Invest in Stock Market,” Xinhua News Agency, August 23, 2015; “Listed Companies Unveil Plans to Stabilize Stocks,” Xinhua News Agency, July 10, 2015. 100  “Devaluation a Natural Step toward a More Global Yuan,” Xinhua News Agency, September 12, 2015; “FX Forwards Measure Is Not Capital Control,” China Daily, September 9, 2015. 101  “China Suspends Stock Market ‘Circuit Breaker,’” Xinhua News Agency, January 7, 2016.

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more law-based, market-oriented and global.”102 It was obviously Hong Kong that made such progress possible. Conclusion: Hong Kong Still Unrivaled This chapter has shown how the role of Hong Kong as the Chinese Mainland’s international financial center has evolved over several decades. Throughout Hong Kong’s history, its financial autonomy left it free to adjust official policies and its business culture to match the changing Mainland environment. The process began with an acceptance by the United Kingdom that Hong Kong’s survival depended on its economic ties with the Mainland. Colonial officials were allowed to do virtually whatever they deemed necessary to promote the relationship with the Mainland, regardless of the UK’s own interests. This colonial autonomy proved crucial for Hong Kong’s survival when first the KMT and then the CCP were in power. It went hand-in-hand, the analysis has shown, with a political neutrality that enabled Hong Kong to operate as the Mainland’s international financial center throughout the wars, revolutions, political chaos, and economic disasters of the last century. The chapter has highlighted how Hong Kong’s international financial center could not have achieved its current status without the personal intervention of CCP leaders since 1949 to promote the national interest by tolerating this colonial and capitalist entity, regardless of ideology.103 This approach made possible the increasing sophistication of Hong Kong’s informal partnership with the Mainland’s banking system during the Cold War. This chapter has also shown that the CCP’s understanding of how colonialism and capitalism could be co-opted into the Mainland’s service proved even more advantageous after the reform era was launched in 1978. The CCP leadership displayed considerable foresight in its recognition of the continuing contribution that could be achieved through using the Basic Law to expand Hong Kong’s already extensive currency and financial autonomy. This decision to build on colonial and capitalist foundations paid off handsomely. Hong Kong’s management of its currency, banking, and financial markets withstood both the Asian and global

102 

“Shenzhen, HK Prepare for Stock Connect Program,” Xinhua News Agency, August 16,

2016.

103 

Mao Zedong had endorsed such pragmatism. See Mao Zedong, “Any Ideology—Even the Very Best, Even Marxism-Leninism Itself—Is Ineffective Unless It Is Linked with Objective Realities, Meets Objectively Existing Needs,” in Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 4, 457.

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financial crises of this century without the strains and scandals suffered by most advanced economies.104 Is Hong Kong’s financial role—which, as argued earlier, has been the crucial element in its Mainland relationship—likely to survive? Will Hong Kong be able to maintain its competitive edge once the Mainland has abolished exchange controls, for example, and the RMB has become a global currency? In contemporary Hong Kong, there are repeated predictions that Mainland China’s financial market reforms would soon make it impossible for Hong Kong to compete with Shanghai and other Mainland cities.105 Indeed, in 2009, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen 曾蔭權 (r. 2005–2012) declared publicly that Hong Kong could no longer depend on such “established core industries” as financial services.106 In reality, Hong Kong’s role as an international financial center is in little danger while the Mainland’s financial sector remains backward and unreformed. A 2009 study by the IMF reported that “once Hong Kong banks are taken out, the correlation between efficiency and profitability is close to zero for Chinese banks.”107 In the meantime, to quote the 2013 World Bank report again, almost every aspect of the administrative and legal framework that a modern economy requires is either missing from or largely incomplete in the Mainland Chinese landscape. The examples cited range from the government’s own budgets, their coverage, and transparency to insolvency legislation. The World Bank was far from confident that financial modernization would be achieved by 2030.108 This means that Hong Kong’s “indispensable” role—to quote the PRC leadership—will continue. Furthermore, the CCP’s economic reforms are not intended to permit the rebirth of capitalism on the Mainland.109 Thus, until the Basic Law expires in 2047, Hong Kong, it seems, will remain the only city in the PRC where the free market reigns supreme. 104  Even in the case of the “Lehman mini-bond” misselling, Hong Kong investors were compensated with US$800 million, at the government’s insistence, from the sixteen retail banks involved. Some bank staff were prosecuted or otherwise penalized. See Douglas W. Arner et al., “The Global Financial Crisis.” 105  An excellent summary of dismal views on Hong Kong’s financial services is Norman T. L. Chan, Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive, “The Future of Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre.” 106  Article by Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, Press Release, Government Information Services, Hong Kong, November 14, 2009. 107  Tarhan Feyzioglu, “Does Good Financial Performance Mean Good Financial Intermediation,” 17. 108  World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, People’s Republic of China, China 2030, 102, 117, 122. 109  “[President] Xi Noted That to Let the Market Decide Does Not Mean to Let It Decide All,” quoted in “Xi Explains China’s Reform Plan,” Xinhua News Agency, November 15, 2013.

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There is a final implication to be drawn from Hong Kong’s status as the Mainland’s international financial center. According to Premier Wen (quoted earlier), its outstanding performance depends on a package that includes the rule of law, judicial independence, and a business environment free from government control. Were Hong Kong’s core values curtailed or the Basic Law diluted, the consequences for Mainland China’s economy would be painful: its international financial center would be crippled. That reality was recognized by Premier Zhou Enlai at the height of Maoist extremism. On this chapter’s analysis, the CCP’s concern for the national interest will ensure the continuing survival of the British colonial legacy for some decades to come, both in its political institutions and its financial arrangements. References Acting Financial Secretary, Minute to Attorney General, January 28, 1948. Banking 1: Banking Ordinance. HKRS 163-1-440. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Ahlers, John. “Postwar Banking in Shanghai.” Pacific Affairs 19 (December 1946): 384–393. Annual Medical Report for the Year 1939. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government. Arner, Douglas W., et al. “The Global Financial Crisis and the Future of Financial Regulation in Hong Kong.” AIIFL Working Paper 4 (February 2009): 33 et seq. Atkin, John. “Official Regulation of British Overseas Investment, 1914– 1931­.” Economic History Review 23, no. 2 (1970): 324–335. Black, Robert, Governor of Hong Kong, Dispatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Great Britain. Hong Kong: Review of Economic and Political Developments, Periodical Reports on Colonial Affairs— Hong Kong. March 16, 1964. Great Britain, Colonial Office and Commonwealth Office. Far Eastern Department and Successors: Registered Files, Series 1030, CO 1030/1590. London: The National Archives. Cai Beihua 蔡北華. “Zhongguo neidi yu Xianggang jingji guanxi de yanbian yu zhanwang 中國內地與香港經濟關係的演變與展望” [The evolution and prospect of economic relations between the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong]. Shehui kexue 社會科學 7 (1988): 11–13. Chan, Norman T. L., Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive. “The Future of Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre amidst the Liberalisation of Mainland China’s Financial Sector.” inSight [by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority]. August 4, 2014.

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Available at http://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/key-information/ insight/20140804.shtml. Chan Lau, Kit-ching. From Nothing to Nothing: The Chinese Communist Movement and Hong Kong, 1921–1936. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Chen Xiaoli, and Cheung Yin-Wong. “Renminbi Going Global.” HKIMR Working Paper No. 08/2011 (March 2011): 1–24. Cheng Linsun. Banking in Modern China: Entrepreneurs, Professional Managers, and the Development of Chinese Banks, 1897–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. China Committee for the Promotion of International Trade. New China’s Economic Achievements, 1949–1952. Beijing: China Committee for the Promotion of International Trade, 1952. China Daily. 2000, 2011, 2014–2016. “China Trade and Commerce Aide Memoire re Closer Cooperation between China and Hong Kong in Connection with Trade and Exchange Control.” HKRS 163-1-402/3. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Clauson, G. L. M. “The British Colonial Currency System.” Economic Journal 54, no. 213 (1944): 1–25. Coble, Parks M., Jr. “The Kuomintang Regime and the Shanghai Capitalists, 1927–29.” China Quarterly 77 (1977): 1–24. Commander in Chief, Hong Kong. Letter to British Ambassador Chungking. Currency and banking. October 6, 1945. HKRS 169-2-26. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———. Top secret telegram to Admiralty. Currency and banking. September 15, 1945. HKRS 169-2-26. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Commerce and Industry Department, Hong Kong. Memorandum for the Trade and Industry Advisory Board: Hong Kong’s Trade with China. November 11, 1967. T.I.A.B. Inf/58/67. Hong Kong. Commission on Strategic Development. “Hong Kong’s Relationship with the Central Authorities/the Mainland.” 2014. CSD/1/2014. Available at http://www.cpu.gov.hk/doc/en/commission_strategic_development/ csd_1_2014e.pdf. Exchange of Notes . . . for the Prevention of Smuggling between Hong Kong and Chinese Ports. Treaty Series 9. 1949. London: HMSO, Cmd 7615/1949. Far Eastern Economic Review. 1947, 1958, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1998. Far Eastern Survey. 1935, 1938. Federation of Hong Kong Industries. Investment in China: 1993 Survey of Members of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries. Hong Kong: Federation of Hong Kong Industries, 1993.

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Feyzioglu, Tarhan. “Does Good Financial Performance Mean Good Financial Intermediation in China?” IMF Working Paper WP/09/170 (2009). Available at https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2009/ wp09170.pdf. Financial Times. 1998. Goodhart, Charles, and Lu Dai. Intervention to Save Hong Kong: CounterSpeculation in Financial Markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Goodstadt, Leo F. “Dangerous Business Models: Bankers, Bureaucrats & Hong Kong’s Economic Transformation, 1948–86.” HKIMR Working Paper No. 8/2006 (June 2006): 1–26. ———. “Painful Transitions: The Impact of Economic Growth and Government Policies on Hong Kong’s ‘Chinese’ Banks, 1945–70.” HKIMR Working Paper No. 16/2006 (November 2006): 1–23. ———. Profits, Politics, and Panics: Hong Kong’s Banks and the Making of a Miracle Economy, 1935–1985. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007. Government Information Services, Hong Kong. Press Release. 1999, 2002–2003, 2009, 2012–2013, 2015. Greenspan, Alan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Testimony before the US House of Representatives, Committee on Banking and Financial Services. September 16, 1998. Available at http://commdocs. house.gov/committees/bank/hba51202.000/hba51202_2.HTM. HKTDC Research. “Economic and Trade Information on Hong Kong.” August 7, 2016. Available at http://hong-kong-economy​-research​.hktdc​ .com/business-news/article/Market-Environment/Economic-and​ -Trade-Information-on-Hong-Kong/etihk/en/1/1X000000/1X09OVUL​ .htm. “Hold High the Great Banner of Deng Xiaoping Theory for an Allround Advancement of the Cause of Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ into the 21st Century.” Report delivered at the Fifteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. September 12, 1997. Available at http://www.bjreview.com/document/ txt/​2011​-03/​25/​content​_ 363499​_7​.htm. Hong Kong Hansard. 1939, 2009, 2015. International Monetary Fund. “People’s Republic of China—Hong Kong Special Administrative Region: Selected Issues.” IMF Country Report No. 05/62 (February 2005): 1–50. Available at http://www.imf.org/ external/pubs/ft/scr/2005/cr0562.pdf. Jao, Y. C. “Hong Kong’s Role in Financing China’s Modernization.” In A. J. Youngson, ed., China and Hong Kong: The Economic Nexus, 12–76. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1983.

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Jones, Randall S., Robert E. King, and Michael Klein. “Economic Integration between Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Coastal Provinces of China.” OECD Economic Studies 20 (1993): 115–144. Available at http://www.oecd.org/countries/chinesetaipei/33948723.pdf. Kendrick, Douglas M. Price Control and Its Practice in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: K. Weiss, 1954. Kueh, Y. Y., and Raymond C. W. Ng. “The Interplay of the ‘China Factor’ and US Dollar Peg in the Hong Kong Economy.” China Quarterly 170 (June 2002): 387–412. Lane, Kevin. Sovereignty and the Status Quo: The Historical Roots of China’s Hong Kong Policy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990. Latter, Anthony. “The Currency Board Approach to Monetary Policy— from Africa to Argentina and Estonia, via Hong Kong.” In Proceedings of the Seminar on Monetary Management Organized by the Hongkong Monetary Authority on 18–19 October 1993, 26–43. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Monetary Authority, 1993. Latter, Tony. “Hong Kong’s Exchange Rate Regimes in the Twentieth Century: The Story of Three Regime Changes.” HKIMR Working Paper No. 17/2004 (September 2004): 1–40. Li Feng, and Li Jing. Foreign Investment in China. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1999. M. 13 AS(EM) to Financial Secretary. Banking statistics various. August 29, 1968. HKRS 163-1-3276. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. ———. Exchange control monthly and half-yearly statistics of foreign exchange transactions from January 1961. August 29, 1968. HKRS 1631-2660. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Mackay, Alastair, British Treasury, to Financial Secretary. (A) Meeting of senior commonwealth finance officials, 1970, Sterling Area balance of 18 China information 24(3) payments—developments and prospects to mid-1971; (B) Overseas Sterling Area countries statistics. July 22, 1971. HKRS 163-9-217. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Mao Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Comp. Committee for the Publication of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. 5 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967. Meredith, David. “The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy, 1919–39.” Economic History Review 28, no. 3 (1975): 484–499. Mills, Lennox A. British Rule in Eastern Asia: A Study of Contemporary Government and Economic Development in British Malaya and Hong Kong. London: Oxford University Press, 1942. Miners, Norman. Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, 1912–1941. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987.

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Tang, James T. H. “World War to Cold War: Hong Kong’s Future and Anglo-Chinese Interactions, 1941–55.” In Ming K. Chan, ed., Precarious Balance: Hong Kong between China and Britain, 1842­–1992, 107–129. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. Thompson, Edmund R. “Dangers of Differential Comprehensions of Hong Kong’s Competitive Advantages: Evidence from Firms and Public Servants.” China Quarterly 167 (September 2001): 706–723. Trade: Balance of Payment Statistics (Hong Kong)—Working papers and miscellaneous correspondence re preparation of . . . . HKRS 163-1-1230. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Trade: Balance of Payment Statistics. “Policy regarding preparation of. . . .” HKRS 163-9-88. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Tsai, Cheng. “Victory for Chairman’s Great Principle. . . .” In China’s Renminbi: One of the Few Most Stable Currencies in the World, 1–32. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1969. Whitfield, Andrew. Hong Kong, Empire and the Anglo-American Alliance at War, 1941–1945. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001. World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, People’s Republic of China. China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative Society. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013. Wright, Tim. “Coping with the World Depression: The Nationalist Government’s Relations with Chinese Industry and Commerce, 1932–1936.” Modern Asian Studies 25, no. 4 (1991): 649–674. Xinhua News Agency. 1974, 1976, 1979, 2009, 2011–2016. Yam, Joseph Chi-kwong. “Hong Kong’s Monetary Affairs—Twenty Years On.” Viewpoint. May 3, 2007. Available at http://www.hkma. gov.hk/eng/publications-and-research/reference-materials/ viewpoint/20070503.shtml. Yang Qinquan, and Jiang Zhiyuan. “Guangzhou duiwai jingji hezuo chengxiao ji ruogan celüe de sikao 廣州對外經濟合作成效及若干策略的 思考” [Analysis of the results and some strategies of Guangzhou’s foreign economic cooperation]. Guangzhou yanjiu 廣州研究 5 (1985): 35–37. Zhou Xiaoyan. “A New Growth Engine: Shanghai Gets the Go-Ahead to Set up a Pilot Free Trade Zone, But Challenges Remain.” Beijing Review 36 (September 5, 2013). Available at http://www.bjreview.com. cn/print/txt/2013-09/02/content_564787.htm.

Part III. Decolonization, Retrocession, and Recolonization: New Perspectives

SEVEN

At the Edge of Empire: The Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jewish Communities in British Hong Kong

FELICIA YAP

During the early twentieth century, the Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jewish communities occupied visible positions at the margins of Hong Kong society. Yet these communities have dwindled in number since the late 1940s; the Portuguese and Baghdadis have even been forgotten as distinctive groups today. These changes beget the questions: Did any significant events occur in the twentieth-century evolution of these three communities? Was there a pivotal moment in which the internal dynamics of these communities were transformed? The social trajectories of these three communities have been discussed in only a limited number of academic works, and even fewer studies have examined the impact of World War II (1939–1945) on these developmental arcs.1 In this chapter, I argue that World War II was a crucial turning point in the social evolution of the Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jewish communities in British Hong Kong. The turbulence and pressures of the Japanese occupation (1941–1945), in particular, created severe dislocations within these three communities. The conflict also sparked the eventual dispersal of the communities from British Hong Kong and the absorption of their remaining members into the territory’s broader society. These developments were hastened by disruptive political transformation on the neighboring Chinese Mainland and by the perceived economic impact of the decolonization process. Thus, although these three groups occupied a prominent and distinct fringe of British Hong Kong before World War II,

1 

See, for instance, Jason Wordie, “The Hong Kong Portuguese Community”; Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian.

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the conflict nevertheless triggered the gradual disintegration of the three communities. This chapter suggests, too, that a comparative study of the Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jewish communities provides insights into how Hong Kong society was shaped by the transient forces of opportunity that had characterized the British Empire. Since the 1840s, the economic possibilities provided by Hong Kong (and other opportunities offered by the British imperial endeavor) spurred physical growth. Equally, the abrupt dislocations caused by war and conflict (as well as postwar political turmoil in China) resulted in eventual decline. Hong Kong was a focal migratory port in the British Empire. Whereas minority groups arrived in the colony in large numbers during periods of peace and relative abundance, they also left in more diminished or more turbulent times. The Eurasians, Portuguese, and Baghdadis experienced roughly similar developmental arcs in British Hong Kong: a period of consistent growth from the late nineteenth century that peaked during the interwar period, followed by three main phases of numerical decline after World War II (post-1945, post-1949, and post-1967). The parallel trajectories of these communities thus epitomizes the opportunistic fluctuations that had characterized the British Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.2 Before the War The first section of this chapter will examine a number of key similarities and differences between the three communities. While these communities had occupied visible positions at the fringes of Hong Kong society, they nevertheless inhabited the ambivalent middle strata between Europeans and Asians.3 The Eurasians and Portuguese in Hong Kong were mostly mixed-blood descendants of unions between Europeans and Asians, with generations of intermarriage blurring the links of the Hong Kong Portuguese with Portugal. Many early Eurasians of Hong Kong were offspring of relationships between European merchants and local Chinese women. Their presence as a minority was felt from the 1850s onward, prompting Governor John Bowring (r. 1854–1859) to remark that the growing population of mixed-blood children was “beginning to ripen into a dangerous element out of the dunghill of neglect.”4 Many Hong Kong Portuguese 2 

Robert Bickers, “Shanghailanders and Others,” 300. As the Eurasian Catherine Joyce Symons phrased it, “I was not totally accepted at best by either culture, nor totally despised at worst. . . . Even now, the ‘no-man’s land’ of Eurasian isolationism is still a hazard for those born into two cultures as they try to blend the different threads together.” See Catherine Joyce Symons, Looking at the Stars, vi. 4  Quoted in G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, 94–95. 3 

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were descendants of intermarriages between Portuguese and Chinese converts to Catholicism.5 Their roots could usually be traced back to the neighboring Portuguese territory of Macau; many filhos de Macau (sons of Macau) began relocating to Hong Kong from the 1850s as the territory offered better employment opportunities and comparative sociopolitical stability. In Hong Kong, they formed a distinctive Roman Catholic community of their own—mostly based in the enclave of Kowloon, which came under British control in 1860—with unique social, cultural, and religious institutions.6 Most Baghdadis, for their part, had forebears who had migrated to Spain from Baghdad, and who were subsequently drawn by trade possibilities and other incentives to Asian port cities such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore after the 1840s. Whereas early Baghdadi settlers were usually of Sephardic background, the Jewish community later experienced an influx of Ashkenazi Jews after the Russian and Balkan pogroms of the 1880s, as well as a further wave of Jewish refugees from Central and Eastern Europe during the interwar period.7 Chiara Betta has documented how the economic contrasts between some wealthy Baghdadi merchants and new migrants from Europe became an occasional source of tension between the two communities.8 Before World War II, most members of the three communities tended to regard Hong Kong as their main long-term abode. Their experiences accordingly mirrored the lives of white settlers in the territory: they worked, married, multiplied, retired, and died in Hong Kong. Many acquired British nationality and held British passports. The Eurasians and the Portuguese often held similar occupations; while a few became successful merchants, the majority were employed in clerical positions. Some were hired as clerks, interpreters, shroffs, or bookkeepers in government institutions or in major European banks (such as the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation), trading companies, and other expatriate firms.9 They were often employed for these roles due to their multilingual abilities, chiefly their fluency in both European and Asian languages.10 The 5 

Jason Wordie, “The Hong Kong Portuguese Community,” 163. Leo d’Almada e Castro, “Some Notes on the Portuguese in Hong Kong”; Henry J. Lethbridge, “Caste, Class, and Race,” 179; Jason Wordie, “The Hong Kong Portuguese Community,” 165; Felicia Yap, “Portuguese Communities in East and Southeast Asia,” 206, 208. 7  Carl T. Smith, “The Early Jewish Community in Hong Kong,” 398–399, 407. 8  Chiara Betta, “From Orientals to Imagined Britons,” 1011. 9  Henry J. Lethbridge, “Caste, Class, and Race,” 176, 178. 10  Felicia Yap, “Portuguese Communities in East and Southeast Asia,” 207–209. Many Hong Kong Portuguese, for instance, were fluent in English, vernacular Cantonese, and a 6 

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Eurasians and Portuguese were also well represented in the colonial military services. Numerous Eurasian and Portuguese recruits populated the locally raised Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC) after World War I (1914–1918). The increasing numbers of enrollments even resulted in the formation of proper Eurasian and Portuguese units within the corps during the interwar period. In the 1930s, two new Portuguese companies were created (No. 5 Coy MMG and No. 6 Coy AALA [Port]), while the Fifth Battalion was an all-Eurasian unit.11 Although the vast majority of Eurasians, Portuguese, and Baghdadis in British Hong Kong held subordinate roles in British-led institutions, a few individuals became prominent in both political and commercial spheres. During the interwar period, Eurasian and Baghdadi influences were increasingly felt in areas of the Hong Kong economy previously dominated by Europeans, such as hotels, shipping, brokerage, trade, insurance, banking, and real estate. Some leading businessmen were invited to formal functions of the British expatriate community and even received knighthoods and accolades; a few held visible roles in colonial public affairs.12 Notable individuals include the Eurasian comprador Robert Ho Tung 何東 (who was once the richest man in Hong Kong due to his successful dealings in the sugar trade), as well as the Portuguese residents José Pedro Braga and Leonardo Horácio d’Almada e Castro Jr. (who were both appointed to the Hong Kong Legislative Council as unofficial members). Frederick David Sassoon (of the Baghdadi family dubbed the “Rothschilds of the East”) served on the Hong Kong Legislative Council, whereas Lawrence Kadoorie (whose family owned the Peninsula Hotel and were nicknamed the “Rockefellers of Asia”) was appointed to the House of Lords.13 Differences in class and economic status nevertheless resulted in social fissures within the three communities. Wealthier and poorer Eurasians or Baghdadis seldom mingled socially with each other; many also tended to marry within their own status groups.14 Studies suggest that some elite Baghdadis of Hong Kong may have feared that the behavior and type of Macau dialect (patois). See Jason Wordie, “The Hong Kong Portuguese Community,” 166. 11  Felicia Yap, “Portuguese Communities in East and Southeast Asia,” 207. 12  The broker Eleazar Silas Kadoorie amassed his fortune in commercial enterprises such as “merchant banking, real estate, hotels, utilities and rubber.” See Joan Roland, “Baghdadi Jews in India and China,” 148–149, 151. Other members of the Kadoorie family (Ellis, Horace, and Lawrence) also received knighthoods from the British. See Dennis A. Leventhal, “Environmental Interactions of the Jews,” 177; Barbara-Sue White, Turbans and Traders, 22, 26–27; Varda Priver, “The Jewish Community of Hong Kong.” 13  Joan Roland, “Baghdadi Jews in India and China,” 149. 14  Chiara Betta has observed a similar social polarization between the wealthier and poorer Jewish residents of Shanghai; see “Marginal Westerners in Shanghai,” 49.

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demeanor of poorer coreligionists (such as “barmen, coffee house keepers, proprietors and managers of second-class hotels” or females who resorted to prostitution) could adversely affect the community’s reputation.15 From the 1880s, the names of some vagrants were listed in local police reports in relation to “street brawls, assault and indecent language.” Thus, when plans were forwarded for the construction of a new synagogue along Hong Kong’s Kennedy Road in the early 1890s, some wealthier Baghdadis began voicing their opposition on the grounds that the proposed location was “inappropriate as it was in a wealthy neighbourhood and the shabby appearance of some of the poorest Jews would cast discredit on the community.”16 Skin color supplied another cleavage factor, with some lighter colored Eurasians (a more visible European phenotype) considering themselves superior to those of a darker skin color.17 Jean Ho Tung’s relationship with William Gittins, a middle-class Hong Kong Eurasian, was viewed askance by her parents, her father disparaging her beau as “too dark to be considered handsome.”18 A sense of superiority born of fairer skin complexion was also observed among a few Hong Kong Portuguese during the interwar period.19 As one Jewish observer remarked in 1925, the “subdued antipathy” that existed between the Baghdadis and Ashkenazis was “due as much to difference of colour as of provenance, with its complex corollary of mental factors.”20 The social identifications of these three communities were often varied, multistranded, and multilayered, with individuals gravitating toward (or even turning away from) European and Asian backgrounds. Some Eurasians in Hong Kong, for instance, favored more Anglicized identities, while others developed more Sinocentric ones.21 Robert Ho Tung preferred a Chinese identity (by wearing Chinese-styled garments and professing Chinese nationality), but his daughter Jean favored an Anglicized approach. “My leanings,” she wrote, “for some reason unknown to me, were always towards the British, and none of us [i.e., the Ho Tung children] looked altogether Chinese in appearance.”22 The Eurasian Joyce Symons observed similar conflicting tendencies in her parents: as she noted, 15 

Caroline Plüss, “Sephardic Jews in Hong Kong,” 67, 78. Carl T. Smith, “The Early Jewish Community in Hong Kong,” 400–401, 407. 17  Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 126–127. 18  Jean Gittins, Eastern Windows, 64. 19  Jason Wordie, “The Hong Kong Portuguese Community,” 311. 20  Israel Cohen, The Journal of a Jewish Traveller, 204–205; Marcia Reynders Ristaino, Port of Last Resort, 25. 21  Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 34, 112, 115. 22  Jean Gittins, Eastern Windows, 11. 16 

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her father began to “accentuate his Chinese heritage” as he grew older and “looked increasingly Chinese in his appearance,” while her mother felt “drawn to the West.”23 Some wealthy Baghdadi Jews in Hong Kong began to embrace Anglicized identities during the interwar period and lead increasingly Anglocentric lifestyles. As in Shanghai, Westernized outfits became the fashionable convention among the more elite members of the Baghdadi community. The interior furnishings of their residences and clubs often mimicked favored trends or norms within the white expatriate community.24 Lawrence Kadoorie recalled being dressed, at the age of six, as “little Lord Fauntleroy in a blue velvet suit with a three-cornered hat and made to sing ‘Au Clair de la Lune’ in French” on the opening day of the first Jewish Recreation Club in Hong Kong.25 The club itself was equipped with (as one observer described it in 1925) “something of the comfort characteristic of a social or political club in the West End of London.” It featured a “large and tastefully furnished room with a grand piano” and “a bar presided over by a white-jacketed Chinese mixer who could dispense you any cocktail that you chose.”26 Betta has described a similar Anglicization process in Shanghai whereby some of the Baghdadi elite began to depart from their Asiatic heritage and adopt increasingly Westernized lifestyles before the war, thereby creating an “imagined British identity” for themselves.27 On the contrary, poorer Baghdadis in Hong Kong often retained their Judaeo-Arabic cultural identities and favored the use of Arabic (over English) as their lingua franca.28 Some Eurasians and Portuguese, for their part, were inclined to remain aloof and apart from the Chinese majority in Hong Kong. As Horatio Ozorio observed, some of the Hong Kong Portuguese “had a misguided sense of superiority given that there were the Chinese whom they looked down on. The Macanese [a term often used by the Hong Kong Portuguese to describe themselves] had one thing going for them that lifted them out of the doldrums of life under the colonial British. They could afford live-in servants whom they paid pitifully little with no other work benefits.”29 A few even adopted an attitude of complete detachment from the Chinese, thereby mirroring attitudes displayed by the British.30 One observer in 23 

Catherine Joyce Symons, Looking at the Stars, 4–5. Chiara Betta, “From Orientals to Imagined Britons,” 1014–1015. 25  Lawrence Kadoorie, Review of Community Affairs, 4. 26  Israel Cohen, The Journal of a Jewish Traveller, 116. 27  Chiara Betta, “From Orientals to Imagined Britons,” 1013–1014. 28  Dennis A. Leventhal, “Environmental Interactions of the Jews,” 172. 29  Horatio Ozorio, “Why I Left Hong Kong.” 30  Chiara Betta, “Marginal Westerners in Shanghai,” 46. 24 

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the 1930s commented on the prevailing inclination of Eurasians to “look down upon the native side” of their ancestries. This proclivity, as he scathingly commented, had essentially turned these individuals into a “class of native-despising hybrids.”31 For Baghdadis, Eurasians, and the Portuguese, complete integration with the white expatriate community was often impossible due to colonial racial prejudices. They were often regarded as “Orientals” by the British (who also tended to equate racial mixture with the horrors of degeneration, impurity, and immorality).32 One Jewish observer thus bemoaned “the general attitude of racial superiority” that the British assumed toward their fellow citizens.33 Europeans who challenged prevailing social barriers by cohabiting with Asian or Eurasian women often did so at the risk of jeopardizing their own professional and social positions in the European fraternity.34 Mixed-race individuals were often denied membership of several exclusive social institutions in prewar Hong Kong, such as the Hong Kong Club, the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, and the Hong Kong Cricket Club.35 The Jewish legislative councilors Frederick David Sassoon and Emmanuel Raphael Belilios were denied admission to the Hong Kong Club.36 Thus, while immense wealth resulted in isolated instances of sociopolitical elevation in British Hong Kong, the vast majority of Eurasians, Portuguese, and Baghdadis were subject to discrimination in the realms of employment and salary scales. Opportunities for professional and educational advancement were often circumscribed by rigid, if not insurmountable, barriers erected by the British. Few Eurasians or Portuguese could ever aspire to top jobs within the Hong Kong civil service, the police force, or British-run institutions, even when they had appropriate (or better) professional qualifications. As Horatio Ozorio phrased it: As long as I was not too ambitious, as long as I could accept the system of government there, as long as I “knew my place,” and despite being disenfranchised, life was pleasant enough. But eventually it was not. In the makeup of the population I was ethnically sandwiched between the privileged minority Caucasians, who held the power, and the majority Chinese citizens, who were oppressed.  In-between these two groups were the non-Caucasian, non-Chinese segment of the colony’s population.  I 31 

Herbert Day Lamson, “The Eurasian in Shanghai,” 643. Chiara Betta, “Marginal Westerners,” 49. 33  Israel Cohen, The Journal of a Jewish Traveller, 204. 34  Felicia Yap, “Eurasians in British Asia,” 489. 35  Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 233; Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 3. 36  Carl T. Smith, “The Early Jewish Community,” 407; Joan Roland, “Baghdadi Jews in India and China,” 152. 32 

224

Felicia Yap was ethnically Portuguese, “classified” as a Macanese, someone whose ancestors were born in Macau, so I belonged in that segment. It had its pluses and it had its minuses.37

World War II and Japanese Occupation As war clouds gathered in South China, several leading Portuguese, Eurasian, and Baghdadi families in Hong Kong attempted to flee the colony before the anticipated Japanese invasion. In July 1940, the British authorities gave abrupt instructions for the evacuation of all European women and children from the territory, but the privilege was largely confined to those of “pure British descent.”38 Several Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi residents who held valid British passports (or who had belonged to Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps families) were convinced that they were eligible for the process.39 However, when the Eurasians Joyce and Marjorie Symons attempted to register for repatriation, their application was rejected by the British authorities.40 When lambasting the biased scheme in the Legislative Council, the Portuguese spokesman Leo d’Almada e Castro bemoaned the “consequent discrimination involved in the said order” and maintained that the Hong Kong government had “forfeited to a very great extent the respect and confidence” of the Portuguese community, while the Eurasian representative Lo Man-kam 羅文錦 similarly deplored the “disgraceful discrimination” inherent to the order.41 A few elite families who were determined to leave Hong Kong did eventually find sea passages out of the colony. To this end, some influential Portuguese residents created a Portuguese Evacuation Committee in August 1939 to enable the evacuation of the women and children who desired to leave.42 A few rich Eurasians such as Robert Ho Tung quickly departed for the neutral Macau and other neighboring territories just before the outbreak of war.43 Those who were able to leave Hong Kong before the Japanese invasion had largely belonged to the moneyed classes and were thus able to deploy their own financial resources to do so.44 As G. E. J. Gent of London’s Colonial Office remarked of the prewar evacuation

37 

Horatio Ozorio, “Why I Left Hong Kong.” Jean Gittins, Stanley, 8; Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 42–43. 39  Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 61. 40  Catherine Joyce Symons, Looking at the Stars, 23. 41  Quoted in Henry J. Lethbridge, “Hong Kong under Japanese Occupation,” 92–93. 42  G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 15. 43  Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 29. 44  Kent Fedorowich, “The Evacuation of Civilians from Hong Kong,” 128. 38 

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process, “there is practical discrimination—of an even more objectionable type—on the basis of personal wealth.”45 When the Japanese conquered Hong Kong on December 25, 1941, many Eurasian and Portuguese regiments were thrust into the combative frontlines between the British and Japanese forces. Numerous recruits were known to have fought with gallantry during the ferocious battle for Hong Kong, with several killed in active service. The No. 3 (Eurasian) Company was particularly hard hit during the attack. The Fifth Battalion, an all-­Eurasian unit, was said to have been decimated by the Japanese onslaught.46 Some wives of Eurasian soldiers became convinced (and were consequently outraged) that the British had deployed Eurasian units of the HKVDC as cannon fodder “in the front ranks to save the white soldiers.”47 Most Volunteers who survived the battle for Hong Kong were eventually incarcerated by the Japanese in prisoner-of-war camps in the territory, such as the ones at Sham Shui Po (Shamshuipo) and Argyle Street. During the occupation period, Japanese policies on the Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jewish communities were substantially different. The Portuguese in Hong Kong were largely exempt from internment as the Japanese had declared that they would recognize the neutrality of Portugal in the conflict. Increasing economic pressures nevertheless prompted several Portuguese residents of Hong Kong to flee to the neutral enclave of Macau during the early months of 1942.48 A number of Eurasians and Baghdadis were known to have voluntarily entered the Stanley Internment Camp out of the belief that they would be better protected in captivity. Robert Ho Tung’s daughter Jean Gittins entered Stanley Camp of her own accord. Her decision to subject herself to “a three-and-a-half-year term of voluntary internment,” she recalled, was out of “the uncertainty of my outlook” and an underpinning conviction that “my only safety lay in Stanley Camp.”49 As Israel Epstein’s anti-Japanese activities in occupied Hong Kong made freedom a risky proposition, he decided to seek refuge in an internment camp. He later stated: “I was safer as an enemy national interned with 3,000 other foreign nationals than I would have been ­walking around in Hong Kong.”50 Some Eurasian wives of interned Europeans voluntarily entered Stanley Camp to accompany their confined 45 

G. E. Gent, Minute, January 15, 1942, CO 273/669/6, 9; Kent Fedorowich, “The Evacuation of Civilians from Hong Kong,” 144. 46  Emily Hahn, Hong Kong Holiday, 167; Clifford Matthews, “Life Experiences,” 233; Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 68. 47  Emily Hahn, Hong Kong Holiday, 167. 48  Felicia Yap, “Portuguese Communities in East and Southeast Asia,” 213. 49  Jean Gittins, Stanley, 38, 40. 50  Quoted in Daniel Walfish, “The Long March,” 64–67.

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spouses.51 While most Jewish individuals with British passports were interned by the Japanese at Stanley in 1942, those who held passports of neutral countries were nevertheless exempt from incarceration.52 One Czech-­Jewish member of the community, Karel Weiss, was not imprisoned at Stanley as Czechs were regarded as neutrals.53 Many members of the Eurasian, Portuguese, and Baghdadi ­Jewish com­ munities experienced considerable physical suffering, economic hard­ship, and traumatic dislocation during the occupation period. Some lost most of their material possessions after the Japanese takeover; others had their properties destroyed (or their homes and businesses ransacked by looters). As Lawrence Kadoorie wrote, “with the coming of the second World War, the Kadoorie family had lost practically everything, their assets being in countries which had been overrun by the enemy both in Asia and Europe.”54 A Hong Kong Portuguese named Lopes recalled his straitened circumstances: “I having lost my home and business had nowhere to go. My only possession was a gold watch. My wife had her jewellery. ­After roaming the streets, I took my wife and two daughters along to our church. The priest allowed us and other destitute members of our community to sleep upon the floor of the church hall.”55 Many depended on the black market or subsistence farming to survive.56 Others resorted to trading jewelry and valuables for food and other necessities. When the valuable items ran out, the alternatives were often “service under the Japanese or starvation,” as one individual put it.57 John Braga wrote that “with our Portuguese name the Japanese did not intern us, though my wife and I were in such straights [sic] that on many occasions we wished they had.” He added that he and his wife were “so reduced in circumstances that I went out with the fiddle, a street musician to play for Jap soldiers, and when they did not give me money or food, at the risk of my life I often stole food from them.”58 After the War World War II was a catalyst in the eventual dispersal of Eurasians, Portuguese, and Baghdadi Jews from British Hong Kong, with three main postwar migratory phases out of Hong Kong: post-1945, post-1949, and 51 

John Stericker, “Captive Colony.” Lawrence Kadoorie, “The Kadoorie Memoir,” 91, 93. 53  “Did You Know?” 54  Lawrence Kadoorie, “The Kadoorie Memoir,” 96. 55  Quoted in John Luff, The Hidden Years, 170. 56  Felicia Yap, “Eurasians in British Asia,” 493. 57  G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 239. 58  John Braga to Viscount Samuel, June 19, 1943, HS 1/171, 5. 52 

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post-1967.59 In wartime, an educational report prepared by some British civilians held captive at Stanley Camp remarked with considerable prescience that prewar “census figures showed a progressive decline in the Eurasian and Portuguese population of the Colony, and it seems likely that the present war . . . will accelerate this.”60 Some wealthier Baghdadis who fled Hong Kong at the outbreak of war (and began new lives in the United States, Britain, Palestine, or Australia) never returned to the territory after the Japanese occupation. Although a few prewar evacuees trickled back into Hong Kong in the months after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, many soon opted to leave again. Some Baghdadis who had been incarcerated by the Japanese at Stanley Camp during the war, for instance, eventually chose to join their families who had evacuated from Hong Kong before the Japanese invasion.61 Many Eurasians and Portuguese also departed permanently from Hong Kong after the war and settled elsewhere, chiefly in countries such as Australia, the United States, Brazil, Canada, and New Zealand.62 The fluid social identities of these individuals may have eased their transition, adaptation, or realignment to new environments, thereby assisting their postwar mobility. Some of the former Eurasian and Portuguese prisoners-of-war who were granted a period of recuperation in Britain or Australia (after suffering traumatic captive experiences during the Japanese rule) never returned to Hong Kong.63 In 1946, only some 837 Eurasians were present in the territory.64 As the Eurasian Irene Cheng 鄭何艾齡 observed in her autobiography: Looking back I realise that the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong was a true turning point in the lives of my family and the whole Eurasian community. In some ways it no doubt brought us closer together, as we helped each other through the hardships caused by the war. However, it ultimately caused us to scatter and heralded the end of a gracious lifestyle that had its roots in the very social foundation of Hong Kong.65

Many individuals were persuaded, in particular, that their employment or educational prospects would be more favorable outside Hong Kong. 59 

Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 100–101. K. M. Anderson, “Suggestions for Re-Organisation.” 61  As in postwar Singapore, the Baghdadi emigration from Hong Kong may have been partly spurred on by the fact that the pool of prospective marriage partners was insufficiently large for younger members of the community after the war. See Frederick Isaacs, interview, transcript 378, 117. 62  Jason Wordie, “The Hong Kong Portuguese Community,” 172. 63  Cyril Neves, “The Portuguese in Hong Kong.” 64  A. W. Ruston, Minute, CO 537/1651. 65  Quoted in Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 235. 60 

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As Cyril Neves wrote, most Portuguese “left Hong Kong to give their children brighter horizons, to present them with education and work opportunities.”66 Jason Wordie suggests that several Portuguese e­ x-POWs were persuaded during their time in captivity (by fellow inmates from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere) that their postwar socioeconomic pros­ pects would be much brighter abroad; a few even received assistance to do so from their wartime contacts.67 Others were disillusioned by the seeming resurrection of various prewar professional barriers in British Hong Kong, including the perceived lack of career advancement opportunities. As Ozorio phrased it: Emigrating to the United States was the best thing I did for my family and for myself. . . . I was pulled out of school, after World War II, to help my father’s large family. Most of the Macanese ended up indentured as clerks, secretaries, and stenographers. I was one of them. Seventy-five percent of my salary went on rent alone, necessitating my wife getting a job and leaving our two children with a baby amah. My father’s generation and the generations before his, to put it bluntly, were obsequiously servile under their British masters and subserviently accepted that jobs at the higher management levels were reserved to the expatriates. Salaries were predicated on the ethnic group to which one belonged.  In that respect there were no agitators or militants among them for a better deal. They took what they got and “liked” it. Prospects for advancement were nil. They and their children could only see life in Hong Kong as getting basic schooling, getting a job, getting married, and getting children. A lot of getting but getting nowhere.68 

The disintegration of these communities was further impelled by postwar political disturbances and a deepening sense of uncertainty over the long-term future of Hong Kong, especially in the light of sociopolitical transformations in Hong Kong and beyond.69 Many individuals were inclined to leave Hong Kong after the 1949 establishment of a communist regime on the Chinese Mainland, as well as after the communist-­instigated troubles of 1967. Between May and December of 1967, communist-­ impelled challenges to British colonial authority in Hong Kong resulted in a paralysis of transportation systems, essential services, and commercial operations. As the communists provoked demonstrations, marches, and street disturbances, the British government began instituting the first

66 

Cyril Neves, “The Portuguese in Hong Kong.” Jason Wordie, “The Hong Kong Portuguese Community,” 173. 68  Horatio Ozorio, “Why I Left Hong Kong.” 69  Cyril Neves, “The Portuguese in Hong Kong.” 67 

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postwar curfews on Hong Kong Island.70 Ray Cordeiro observed that several Portuguese residents began emigrating from the territory in the wake of the 1967 Riots: “people just left Hong Kong, unhappy with their lives here and the future for their kids and all that.”71 Frank Correa, a fellow Hong Kong Portuguese, similarly felt that the disintegration of his community was spurred on by the 1967 troubles and uncertainties prevailing in the territory in the postwar period.72 The Eurasians of Hong Kong were also affected by the anti-British sentiments stirred up by the communist agitations in 1967. Some foreigners were assaulted on the streets at the height of the rioting; a few Eurasians also faced open displays of hostility as a result of their partially European appearances.73 Joyce Symons recalled “her nightmarish one-mile journey” through dense Chinese crowds in a vehicle, fearing that her semi-­European physicality could provoke their wrath.74 Like the Portuguese, some Eurasians suffered a crisis of confidence in the wake of perceived threats to Hong Kong’s continued political stability.75 Symons was aware of the resultant “subtle changes” within the Eurasian community, noting in her memoirs that “some very rich people started to buy property overseas and send their children away for tertiary and even secondary education. I consider that this was the beginning of emigration from Hong Kong.”76 The loss of confidence in the future of Hong Kong was also heightened by new economic concerns. Some Baghdadis were convinced that the communist takeover of the Mainland (which also resulted in the rapid erosion of the large Jewish community in Shanghai) could eventually threaten the viability and stability of regional trade—including their financial interests in Hong Kong.77 A few businesspeople also feared that the trade links between the East and the West (and their own commercial interests) would be adversely affected by the rapid relinquishment of European colonies across Asia. Turbulence within Hong Kong’s postwar economic landscape was indeed a cause for anxiety for many middle-income Eurasian, Baghdadi, and Portuguese families. “I suppose we were caught up in so many changes that I felt the city was no longer the quiet colonial town I had known,” remarked Joyce Symons of the early 1950s. “Economically it was 70  Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, 185–186; Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 324. 71  Ray Cordeiro, interview by Amelia Allsop. 72  Frank Correa, interview by Amelia Allsop. 73  Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 89–90. 74  Catherine Joyce Symons, Looking at the Stars, 62. 75  Vicky Lee, Being Eurasian, 92. 76  Catherine Joyce Symons, Looking at the Stars, 62. 77  Joan Bieder, The Jews of Singapore, 109.

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a struggle for those on fixed salaries as food prices increased dramatically, rents and key money reached giddy heights, servants demanded ‘Shanghai’ salaries and left when refused. Many families lost the old servants who had stayed throughout the Japanese occupation.”78 Like some Baghdadis in postwar Singapore, some Baghdadi individuals in Hong Kong also became convinced that their economic roles had been supplanted by the local Chinese after the conflict.79 In particular, those who felt unable to compete with the Chinese majority within the changed postwar climate often sought fresh or brand-new starts elsewhere.80 As Ozorio wrote: World War II seems to have cleansed the atrophy from the thinking of the Macanese by having knocked down what had been their bailiwick in the three-tiered society that was Hong Kong’s before the war. With the Chinese gaining ascendancy, the younger generation started looking overseas for a better life. Glowing reports filtered back from America by the courageous few who had taken the plunge and left the Far East for greater opportunity in America. So, feeling as I did about the colonials and the colonial system, I joined in the Macanese exodus from Hong Kong.81

A few individuals who decided to remain in postwar Hong Kong did go on to positions of considerable political and social influence in the territory. Lawrence Kadoorie, for instance, stayed in Hong Kong to restore his family business, “starting almost from scratch.”82 Over the following decades, his family remained actively engaged in diverse commercial activities in Hong Kong, ranging from interests in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. (i.e., the Peninsula Group) to the China Light and Power Company and the Peak Tram Company.83 After the war, the Portuguese barrister Leo d’Almada e Castro was appointed to Hong Kong’s Executive Council, while his wife Clothilde Belmira Barretto (Tilly) became one of the first female justices of the peace in Hong Kong.84 Joyce Symons also served as a justice of the peace; she was subsequently elected to the Urban Council, Legislative Council, and Executive Council in the late 1960s and 1970s.85 78 

Catherine Joyce Symons, Looking at the Stars, 45. Joan Bieder, The Jews of Singapore, 109. 80  Jacob Ballas, interview, transcript 163, 4, 14. 81  Horatio Ozorio, “Why I Left Hong Kong.” 82  Lawrence Kadoorie, “The Kadoorie Memoir,” 98. 83  Dennis A. Leventhal, “Environmental Interactions of the Jews,” 173. 84  Felicia Yap, “Portuguese Communities in East and Southeast Asia,” 219; Jason Wordie, “The Hong Kong Portuguese,” 172. 85  Catherine Joyce Symons, Looking at the Stars, vi. 79 

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Despite the postwar achievements of some individuals, the three communities continued to decline in number. Over the subsequent decades, most of the few remaining members were gradually woven into the larger fabric of Hong Kong society through intermarriages with the local Chinese (or with other migrant communities), causing a further dissolution of the once distinctive identities of the three communities.86 As one member of the Portuguese community phrased it, “inter-marriage in Hong Kong and abroad diffused the community feeling,” and many Hong Kong Portuguese now have “more blood of Guandong [Guangdong] than Lusitania in their veins.”87 This process was hastened by the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of the territory. One study has suggested that the Jewish community in Hong Kong has since evolved from a largely Baghdadi community to a “Jewish cultural collage that can be seen as a microcosm of world Jewry, being a predominantly American, British and Israeli ‘mix.’”88 Though not the focus of this study, more recent developments (such as Internet connectivity and a growing worldwide interest in family history and genealogy) may have nevertheless contributed to the restoration of some old community ties. Many individuals—often suffused by feelings of nostalgia for old Hong Kong—have begun reestablishing connections with one another through membership of various diaspora associations (such as the Casa de Macau Australia for the Portuguese).89 Conclusion This chapter argues that World War II was a critical turning point in the twentieth-century evolution of the Eurasian, Portuguese, and Jewish communities in British Hong Kong. The upheavals, traumas, and dislocations of the period resulted in the eventual disintegration of these three communities. Some individuals who fled just before the outbreak of the war (or during the early months of conflict) never returned. Uncertainty over future prospects was also a key factor in accelerating the postwar exodus from British Hong Kong. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, entire families continued to migrate to countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United States. These dispersals were hastened by various socioeconomic transformations in postwar Hong Kong, partly as a result of political transitions on the neighboring Chinese Mainland. Some individuals were 86  Cyril Neves, “The Portuguese in Hong Kong”; Dennis A. Leventhal, “Environmental Interactions of the Jews,” 176. 87  Cyril Neves, “The Portuguese in Hong Kong.” 88  Dennis A. Leventhal, “Environmental Interactions of the Jews,” 176–177. 89  Horatio Ozorio, “Why I Left Hong Kong.”

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persuaded that opportunities for personal and economic advancement were better abroad, especially in the light of continued political turbulence on the Mainland and communist-instigated disturbances in Hong Kong. For many, continued residence in the territory became an increasingly uncomfortable prospect—or even an untenable one—in the wake of these troubles. In particular, many members of the three communities began packing their bags during the localized communist challenges to British authority in 1967. Other individuals were disillusioned by the perceived resurrection of racial barriers that had previously circumscribed their professional advancement in Hong Kong. We may therefore conclude that social dynamics within the three communities were irretrievably altered when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941. Despite colonial roots going as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, the turbulence and disruptions of World War II left an indelible impression on the communities. The conflict and its aftermath, as this chapter has argued, contributed to three main phases (post1945, post-1949, and post-1967) of numerical decline. For the Eurasians, Portuguese, and Baghdadis of British Hong Kong, World War II was a pivotal moment in a process of terminal disintegration and of the erosion of these three communities as distinct and identifiable groups at the margins of society. References Anderson, K. M. “Suggestions for Re-Organisation: Primary and PrePrimary Education in Hong Kong.” MSS Ind.Ocn.s.110. Oxford: Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Rhodes House Oxford. Ballas, Jacob. Interview. Transcript 163. Singapore: Oral History Department, National Archives of Singapore. Betta, Chiara. “From Orientals to Imagined Britons: Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai.” Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (2003): 999–1023. ———. “Marginal Westerners in Shanghai: The Baghdadi Jewish Community, 1845–1931.” In Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot, eds., New Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842– 1953, 38–54. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Bickers, Robert. “Shanghailanders and Others: British Communities in China, 1843–1957.” In Robert Bickers, ed., Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas, 269–301. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Bieder, Joan. The Jews of Singapore. Singapore: Suntree Media, 2007.

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Braga, John, to Viscount Samuel. June 19, 1943. Great Britain, Records of Special Operations Executive, Series 1, HS 1/171. London: The National Archives. Cohen, Israel. The Journal of a Jewish Traveller. London: John Lane, the Bodley Head, 1925. Cordeiro, Ray. Interview by Amelia Allsop. September 4, 2008. Transcript 14. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Heritage Project Archive. Correa, Frank. Interview by Amelia Allsop. October 17, 2008. Transcript 30. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Heritage Project Archive. D’Almada e Castro, Leo. “Some Notes on the Portuguese in Hong Kong.” Boletim (Instituto Português de Hong Kong) 2 (September 1949): 265–276. “Did You Know? Mr Weiss Saves the Sefer Torahs during the Japanese Occupation.” Hong Kong Jewish Chronicle 10, no. 4 (1987): 10. Endacott, G. B. A History of Hong Kong. London: Oxford University Press, 1958. ——— and Alan Birch. Hong Kong Eclipse. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1978. Fedorowich, Kent. “The Evacuation of Civilians from Hong Kong and Malaya/Singapore, 1939–42.” In Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter, eds., Sixty Years On: The Fall of Singapore Revisited, 122–155. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2002. Gent, G. E. Minute. January 15, 1942. Great Britain, Colonial Office, Evacuation of Civil Population, Series 273, CO 273/669/6. London: The National Archives. Gittins, Jean. Eastern Windows, Western Skies. Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1969. ———. Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1982. Hahn, Emily. Hong Kong Holiday. New York: Doubleday, 1946. Isaacs, Frederick. Interview. Transcript 378. Singapore: Oral History Department, National Archives of Singapore. Kadoorie, Lawrence. “The Kadoorie Memoir.” In Dennis A. Leventhal, ed., Sino-Judaic Studies: Whence and Whither: An Essay and Bibliography, 82–99. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Jewish Chronicle, 1985. ———. Review of Community Affairs by the Chairman of the Incorporated Trustees of the Jewish Community of Hong Kong, 1985/6. Hong Kong: Incorporated Trustees of the Jewish Community of Hong Kong, 1986. Lamson, Herbert Day. “The Eurasian in Shanghai.” American Journal of Sociology 41, no. 5 (1936): 642–648. Lee, Vicky. Being Eurasian: Memories across Racial Divides. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004.

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Lethbridge, Henry J. “Caste, Class, and Race in Hong Kong before the Japanese Occupation.” In Hong Kong: Stability and Change: A Collection of Essays, 163–188. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1978. ———. “Hong Kong under Japanese Occupation: Changes in Social Structure.” In I. C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, eds., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition: Contributions to the Study of Hong Kong Society, 77–127. London: Routledge, 1969. Leventhal, Dennis A. “Environmental Interactions of the Jews of Hong Kong.” In Jonathan Goldstein, ed., The Jews of China, vol. 1, Historical and Comparative Perspectives, 171–186. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. Luff, John. The Hidden Years. Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1967. Matthews, Clifford. “Life Experiences: From Star Ferry to Stardust.” In Clifford Matthews and Oswald Cheung, eds., Dispersal and Renewal: Hong Kong University during the War Years, 227–246. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1998. Neves, Cyril. “The Portuguese in Hong Kong.” Voz dos Macaenses de Vancouver (Official Newsletter of the Casa de Macau [Vancouver]) 4, no. 4 (2002). Available at http://www.casademacau.org/ Newsletters/2002/1102news.htm. Ozorio, Horatio. “Why I Left Hong Kong for Good.” March 12, 2008. Available online at http://www.diasporamacaense.org/The%20 Way%20It%20Was.htm. Plüss, Caroline. “Sephardic Jews in Hong Kong: Constructing Communal Identities.” Sino Judaica: Occasional Papers of the Sino-Judaic Institute 4 (2003): 57–79. Priver, Varda. “The Jewish Community of Hong Kong.” HKRS 365/1/520, 2. Hong Kong: Public Records Office. Ristaino, Marcia Reynders. Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Roland, Joan. “Baghdadi Jews in India and China in the Nineteenth Century: A Comparison of Economic Roles.” In Jonathan Goldstein, ed., The Jews of China, vol. 1, Historical and Comparative Perspectives, 141–156. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. Ruston, A. W. Minute. November 18, 1946. Great Britain, Colonial Office: Colonial Office and Predecessors: Confidential General and Confidential Original Correspondence, Series 537, CO 537/1651. London: The National Archives. Smith, Carl T. “The Early Jewish Community in Hong Kong.” In A Sense of History: Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong, 398–413. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Educational Publishing, 1995.

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Snow, Philip. The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Stericker, John. “Captive Colony: The Story of Stanley Camp, Hong Kong.” MSS 940.547252 S8. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Library Special Collections. Symons, Catherine Joyce. Looking at the Stars: Memoirs of Catherine Joyce Symons. Hong Kong: Pegasus Books, 1996. Tsang, Steve. A Modern History of Hong Kong. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004. Walfish, Daniel. “The Long March.” Far Eastern Economic Review 164, no. 13 (2001): 64–67. White, Barbara-Sue. Turbans and Traders: Hong Kong’s Indian Communities. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994. Wordie, Jason. “The Hong Kong Portuguese Community and Its Connections with Hong Kong University, 1914–1941.” In Chan Lau Kit-ching and Peter Cunich, eds., An Impossible Dream: Hong Kong University from Foundation to Re-Establishment, 1910–1950, 163–173. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Yap, Felicia. “Portuguese Communities in East and Southeast Asia during the Japanese Occupation.” In Laura Jarnagin, ed., Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511–2011, vol. 1, The Making of the Luso-Asian World: Intricacies of Engagement, 205–228. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011. ———. “Eurasians in British Asia during the Second World War.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21, no. 4 (2011): 485–505.

EIGHT

Reunification Discourse and Chinese Nationalisms

LAW WING SANG

Introduction In 1997, when Hong Kong’s administration was transferred from Britain to Mainland China, Mainland China called it “reunification” or “return.” These terms mark a Sinocentric perspective of history, expressing that Hong Kong has always been an indivisible part of China and that Hong Kong to China was like a wandering prodigal child returning to the arms of his motherland. The widely used term “return” (huigui 回歸), in particular, conveys a sentimental notion of homecoming, deflecting the need to admit that Hong Kong was once a British colony, and thus the need for Hong Kong to engage in “decolonization,” meaning not only a change of political sovereignty but also a transformation of the society and culture that had sustained the colonial power relationship. However, for the sake of maintaining the effective control that the British had established, the communist government in Beijing had never cherished the idea of any genuine social reforms. In this regard, the clever word choice of “return” allowed Mainland China to indiscriminately accept the system handed down from the British administration and to maintain the status quo of the Hong Kong Chinese elites; it also facilitated the transfer of institutions from British rule that could enable governing Hong Kong without changing its basic structure of being a colonized territory. Eclipsed by the rather poetic wording of “return” was the fact that no post-1997 arrangement would allow Hong Kong to enjoy full political autonomy or let Hong Kong people participate in their government effectively. The Sino-British talks that took place in the 1980s on Hong This chapter is developed from an article published in Chinese. See Luo Yongsheng [Law Wing Sang], “Liu qishi niandai de huigui lunshu.”

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Kong’s political future intentionally excluded any representative of the Hong Kong people. The Basic Law, which serves as the constitutional document of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), contains many loopholes and ambiguities because its drafting was undertaken only by those who were selectively picked by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), most of whom were focused solely on preserving the interests of the wealthy and privileged.1 I have characterized this situation in my book Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese as the “indigenization of colonial power” and the whole historical change as a “passive reunification.”2 The political consequences of passive reunification are unfolding gradually after the 1997 Handover, resulting in a series of political crises. However, there is no easy way to get out of political crisis without touching upon the constitutional base of Hong Kong, that is, the Basic Law. Also, given the diversity and complexity of Hong Kong, there will never be a political solution without a thorough understanding of the culturalpsychological dynamic of the people concerned. This chapter offers a historical perspective in this regard. Here, I analyze selected historical texts to bring to light various debates and thoughts about Hong Kong’s reunification with China and the issues of the political and cultural identity of Hong Kong people between the 1960s and 1970s. By retrieving these often forgotten episodes of Hong Kong “intellectual history,” I highlight the complex cultural and discursive dynamics among intellectuals and college students, whose lingering influences have never been purely academic but are embedded in various ideologies that are still operative today. The Desire and Myth of Unification The cession of Hong Kong to Britain has long been seen as a deep humiliation among nationalists in modern China. The idea of “reunifying” Hong Kong and China can be found in the writings of nationalistic Chinese authors as early as the mid-1920s. In Song of the Seven Sons, the famous Chinese patriotic poet Wen Yiduo 聞一多 describes Hong Kong metaphorically as a poor child attacked by a sea lion and clamoring desperately for his mother’s rescue. However, although both the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were upholders of Chinese nationalism in their own ways, acquiring Hong Kong remained low in their 1 

Cindy Yik-yi Chu, Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists; Leo F. Goodstadt, “China and the Selection of Hong Kong’s Post-Colonial Political Elite”; Stephen Vines, Hong Kong: China’s New Colony; Ma Ngok, Political Development in Hong Kong. 2  Law Wing Sang, Collaborative Colonial Power.

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political priorities. Acquiescence to British rule in Hong Kong can actually be traced back to the early days when the Republican Revolution broke out in China. Sun Yat-sen 孫中山, when orchestrating uprisings against the Manchu government of the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), earnestly solicited help from the British government. Likewise, when the Nationalist government was established in 1912, the southern rivaling factions also used Hong Kong as a place to liaise with foreign powers.3 The outbreak of the May Fourth Movement in 1919, however, unleashed strong sentiment against the imperial powers in China. But it was not until the Guangzhou– Hong Kong Strike-Boycott (1925–1926) that anti-British imperialism materialized into industrial actions, jointly supported by the KMT and the CCP. From 1927 onward, the government of Republican China regained a number of concessions from foreign powers. Yet the British refused to relinquish their newly acquired New Territories adjacent to Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.4 When Japan invaded China in the 1930s, Chinese nationalists of all strands considered Japan as their main foe. Subsequently, the anti-British movement lost its foothold. Even the CCP strategized to make use of the openness of British-governed Hong Kong to target Japan and to conduct political campaigns against the nationalist government at the same time. When the Japanese occupation ended in 1945, the British returned to reign over Hong Kong. Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石, leader of the KMT, had no means to ask the British government to adjourn their colonial ruling, although the British government agreed to renounce many other rights in China that it had earned through a series of “unequal treaties” in the past century. The communist takeover of the Chinese Mainland in 1949 did not change Hong Kong’s status of being a territory under British rule because the CCP deemed that they would benefit more if the status quo of Hong Kong was maintained. As a result, when many former colonies declared independence after World War II (1939–1945), the British plans for political decolonization in Hong Kong were being shelved. The Korean War (1950–1953) proved that Hong Kong was indeed useful for the CCP in earning foreign exchange and information gathering (see Leo F. Goodstadt’s chapter in this volume). The CCP thus acquiesced in Hong Kong’s colonial state and actively participated in maintaining the territory’s stability. For this reason, longing for Hong Kong’s reunification with the “New China,” though prevalent among the pro-communist leftists in Hong Kong, remained a minority view. The authorities in Beijing 3  Harold Z. Schriffin, Sun Yat-Sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution; Martin C. Wilbur, Sun Yat-Sen. 4  The New Territories was leased to the United Kingdom from 1898 to 1997.

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had never allowed their call for Hong Kong’s “reunification” (or “return”) to go public except for a brief moment during the 1967 leftist riots that erupted in Hong Kong.5 Most of the leftists followed the directions given by the CCP and acknowledged that their priority was not to overthrow the British colonial government, but to prepare for the future and to make the best out of Hong Kong. In the meantime, patriotism had to be advocated, and ideological work to promote socialism had to be carried out, but not anti-colonialism, lest it shake the ground of Hong Kong. Under these circumstances, the returning of Hong Kong became a dream for the future only. Before 1949, the call for reunification with China was weak also because the British government did not really suppress the development of Chinese nationalism and Chinese identity in the colony. For example, most Chinese private schools in Hong Kong were registered with the Nanjing government of the Republic of China (ROC), which stipulated that all schools should take nurturing patriotism and developing education with the Three People’s Principles of Sun Yat-sen as their educational goals.6 Also, like many foreign concessions in the treaty ports along the China coast, Hong Kong had no rigid border with Mainland China. While Chinese people could move freely between the two places before 1949, it was only in 1949 that the Population Registration Ordinance was implemented with other visa requirements imposed—as measures to control the huge influx of Chinese immigrants from the Mainland.7 Thereafter, the British Hong Kong government also developed its education and public examination systems to lessen the influences exerted by the two China governments, located on each side of the Taiwan Strait. The Cultural Cold War and Desolation As Mao Zedong’s 毛澤東 communist system was further entrenched on the Mainland, distance between Hong Kong and Mainland China, in political as well as cultural-psychological terms, further widened. This tendency 5  The 1967 leftist riots in Hong Kong were inspired by the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) on the Mainland. They broke out first as a local labor dispute and quickly escalated to an allout war throughout the territory. See Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, May Days in Hong Kong. 6  See Wong Ting-hong, Hegemonies Compared, 88–127. 7  Although the colonial government had often conducted censuses in Hong Kong, population registration was not really formalized under British rule before 1949. Chinese officials and ordinary people’s free travel in and out of Hong Kong was indeed guaranteed in the Second Convention of Peking dated 1898, under which the New Territories was leased to the British. The first compulsory population registration system was installed by the Japanese occupation government in 1941–1945. See Zheng Hongtai and Wang Shaolun, Xianggang shenfenzheng toushi.

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was also augmented by the Cold War confrontation in which Hong Kong was caught. In the 1960s, a distinct Hong Kong cultural identity and citizenship gradually emerged.8 In the same decade, Britain started to retreat from its colonies in Southeast Asia and created waves of decolonization movements, which induced in Southeast Asia the diasporic Chinese feelings of uncertainty in face of the upsurging Sinophobic indigenous nationalisms all over the region. Chinese sojourners in Hong Kong, who constituted a big proportion of the post-WWII local population, shared worries of losing one’s Chinese identity. Within the Chinese diaspora in Hong Kong, there was no lack of knowledge producers and educators funded by the United States to continue their work in culture, education, and research, or to collaborate with pro-KMT units to watch and study the PRC’s dynamics as well as to provide intelligence. The US support for such activities was part of an effort to wage a “cultural Cold War” against the communists; hence, the leftists accused those intellectual figures involved of either manufacturing “dollarized culture” or participating in “banditry studies” (feiqing yanjiu 匪情研究).9 One exemplary scholar caught in such controversial work is the Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi 唐君毅. Like many other immigrants from the north, Tang moved to Hong Kong after 1949. Running New Asia College to promote Neo-Confucian teachings and writing and lecturing extensively, Tang was famous for his anti-communist stance and highly regarded in overseas Chinese circles.10 In an article published in 1961 about the perplexed cultural and political identity of the diasporic Chinese in Southeast Asia (including Hong Kong), he described these Chinese as charged with the duty to preserve the Chinese culture, which, like “dispersed flowers and drifting fruits,” had lost its natural soil. He criticized some overseas Chinese for being too eager to be naturalized in their resident countries and for giving up their own language, culture, and traditional practices.11 He advocated cultural conservatism and spoke against individuals who discarded their own history and cultural heritage in the 8 

Gordon Matthews, “Heunggongyahn.” Grace A. L. Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War; Tuong Vu and Wasana Wongsurawat, Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia. 10  Before the 1960s, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) was the only tertiary education institution in Hong Kong and was widely regarded as the preserve of the English-speaking elite. However, a number of private colleges like New Asia moved to Hong Kong from the Mainland after 1949 and constituted the higher education sector for students mainly using Chinese. Among scholars teaching in these colleges, Tang Junyi commanded perhaps the highest reputation, and his writings and speeches were always widely published and discussed in magazines for general readers. 11  Tang Junyi, Shuo Zhonghua minzu zhi huaguo piaoling, 3–29. 9 

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name of progress, the tides of time, or any other pretenses. Dialectically and passionately, he wrote that overseas Chinese communities would only disintegrate tragically: “The five thousand years of the Chinese nation is now a fallen tree with its flowers and fruits dispersed and drifted in the winds. It knows not what to guard and has no vision of what to hold on to. It knows not ways toward solidarity.”12 Tang belongs to a group of eminent Chinese scholars who vowed to revitalize Confucian teachings in the modern world; for this they are considered Neo-Confucians who insisted on their own cultural conservatism. They shared language with the West bloc’s Cold War against communism, they found armaments to attack communism, but in fact Neo-­ Confucianism was also critical of the “Free World” in the West. As Tang opined, “The major sin of the communist world today is its deviance from humans’ mainstream culture, and the sin of the Free World rests in its failing to guard its religious and cultural ethics, as well as its societies’ liberty and democracy.”13 He therefore tried to persuade those living in the Free World not just to talk about progress but also to consider how to conserve traditional practices and values. In his other articles, Tang also harshly criticized Chinese intellectual communities for surrendering the academic and cultural worth of their ethnic selves and developing a slavery mindset in relation to the Westernized world. Hong Kong was the prime battlefield of these competing interests, between dispelling communism and preserving a sense of Chineseness in light of increasing Western influence in the territory. In 1963, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) was inaugurated and incorporated Chung Chi, United, and New Asia colleges. Originally envisaged as supporting local Chinese-language education, it received a very warm welcome from the local Chinese from all walks of life. The passion and expectation it created were comparable to those felt by the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia when Nanyang University, an institution using Chinese as its language of instruction, was established in 1956.14 However, less than a decade after CUHK’s inauguration, the Hong Kong colonial government rescinded its initial support and decided to introduce a centralization policy that weakened the autonomy of its colleges and let government bureaucrats decide the university’s policy and development. For example, the government coerced the university to switch from a four-year system to a three-year system so that it would be on par with the British education system. This caused Tang Junyi, together with a group of New Asia College’s 12 

Tang Junyi, Shuo Zhonghua minzu zhi huaguo piaoling, 28. Tang Junyi, Shuo Zhonghua minzu zhi huaguo piaoling, 23. 14  Justus M. van der Kroef, “Nanyang University.” 13 

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founders, to resign from the board of directors in 1973. This confrontation reveals the tension and conflict between colonialism and Chinese nationalism within the anti-communist alliance during the cultural Cold War. These anti-communist Neo-Confucian scholars, though expressing discontent with Hong Kong’s British colonial existence, found themselves staying in the territory out of necessity. They showed very little concern for Hong Kong’s present or future and did not engage in local politics. Tang’s imagined dispersed flowers and fruits, while accurately depicting the psychological state and pessimism that prevailed within the scattered diasporic Chinese communities at the time, offered no solution for drawing from cultural conservatism’s practical principles. The displaced communities’ anxious search for a place where they could both reside and belong was denied by the reality, which inevitably served to distance Tang and his academic work from the drastically changing local conditions in Hong Kong. Tang, through his passion to revive Chinese cultural nationalism, inspired many students during his stay in Hong Kong. Yet, Tang was aware of his disconnectedness from the wider Hong Kong population. He wrote at the end of the aforementioned article that “Hong Kong, the British colony, is neither my land nor my people. My scholarly friends and I are gods and noble descendents with our souls left lingering on the Mainland, our bodies regretfully taking shelter here with no options. We have not even the time for self-pity, so dare we blame any?”15 Obviously, the cohort of southbound literati that Tang represented had never considered Hong Kong as a dialog partner. But the Chinese cultural nationalism ideal that they held, simultaneously criticizing the communist world and the “Free World” of the West, was drifting away from and losing relevance among the local communities in Hong Kong. The new generation of people born and raised in the territory since the 1960s were puzzled by the issue of conflicting identities, not so much a question of choosing between Western and traditional Chinese values as the burning issue of Hong Kong’s political future. What kind of society would Hong Kong be in future? Who is actually deciding the territory’s fate? Such puzzles often led to the ultimate question: Where should Hong Kong go from here? Pan Ku 盤古 Magazine and the Reunification Movement The major challenge to the right-wing cultural conservatism came from the rising new left toward the end of the 1960s, as well as from Communist China’s “United Front” strategy targeted at young scholars and students in Hong Kong.16 During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Mainland 15  16 

Tang Junyi, Shuo Zhonghua minzu zhi huaguo piaoling, 29. The United Front strategy was developed by the CCP during the Second Sino-Japanese

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China was projecting revolutionary and progressive images that inspired Maoists all over the world. They believed that the Cultural Revolution was a great social and political experiment—although the world then did not have a clear idea of what the Cultural Revolution really entailed, and what the consequences would be. In Hong Kong, the same curiosity and enthusiasm also turned quite a few students into Maoists.17 To them, Red China under Mao’s rule had a number of achievements of which they were proud: establishing a diplomatic relationship with the United States; becoming a member of the United Nations; testing a nuclear weapon; and launching a satellite. As a newcomer among the league of powerful countries, the PRC attracted international attention, which inflamed a huge burst of pride among the overseas Chinese.18 To understand the dramatic change of ideology at that time, the case of Pan Ku (Pangu) is revealing. A magazine published in Hong Kong, Pan Ku, which was followed by The 70’s magazine edited by Li Yi 李怡, provided a key platform for winning over the overseas Chinese in the ideological campaign.19 Pan Ku was the first magazine to bring up the reunification debate. Founded in 1967 by a group of nationalistic intellectuals in Hong Kong, it enjoyed broad circulation and influential power both in Hong Kong and among the overseas Chinese. This magazine was also the first one that displays a strong stance against communism. For example, during its inaugural year, which was incidentally also the year when the 1967 Riots erupted, Pan Ku condemned the leftists in its editorial. However, in less than five years, the magazine made a sharp turn to becoming a pro-­communist publication, spreading radical Maoist criticisms with the rhetorical style of the Cultural Revolution.20 War (1937–1945). Afterward, it became a strategy of incorporating societal elements as much as possible to isolate the enemy to be defeated. See Christine Loh, Underground Front; Lam Chi Yan, “Constructing Hegemony.” 17  Alvin Y. So, Hong Kong’s Embattled Democracy. 18  The impact of the enthusiasm for Maoist China in the 1970s on Hong Kong’s radical student movements can be seen in Lui Tai-lok and Stephen W. K. Chiu, “Social Movement and Public Discourse on Politics.” 19  Xiong Zhiqin and Lu Weiluan, Shuangcheng lu. 20  In 1967, Pan Ku published an editorial in issue no. 3 titled “Our Views toward the Kowloon Incident.” The editorial begins by condemning the riots as “causing huge damage to Hong Kong, disrupting its stability and prosperity.” It goes on to explain that “the incident first started as an industrial conflict but soon transformed into a political confrontation, involving intervention by foreign political power.”  The editorial also urges the Hong Kong government to take up the responsibility to maintain social stability and order by appropriate means. See  Pan Ku  3 (1967): i. The next issue’s editorial reads: “Hong Kong leftists are using all political dirty means, rumors, provocations, riots, bribes, threats, strikes, incidents…all these are the leftists’ initiated actions under the influence of the Cultural Revolution.” See Pan Ku 4 (1967): i. Yet, in 1972, the magazine changed its stance and published

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The tenth issue of Pan Ku published an article by Pao Cho-shek 包錯 石 (Bao Cuoshi; pen-name of Bao Yiming 包奕明).21 This article eloquently

defined “reunification” philosophically as a “human condition” through which an individual could conduct him- or herself and find the meanings of life. He wrote, “Human life is no more than a movement of reunification—with all the home-sickness, the will to offer, as well as the needs to have one’s place, everyone in the human world is in the movement of returning to where one should belong. All joys and sorrows are but foam and spray in the surging tides of reunification.”22 Apparently repeating Tang Junyi’s opinion, Pao reckoned that humans could not be separated from their histories, cultures, traditions, lifestyles, and so on; otherwise, they would lose their sense of ethnic-cultural belonging and fall into a state of loss and desolation. Unlike Tang, however, Pao did not stop at merely describing the sentiment of sadness. Instead, he turned the pathological state of losing the sense of belonging into a drive to discern where one should belong. Pao thus further framed “reunification” as seeking out a “community for active engagement.” He wrote in the Pan Ku article: “‘a community for active engagement’ is the place where we can link our past (traditions, histories, habits, and memories) to our future (ideals, directions, and potentials), the place where we can locate our positions and roles, providing us with opportunities for development in the present (taking into account of our current issues and predicaments as well as capabilities we possess).” The community that Pao believes “we should actively engage” is the “contemporary Chinese society,” namely, Red China.23 While flipping around the cultural nationalism advocated by Tang, Pao did not stick to Tang’s thinking of regarding an individual’s national identity as objective and constant, but incorporated the ideas of “active participation” and “rational discernment” in his theory about identity construction. Pao insisted that “we” should actively engage with a China (i.e., Mainland China) that had been “reevaluated,” but not the one that emerged from history, culture, and tradition, for the latter had long been buried and existed only in historical documents. He considered that this editorials like “Declaring War on Public Opinion by Hong Kong’s Devils and Demons” and “Beating up Cultural Underdogs in Water,” using extremely militant and bitter language, resembling that used by the Red Guards on the Mainland, to attack right-wing intellectuals. See Pan Ku 44 (1972): 1–5; Pan Ku 50 (1972): 1–4. 21  Bao Yiming is the son of a high-ranked KMT cadre. His radical thoughts caused him to be imprisoned in the 1950s when he studied at National Taiwan University. After his release, he went to the United States to study at Columbia University and then moved to Hong Kong in the late 1960s. See Jian Yiming, “Lengzhan shiqi.” 22  Bao Cuoshi, “Haiwai Zhongguoren de fenlie.” 23  Bao Cuoshi, “Haiwai Zhongguoren de fenlie.”

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process of “reevaluation” should measure “the daily potentials, land resources, and humanistic recognition of the Chinese still present in front of us.” He said that we should look for what has manifested in contemporary China—that is, the PRC—such as “the part that motivates people to learn about modern culture,” but we should not “yell empty and abstract slogans like science and liberty, nor appropriate empty and abstract systems such as democracy, and force them onto Chinese society.” He also said: We should take these values to heart, and regard them as the ideals for China’s modernization. Yet, our most urgent task right now is to know how to put our manpower and resources as well as all other potentials together into mobilizing. Only when a nation of people is mobilized would they then see their needs and their power; armed with self-respect and confidence, they could then enthusiastically belong to their society. . . . From this perspective, solidarity and mobilization should be the society’s modernization at this stage.24

When Pao Cho-shek raised “modernization” as the yardstick to reevaluate Mainland China, he was also taking from the US mainstream’s sociological modernization theories in the 1960s three instruments of social mobilization, namely, nationalism, industrialization, and national education. He also worked hard to prove that the overseas Chinese should reunify with the “modernized people” of Mainland China, for “under the ruling of the communist government, people on the Mainland have already achieved the greatest social mobilization in China’s history.” In his other articles, Pao brought up a state-centered sociological perspective.25 He considered a government to be the central organization in a modern society and also the prime mobilizer, while the state of a society’s mobilization determined whether the society could create and make progress. From here Pao distinguished two forms of society, one mobilizing and another disintegrating. The former leads “the people” to engage with the society and to generate a sense of belonging and identity; the latter loses recognition of its “people,” and subsequently results in individualization/atomization, disconnectedness, and moral apathy. From “Banditry” to Statehood The “reunification” perspective raised by Pao Cho-shek corresponds well with his critique of “banditry studies” in his other works.26 He ridiculed overseas intellectuals who worked for anti-communist cultural organiza24 

Bao Cuoshi, “Haiwai Zhongguoren de fenlie.” Bao Yiming, “Minzhu shehui dongyuan.” 26  Bao Cuoshi, “Yanjiu quan Zhongguo.” 25 

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tions and suggested that they switch to “statehood studies” (guoqing yanjiu 國情研究). He also challenged those who studied overseas in general, considering them the equivalent of warlords and compradors that were “located in between foreigners and the native Chinese, who look Chinese but have the heart of foreigners. Their physical bodies [are] in China, but their souls are elsewhere.”27 These people looked down on Mainland China using the gaze of the West, embraced a negative attitude toward changes in Mainland China, and worked for the West by calling the Chinese people working hard there “bandits.” Using language that is hard to tell whether serious or in jest, he wrote that overseas Chinese students should catch the academic trend in the West and use Mainland China as their subject of study, so as to be in tune with the world’s intellectual market demand, for experts in the West had already showed interest in understanding the “Sina Miracle.” With newly acquired data organizational skills and analytical methods, overseas Chinese intellectuals should find new Chinese materials for knowledge production. Taking the leftist stance, Pao criticized the right-wing overseas intellectuals’ apathy toward their own country and their becoming the vassals of backward banditry studies traffickers. His concerns echoed Tang’s earlier criticisms of overseas students for appropriating external scholarship and values, thereby losing their self-confidence and spirit to guard themselves, and becoming subservient. Apparently, Pao and Tang shared with each other their misgivings about the current subserviant attitude of the overseas Chinese intellectuals who had lost their bearing in their exiled life, and Pao outwitted Tang rhetorically by offering a ray of hope in embracing a “reunification movement” that, allegedly, would lead to a brighter future. In that regard, he shattered Tang’s pessismistic humanism and took on a “rationalist” approach in calling upon the diasporic intellectuals to return to Mainland China to learn about the on-the-ground situation there. He redefined what the nationalists had to identify with—replacing the image of “Old China” and her culture found only in history books with what he deemed to be the real and modern New China. Interestingly, his identity theory did not rely on cultural heritage, blood ties, or race, but on a conception of political organization based on pure “rational” and utilitarian calculation as well as modernization sociology he had learned during his brief stay in the United States in the early Sixties. Pao’s rhetoric is full of such raw ideas appropriated from social sciences that do not make his arguments more scientific. Nevertheless, making a genuinely scientific argument is not necessary for him because his powerful rhetoric only meant to

27 

Bao Cuoshi, “Yanjiu quan Zhongguo,” 28.

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undermine the moral authority of the old right-wing nationalist scholars to clear the way for a new faith in a strong state. In Modernization as Ideology, American scholar Michael E. Latham critically analyzes the collaborative relationship among modernization theories, US research organizations, and the Cold War.28 He finds that modernization theories were not purely academic, but corresponded to US national policies toward the Third World’s development programs and aid plans, which tightly controlled the economy and political arteries of the developing countries. Intriguingly, in Hong Kong during the 1970s, left-leaning intellectuals were actively citing modernization theories in public debates to shatter the US’s Cold War allies in the territory, ripping off the right-wing cultural nationalists’ discursive and moral authority. The United Front tactic allowed communist apologists like Pao to appropriate select portions of these modernization theories to suit their agendas of recruiting and converting the Hong Kong and overseas Chinese students to their course. As a result, the communist sympatheizers were leaving a major dialectic omission in Hong Kong’s history of thought: while reformist leaders like Zhou Enlai 周恩來 and Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平 were under heavy attack by their foes in the CCP in the 1960s for setting the “Four Modernizations” as the national slogan and goal, a new group of young people from Hong Kong grew increasingly empathic toward Communist China. That young people in Hong Kong assumed this stance was, paradoxically, catalyzed by discursive weapons borrowed from US modernization sociology, which served the Cold War need to flaunt Communist China’s “achievements.” During that time, the pathos of the rightwing nationalistic narratives in the Cold War period subsided. Perspectives on progress using the discourse of Western modernization somehow set the next wave of left-wing Chinese nationalism and dominated how the young people of Hong Kong should think, that is, with a leftist outlook. However, how this wave of nationalism took over was not without dispute, deviation, and division. Anti-Communism and Science After Pan Ku released the article by Pao, responses rolled in.29 These responses, however, did not have powerful arguments to challenge his sociological theory and his view centered on social mobilization because his new thought fit into the desire to break the gridlock, which had been 28 

Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology. There were quite a number of responses to Pao’s controversial article. For example, see Lao Siguang, “Guanyu liuxuesheng yu Zhongguo wenti”; Li Jinye, “Wei fa ‘huigui’ bing de ren yibing.” Pao’s reply can be found in Bao Cuoshi, “Zai lun Zhongguo zhishi fenzi.” 29 

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laid down by older intellectuals from the right. His theory met the desire for a new language to develop outside the anti-communist rhetoric. Later on Pan Ku even published an article collectively written by its editors to affirm Pao’s view that “social movements should be regarded as a science.”30 Obviously, this article used scientism to replace the stronghold of humanity/philosophy narratives of the older anti-communists. Pao’s thesis loosened the foundation of the conventional national identity (historical and cultural) found among the overseas Chinese on one hand, and on the other hand shifted its focus to the mobilization power of the governing state. He claimed that intellectuals should seize the day while the methods and tools they held still had an edge over others and should use those resources to serve the “civic majority” represented by Communist China. Thus, even though the majority of those responding to Pao’s article were anti-communists, Pao had already succeeded in turning the Chinese intellectual overseas from the right to the left through scientism and pragmatism. In Hong Kong, among the fast-growing number of “homelandist” (guocuipai 國粹派) pro–Communist China college students in the 1970s, science and engineering students took up a large proportion. These students did not have a strong anti-communist burden, nor were they bounded by the traditional humanitarian knowledge. They were embracing a pragmatic and utilitarian inclination enculturated by Hong Kong’s British colonial education, which preferred science to the arts. The thirteenth issue of Pan Ku (May 1968) published an article by Chan Yuen-ying 陳婉瑩 and three others that enthusiastically responded to the reunification movement.31 Chan and her coauthors were students at the University of Hong Kong. In the article they admitted that they did not have what Pao described as “collective memory of the past.” All things ancient on the Mainland were strange and distant to them. They were disconnected from what China was. Nevertheless, they expressed their willingness to take up the burden to rebuild a form of Chineseness that could maintain the spirit of the overseas Chinese and the new national confidence. They also deeply believed that sentiments of sadness, fear, and loneliness were disempowering and should be abandoned. These authors later became leaders in Hong Kong’s student movement. They spared no effort in trying to steer Hong Kong’s tertiary institutes to the left with “Know your Homeland” as the focus of the movement. Those born and raised in the colonial territory had little contact with China, be it at a

30  31 

Daokouting, “Jianping Bao Cuoshi zhubi.” Chen Wanying et al., “Diyi kuai shitou.”

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historical or cultural level, yet these enthusiastic and active student leaders strongly identified themselves with Red China. Hongkonger? Chinese? Of course, even though a pro–Red China trend was on the rise toward the end of the 1960s, there was no lack of young people holding a different view. In an article titled “I Am a Hongkonger” printed in the November 1969 edition of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union’s publication Undergrad (Xueyuan 學苑), the author Gengyun 耕耘 challenged the Neo-Confucian scholars’ narratives about cultural nationalism as loud and empty. In the article, the author narrated his own soul-searching journey. He said that he knew and understood the modern history of China and did learn a lot from the Neo-Confucian scholars. He once believed in Ch’ien Mu’s 錢穆 argument that the priority of the young overseas Chinese should be shouldering the yoke of the perishing Chinese culture. Yet when he entered university, he discovered that many expatriate Western lecturers, even with their short tenure in Hong Kong, spared nothing when criticizing what was unreasonable or unjust in the society. At the same time, there were overseas missionaries who wholeheartedly served Hong Kong’s underclass and earnestly fought for the basic rights of local workers. He reflected that being a Hongkonger, he had done too little for the place. He wrote: “I was born here and raised here. I am studying in the University of Hong Kong using the taxpayer’s money. If I only talk emptily about loving one’s country, but see not the inequalities and the unreasonable things in here, care not of the four million fellow citizens, then why do I talk about being patriotic?” He also penned, in Chinese: In fact, if we cannot face the problems that Hong Kong is now facing, whatever slogans about rebuilding China, reunification, bearing the cultural yoke, are all only self-deceiving sleep talk. A person that would not sacrifice for the Chinese residing in Hong Kong would not do the same for one’s compatriots in the motherland. If I myself could not work for the betterment of the people here, why should I talk emptily about serving the country in the days to come, using the unknowable future and vacuous ideals as anesthetics, and building castles in the air to escape the condemnation of our conscience?

He then wrote in English: “China is but an empty shadow. Hong Kong is concrete. . . . It is only recently that I realize I value a strong sense of justice much more than a strong national sentiment, that Hong Kong is much more authentic to me than China.”32 32 

Gengyun, “Wo shi ge Xianggangren.”

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The quotations are from a piece of writing purposely incorporating both Chinese and English. The author called this “Hong Kong–style writing,” that is, the Hong Kong language. The article’s release in the Undergrad attracted heavy criticism, with nationalistic critics attacking the author as someone determined to have Hong Kong become independent, an idea decried as being akin to a daydream.33 They considered that when Gengyun used terms like “Hongkonger” or “Hong Kong–style writing,” he was really drumming for the “Hongkonger movement” and was advocating a “let’s-forget-the-country” narrative with deceiving words. To these nationalistic critics, the return of Hong Kong to China in the future was inevitable. Whoever wanted to validate Mainland China’s distance with Hong Kong’s proximal experiences in order to affirm the term “Hong­konger” were considered confused deviants because they were saying that patriot­ ism was futile and were proposing the insidious idea that identifying with Hong Kong was better than identifying with China. Being Chinese was considered by these critics to be an identity given at birth, a self-evident identity that does not need proving and cannot be questioned. In rebutting the critics, Gengyun differentiated ethnicity, nationality, and identity as three separate concepts, and explained that while he did not refute his Chinese ethnicity, he was a British subject in nationality, and that identity was something belonging to the realm of emotionality. As far as identity was concerned, he could not consider himself a Chinese without first considering himself a Hongkonger. However, such explanations failed to placate the criticisms from the nationalists. One of the critics wrote: “Hong Kong’s postwar generation has only two ways to go: bravely affirm that they are the pillar of China’s future or cut ties with their Chinese ethnicity, then deny themselves as being Chinese. . . . However, when you walked outside the two roads and strayed into [the claim that] ‘I am a Hongkonger, not a Chinese,’ then the Chinese people could ruthlessly attack you.”34 Gengyun, when striving to use “Hongkonger” to identity himself, revealed the tensions revolving around Hong Kong’s identity crisis between the “local Hong Kong,” the “real China,” and the “China as imagined and remembered through history.” These multidimensional tensions were not something that the reunification movement mobilized by left-wing intellectuals could resolve. The tug-of-war between whether to “identify with China” or to carry out “social actions” within the student movement, and the confrontation between the “homelandist” and the local social activists

33  34 

Lin Xiafeng, “Gei ‘Wo shi ge Xianggangren’ kanbing.” Xiang Jing, “‘Wo shi ge Xianggangren’ yiwen shangque.”

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(shehuipai 社會派), were manifestations of those multidimensional tensions when ideologies were put into practice.35 Embracing a strong sense of righteousness and practicing it in specific local communities, Gengyun resisted empty patriotic slogans as he built his foundation for identity, alongside Pao Cho-shek’s sociological concepts that decorated his leftist state-sovereignty affirmation discourse. The two writers might have shared a similar sense of reality and practical principles, as well as their rejection of the essentialist inclination found in the grand narratives of history and culture used by the cultural nationalists. Nevertheless, comparing Gengyun’s ideas with Pao’s statist grand narrative, which places state power as the central organization and uses social mobilization as a yardstick, Gengyun’s identity theory and his reasons for coining the term “Hongkonger” indeed provide a departure from the leftist statism’s conceptualization of “being Chinese.” Gengyun’s own conceptualizations of Hongkonger’s identity are mildly put. Yet the concept, for its unorthodox and “politically incorrect” nature, was simultaneously attacked by the left and the right. In 1971, the “Defend the Diaoyu Islands Movement” (bao Diao yundong 保釣運動; hereafter abbreviated as the Diaoyu Movement) broke out. Many Hong Kong Chinese students came out in support of the movement, but supporting voices from college or university teachers were rare. Lau Meimei 劉美美, a student of New Asia College, cried in disappointment of the apathy shown by her teachers, who had inspired her all along with their nationalism.36 Her passionately written article, published in a number of student and youth newspapers, caused a stir.37 She claimed that the spirit of New Asia College was dead; the Confucian teaching was hypocritical. The leftist students surfed on the tide to fiercely attack Neo-Confucian scholars like Lao Sze-Kwang 勞思光.38 In face of the Diaoyu Movement, 35  There were two main factions among the college and university students during the 1970s. The homelandists were pro-PRC whereas the local social activists focus more on engaging in local social struggles. Outside the campuses, the leading radical youth groups were Trotskyists. 36  First initiated in the early 1970s, the Defend the Diaoyu Islands Movement made claims concerning Chinese sovereignty over the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands, which Japan has also claimed. Its main supporters were Chinese students of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and North American universities. It received support from almost all overseas Chinese circles in different parts of the world. The movement played a significant role in drawing out sentiment of Chinese nationalism among college students at a time when both places had strong political grievances against the KMT’s authoritarian rule in Taiwan and British colonial governance in Hong Kong. The second wave of the movement was seen in the 1990s, when young people in Mainland China joined to protest the Japanese government. 37  See Liu Meimei, “Gei Xinya shuyuan xiaozhang.” 38  For example, see Jian Fu, “Fangong wenzhang.”

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right-wing cultural nationalists became embarrassing and disreputable. Their image as a group of moral leaders was tarnished. As a result, the upsurge of radical thought and social activism on campus replaced the pessimism and passivity representative of the first two decades after the war. The Diaoyu Movement marked a turn of the tide. It eventually led to the “Knowing thy Motherland Movement,” which was headed by leftist “homelandists,” who strove to win over young college students. While sentiments of sadness and the empty shadow of the past were shrugged off, this new movement had fallen into sentimental vanity filled with romantic imaginations about the revolution on the Mainland. With the abrupt end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, which brought the ugly side of this historical episode to the surface, all efforts to know the “New China” were recognized as misinterpretations. The “homelandist” faction in the student movement was shattered, only to reaffirm the impression that “China” was a faraway and mysterious entity for people in Hong Kong. Reunification Discourse in the 1980s As the Cultural Revolution ended and Deng Xiaoping was restored to power in 1977, Hong Kong’s student movement in the 1970s also finished its course. Li Yi, a writer once responsible for the youth work of the United Front of Communist China, issued apologies for his views during the time.39 Yet, he did not give up his advocacy for overseas Chinese students to know and care about the Motherland. He asserted that these students should learn from the world-renowned Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng 魏京生 and carry on his dedication to realizing democracy in Mainland China. Wei advocated for a fifth element to be added to the Four Modernizations scheme launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978: democracy. Li Yi’s stance thus preserved his sense of nationalism by enriching it with a critical perspective encouraging the pursuit of democracy in Mainland China. His ideas shaped Chinese nationalism in Hong Kong, a nationalism that assumed a new stance and appearance. In the early 1980s, when communist ideology was encountering its confidence crisis, the re-empowered Deng Xiaoping wanted to mark his ascendance by making contributions to nationalism. He seized upon the opportunity of the coming expiry of the lease of the New Territories in 1997 to demonstrate his determination and leadership. He took a nonnegotiable stance over the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to the People’s Republic, promising that the territory’s economic system would 39 

Li Yi, Cong rentong dao chongxin renshi Zhongguo.

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remain capitalist after 1997 with a high degree of autonomy. The diplomatic talks between the two countries opened a new chapter in Hong Kong history. While the conservative opinion of the major population expressed their wish to maintain the status quo (i.e., the British to continue their colonial rule), the university students, still in the grip of certain left-wing anti-colonial sentiment, supported an idea called “reunion in democracy” (minzhu huigui 民主回歸)—which was built upon a wish to merge the quests for democracy and nationalism. Unfortunately, because the Sino-British negotiations on Hong Kong’s future lasted for only a very short time and Mainland China refused to allow anybody to represent Hong Kong, the proposal remained wishful thinking, espoused by some student activists and certain concerned groups, but adding nothing material to the negotiations. There were indeed a number of other proposals coming from the people who objected to the “reunification,” but none of them matured into influential collective actions. Such inaction is understandable because most of the Hong Kong people were then still trapped by their long-held political apathy and nothing had prepared them to face the sudden uncertain future. The PRC’s decision to “take back” Hong Kong evoked fear and ignited waves of mass emigration among the local people. Since Britain did not show any determination in fighting for Hong Kong’s autonomy during the Sino-British negotiations, nor did it actively indicate that it would make Hong Kong people permanent British subjects by granting them British citizenship, when the fate of the sovereignty transfer was confirmed, Hong Kong people were not enthusiastic in displaying loyalty to Britain.40 Some of those who had made no plans for emigrating believed that their only choice was to step up their efforts in striving for democratic reforms so that the promise of autonomy could be realized. As a result, the number of people siding with “democratic reunification” rose progressively in the late 1980s. However, the term reunification had become more of a prediction or description of some inescapable reality or fate waiting ahead, which was unlike the 1960s or 1970s, when it was a term about existential and philosophical choices. To the Hong Kong population at large, reunification positioned them in a much more passive role, greatly differing from the self-initiated reunification movement advocated by Pan Ku magazine. 40 

Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, “An Analysis of Sino-British Negotiations over Hong Kong’s Political Reform”; Ming K. Chan, Precarious Balance; Jamie Allen, Seeing Red; Ming K. Chan and David J. Clark, The Hong Kong Basic Law; Robert Cottrell, The End of Hong Kong; Mark Roberti, The Fall of Hong Kong.

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Conclusion As the wishful hopes of maintaining democratic home-rule under the “one country, two systems” formula enshrined in the Basic Law have now been dashed, a variety of localist movements seeking self-determination, or even independence, are now underway. In face of all these discontents and protests, as witnessed especially in the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and the Mong Kok riot in the Chinese New Year of 2016, the pro-Beijing forces still tried to attribute their failure to calm dissenting voices in Hong Kong to the incompletion of “cultural reunification.” According to this “lack of cultural reunification” (or the “unfinished reunification of people’s minds”) discourse, Hong Kong society’s refusal to conform to PRC rule will be addressed and solved by forceful instillation of national education in school curriculum or by incubating a deeper sense of national identity into Hong Kong citizens’ minds (also see Carrico’s chapter in this volume). They fancy that such efforts to strengthen the ideological fronts will eventually displace a dissentient culture of Hong Kong that has long been critical of the PRC government.41 This chapter offers a different perspective through which to examine such an approach. The historical review of “reunification” discourses, as they unfolded in 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong, illustrates how people of the territory deliberated on and struggled over their belongingness and identity well before “reunification” became inevitable after 1984, when the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong was signed. In contrast to the essentialist view in which Hong Kong’s Chinese cultural and ethnic ties are associated with China, the retrieval of the almost forgotten episodes of Hong Kong history explains how the cultural and political identity of Hong Kong was seriously debated and negotiated by people residing in Hong Kong. In the past, although the word “return” or “reunification” was conceived for its meaning couched in terms of ethnicity defined by one’s traditional or cultural attachment to China, a new set of parameters emerged, in the Sixties and Seventies, redefining the issues of Hongkongers’ identity as not so much a matter of cultural heritage as a search for space for political engagement as well as emotional and moral investment. It is with reference to these new concerns that Hong Kong started to be conceived and imagined as a distinct political community. As the cases examined here illustrate, the answers to the question of what constitutes this political community of engagement are diverse. A renegotiation of the meaning between being a Chinese and being a Hongkonger 41  “Cultural reunification” was a concept actively promoted from 2002 to 2007 by Ho Chiping 何志平, secretary for home affairs. The pro-PRC press has also championed the idea repeatedly.

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further unfolded in the decades to follow. Therefore, far from being a consensual ideal showing the path of “homecoming” for all Chinese in Hong Kong, “reunification” has always been a highly contested concept. In the future, the notion of “reunification” will likely remain the focus of controversies as conflicting values and emotions are tied together with it. With a retrospective understanding of how complex and dynamic Hong Kong citizens’ forms of identification have always been, the prospect of implanting a patriotic-conformist Chinese identity within Hong Kong people— through artificial cultural engineering—does not seem to be promising. References Allen, Jamie. Seeing Red: China’s Uncompromising Takeover of Hong Kong. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997. Bao Cuoshi 包錯石 [Pao Cho-shek]. “Haiwai Zhongguoren de fenlie, huigui yu fandu 海外中國人的分裂, 回歸與反獨” [The separation, reunification, and anti-independence among the overseas Chinese]. Pan Ku 盤古 10 (1968): 2–16. ———. “Yanjiu quan Zhongguo—Cong feiqing dao guoqing 研究全中 國​—從匪情到國情” [Researching the whole China—from banditry to statehood]. Pan Ku 盤古 8 (1967): 24–28. ———. “Zai lun Zhongguo zhishi fenzi he quan Zhongguo guoqing yanjiu de guanxi: Jian da Lao Siguang xiansheng 再論中國知識分子和 全中國國情研究的關係: 兼答勞思光先生” [The relations between Chinese intellectuals and Pan-China statehood studies revisited: A rejoinder to Mr. Lao Sze-Kwang]. Pan Ku 盤古 12 (1968): 6–12. Bao Yiming 包奕明 [Pao Yik-ming; alias Bao Cuoshi]. “Minzhu shehui dongyuan xia de daode duoshu, shaoshu he zhishi fenzi 民主社會動 員下的道德多數, 少數和知識分子” [The moral majority and minority and intellectuals under democratic societal mobilization]. Mingbao yuekan 明報月刊 [Mingbao monthly] 3, no. 4 (1968): 2–13. Bickers, Robert, and Ray Yep, eds. May Days in Hong Kong: Riots and Emergency in 1967. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Chan, Ming K., ed. Precarious Balance: Hong Kong between China and Britain, 1842–1992. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. ——— and David J. Clark, eds. The Hong Kong Basic Law: Blueprint for “Stability and Prosperity” under Chinese Sovereignty? New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1991. Chan Lau, Kit-ching. China, Britain, and Hong Kong, 1895–1945. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1990. Chen Wanying 陳婉瑩 [Chan Yuen-Ying] et al. “Diyi kuai shitou: Women dui huigui yundong de yixie jianyi 第一塊石頭: 我們對回歸運動的一些

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建議” [The first piece of stone: Our suggestions on the reunification movement]. Pan Ku 盤古 13 (1968): 48–52.

Chou, Grace A. L. Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War: Chinese Cultural Education at Hong Kong’s New Asia College, 1949–63. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Chu, Cindy Yik-yi. Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists, 1937– 1997. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Cottrell, Robert. The End of Hong Kong: The Secret Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat. London: John Murray Publishers, 1993. Daokouting 刀口聽. “Jianping Bao Cuoshi zhubi de ‘Haiwai Zhongguoren de fenlie, huigui yu fandu’ 簡評包錯石主筆的‘海外中國人的分裂、回 歸與反獨’” [A brief comment on Pao Cho-shek’s “The separation, reunification, and anti-independence among the overseas Chinese”]. Pan Ku 盤古 13 (1968): 28–29. Gengyun 耕耘. “Wo shi ge Xianggangren 我是個‘香港人’” [I am a Hongkonger]. Undergrad [Xueyuan 學苑]. November 1, 1969. Goodstadt, Leo F. “China and the Selection of Hong Kong’s Post-Colonial Political Elite.” China Quarterly 163 (September 2000): 721–741. Jian Fu 簡復 [Kan Fuk]. “Fangong wenzhang, yipian canbai: Ping Zhongda xueshengbao shang jipian jiangshiji de dazuo 反共文章, 一片慘 白: 評中大學生報上幾篇講師級的大作” [Anti-communist writing, all pale white: Commenting on a few ranked lecturers’ articles in the Chinese University Student Press]. Pan Ku 盤古 51 (1972): 9–12. Jian Yiming 簡義明 [Chien I-ming]. “Lengzhan shiqi Tai Gang wenyi sichao de xinggou yu chuanbo: Yi Guo Songfen ‘Tan tan Taiwan de wenxue’ wei xiansuo 冷戰時期台港文藝思潮的形構與傳播: 以郭松棻‘談談 台灣的文學’為線索” [The construction and spread of the literary and cultural thinking in Taiwan and Hong Kong during the Cold War: Using “Discussion on Taiwanese Literature” by Guo Songfen as a clue]. Taiwan wenxue yanjiu xuebao 台灣文學研究學報 18 (April 2014): 207–240. Lam, Chi Yan. “Constructing Hegemony: Patriotic United Front on the Youths in Post-Handover Hong Kong.” Ph.D. diss., University of Hong Kong, 2014. Lao Siguang 勞思光 [Lao Sze-Kwang]. “Guanyu liuxuesheng yu Zhongguo wenti 關於留學生與中國問題” [On students overseas and the issues of China]. Zhanwang 展望 145 (1968): 12–13. Latham, Michael E. Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Law, Wing Sang. Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.

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Li Jinye 李金曄 [Li Kim-yip]. “Wei fa ‘huigui’ bing de ren yibing: Cong Bao Cuoshi de wen kan Bao Cuoshi 為發‘回歸’病的人醫病: 從包錯石的文看 包錯石” [A diagnosis of a patient’s “reunification” disease: Reviewing Pao Cho-shek from his essay]. Pan Ku 盤古 17 (1968): 2–5. Li Yi 李怡. Cong rentong dao chongxin renshi Zhongguo 從認同到重新認識中 國 [From identifying with China to relearning China]. Hong Kong: Qishiniandai chubanshe, 1983. Lin Xiafeng 林下風 [Lam Ha-fung]. “Gei ‘Wo shi ge Xianggangren’ kanbing 給‘我是個香港人’看病” [Diagnosing “I Am a Hongkonger”]. Undergrad [Xueyuan 學苑]. November 16, 1969. Liu Meimei 劉美美 [Lau Mei-mei]. “Gei Xinya shuyuan xiaozhang ji gewei shizhang de gongkaixin 給新亞書院校長及各位師長的公開信” [An open letter to the president and the teachers of New Asia College]. Zhongguo xuesheng zhoubao 中國學生周報. October 1, 1971. Lo, Sonny Shiu-Hing. “An Analysis of Sino-British Negotiations over Hong Kong’s Political Reform.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 16, no. 2 (1994): 178–209. Loh, Christine. Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Lui, Tai-lok, and Stephen W. K. Chiu. “Social Movement and Public Discourse on Politics.” In Ngo Tak-Wing, ed., Hong Kong’s History: State and Society under Colonial Rule, 101–118. London: Routledge, 1999. Luo Yongsheng 羅永生 [Law Wing Sang]. “Liu, qishi niandai Xianggang de huigui lunshu” 六, 七十年代香港的回歸論述 [Discourses of reunification in the Sixties and Seventies of Hong Kong]. Renjian sixiang 人間思想 1 (July 2012): 119–209. Ma, Ngok. Political Development in Hong Kong: State, Political Society, and Civil Society. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007. Matthews, Gordon. “Heunggongyahn: On the Past, Present, and Future of Hong Kong Identity.” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29, no. 3 (1997): 3–13. Pan Ku 盤古. Editorial. “Bangda wenhua luoshuigou! 棒打文化落水狗!” [Beating up cultural underdogs in water!]. Pan Ku 盤古 50 (1972): 1–4. ———. Editorial. “Xiang ben Gang niu gui she shen yulun xuanzhan 向本港牛鬼蛇神輿論宣戰” [Declaring war on public opinion by Hong Kong’s devils and demons]. Pan Ku 盤古 44 (1972): 1–5. ———. Editorial. “Women duiyu Jiulong shijian de kanfa 我們對於九龍 事件的看法” [Our views toward the Kowloon incident]. Pan Ku 盤古 3 (1967): i. ———. Editorial. “Xianggang zuopai fenzi chumai le Zhonggong 香港 左派分子出賣了中共” [Hong Kong leftists have betrayed the Chinese Communist Party]. Pan Ku 盤古 4 (1967): i.

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Roberti, Mark. The Fall of Hong Kong: China’s Triumph and Britain’s Betrayal. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. Schriffin, Harold Z. Sun Yat-Sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. So, Alvin Y. Hong Kong’s Embattled Democracy: A Societal Analysis. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Tang Junyi 唐君毅. Shuo Zhonghua minzu zhi huaguo piaoling 說中華民族之 花果飄零 [The dispersal and drifting about of the flowers and fruits of the Chinese nation]. Taipei: Sanmin shuju. Van der Kroef, Justus M. “Nanyang University and the Dilemmas of Overseas Chinese Education.” China Quarterly 20 (December 1964): 96–127. Vines, Stephen. Hong Kong: China’s New Colony. London: Aurum Press, 1998. Vu, Tuong, and Wasana Wongsurawat, eds. Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia: Ideology, Identity, and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Wilbur, Martin C. Sun Yat-Sen: Frustrated Patriot. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. Wong, Ting-hong. Hegemonies Compared: State Formation and Chinese School Politics in Postwar Singapore and Hong Kong. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002. Xiang Jing 向京 [Heung King]. “‘Wo shi ge Xianggangren’ yiwen shangque ‘我是個香港人’一文商榷” [The essay “I Am a Hongkonger” questioned]. Undergrad [Xueyuan 學苑]. November 16, 1969. Xiong Zhiqin 熊志琴 [Hung Chi-kum], and Lu Weiluan 盧瑋鑾 [Lo Wailuen]. Shuangcheng lu: Zhong Xi wenhua de tiyan yu sikao, 1963–2003 (Gu Zhaoshen fangtan lu) 雙程路: 中西文化的體驗與思考, 1963–2003 (古兆申訪談 錄) [Two-way traffic: Experience and thoughts of Chinese and Western cultures, 1963–2003 (Interviews of Ku Siu-sun)]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2010. Zheng Hongtai 鄭宏泰 [Victor Zheng Wan-tai], and Wang Shaolun 黃紹 倫 [Wong Siu-lun]. Xianggang shenfenzheng toushi 香港身分證透視 [Hong Kong identity card in perspective]. Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2004.

NINE

From Citizens Back to Subjects: Constructing National Belonging in Hong Kong’s National Education Centre

KEVIN CARRICO

The Beijing-backed national education program (guomin jiaoyu 國民教育), initiated in 2004, emerged as a major point of contention in Hong Kong society in the spring of 2012. The program’s stated goal may appear fairly benign, namely, “enhancing students’ understanding of our country [the People’s Republic of China, the PRC] and national identity.”1 Yet popular support has been markedly limited, particularly as people have become more familiar with the often puzzling contents of national education.2 A series of protests against the program made this educational plan a mobilizing issue in the early stages of the rising tensions in Hong Kong– Beijing relations, prompting a rebellion against Beijing-based narratives of identity and history that continues to grow to this day.3 This chapter examines the national education controversy and its implications based upon research conducted in early 2009 at the now defunct National Education Centre (Guomin jiaoyu zhongxin 國民教育中心), once the main state-­ supported patriotic education base in Hong Kong, located in the Tai Po section of the New Territories. First conceived in the politically charged atmosphere of 2004, the National Education Centre was a site for school field trips dedicated to introducing the children of Hong Kong to Mainland China’s “national conditions” (guoqing 國情) and “Chinese national culture” (Zhongguo wenhua 1 

Education Bureau, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, “National Education.” “Zhichi guomin jiaoyu.” 3  For a complete chronology of the events surrounding the “national education” controversy, see Ye Yinchong, Wei xiayidai juexing, 18–21. For a critical history of the national education program and the controversies that it produced, see Qi Bensheng, Guomin jiaoyu shi shenme? 2 

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中國文化). Promising to expose students to the “real” China through a series

of interactive classrooms on the first floor and a more solemn and formal museum-like display on the second floor, the center brought together filial piety and patriotism, oracle bones and the PRC’s national anthem, and traditional Chinese medicine and vigorous denunciations of “evil cults.” Examining the political and historical context of the emergence of this institution, as well as ethnographically analyzing three central moments in the tour, I argue that the center’s displays and activities bring together culture and politics, as well as the nation and the self, to construct a “patriotic” and purely Chinese form of identity that wraps stifling culturalpolitical restrictions in self-aggrandizing modes of identification. In sum, by examining how the National Education Centre promotes an official vision of Hong Kong identity as a naturalized Chineseness, I demonstrate how the center enacts a colonizing process of national identification under the guise of decolonization.4

The Birth of the National Education Centre The National Education Centre was established in 2004 in an abandoned Tai Po school building. From 2004 until the center’s closure in 2013, visitors to the center toured a series of small rooms with displays on Chinese culture and national conditions, as well as a miniature museum tracing the ancient history of China and the economic development of the PRC over the previous thirty years. According to a brochure obtained on-site, the center’s mission consists of: • promoting understanding of national conditions • enhancing identification with national identity • cultivating outstanding morals • realizing students’ potential The rhetoric of national conditions, morals, and human potential appropriated by this remote educational enclave seems at first glance apolitical and natural. After all, “understanding national conditions,” “enhancing identification with national identity,” “cultivating outstanding morals,” 4  In this chapter’s discussion of Beijing’s influence on Hong Kong as colonization, I employ a definition of colonization beyond the ethnonational identity that, in its presumed “unity” in the Hong Kong case, erases real difference and tensions. A novel interpretation of colonialism sees this concept as composed of social, cultural, and identity representations feeding into a “process of hegemonic construction that has the goal of masking and sublimating domination.” This definition of colonization is developed by Allen Chun in his “Towards a Postcolonial Critique of the State in Singapore,” 679.

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and “realizing students’ potential” appear to be affirmative values that would not provoke widespread opposition in respectable company. Despite the parallels with the patriotic education program (aiguo zhuyi jiaoyu 愛國主義教育) employed for nationalist indoctrination and state stability in post-Tiananmen China, and despite the fact that the center was run by the “patriotic” Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers, the center was able to operate largely without protest from 2004 until the national education controversy of 2012. Yet by examining the political context of the center’s emergence and its development within a polarized environment, one finds that there is more to this institution than simply objective education. In fact, I argue, the two founding and binding political assumptions of the National Education Centre are: (1) Hong Kong has since time immemorial been part of China and will remain so for eternity, and (2) despite this fact, the people of Hong Kong are not yet fully Chinese. The National Education Centre and the national education program, of which the center is a part, are then designed to resolve this contradictory condition through “education.” The rhetoric of the National Education Centre operates in the realm of national conditions, national culture, and national essences. While these notions are often taken for granted as “natural,” they are in reality inevitably constructed, and it is thus essential to consider who is doing the constructing, as any attempt to provide a determinant definition of “culture” and “the nation” is invariably intertwined with politics and power.5 According to conventional history, Hong Kong was administratively integrated into the PRC in 1997, an event marked by massive spectacles of celebration: a moment, supposedly, of “return” (huigui 回歸). Yet this was a moment, I argue, of integration with hierarchical difference. Quite ironically, after nearly a century of cultural upheavals and antitraditional cultural iconoclasm, during which Hong Kong was imagined as the home of a “Chinese essence” free from Communist interference, the Mainland in the reform era has been reconstructed as the self-proclaimed home of an “uncontaminated” Chinese culture. Alongside the revitalization of cultural scholarship and religious life, this Chinese “authenticity” as deployed by the state often takes the form of an ideological rationalization of political conservatism and repression as a unique Chinese characteristic, existing since time immemorial, in opposition to the West. This is particularly true in Beijing’s relationship with its special administrative region: Hong Kong, having been colonized by agents of the other side of the binary, is by contrast to the Mainland presumed to be an “impure” space, burdened by British colonial pollution with such “non-Chinese” traditions as civil 5 

Allen Chun, “Fuck Chineseness.”

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society, a relatively free press, and a certain degree of critical political engagement.6 Such institutions and activities, once given the now outmoded Marxist label “bourgeois liberalism,” have been accused in the increasingly nationalistic Mainland media and education systems since 1989 of the far more insidious charges of a fundamental incompatibility with Chinese culture and even of emerging from supposed Western conspiracies promoting chaos-inducing universal values in order to hinder China’s rise under the purportedly omniscient and orderly guidance of the partystate.7 These components of contemporary Hong Kong society are thus presented as anomalous, unpatriotic, and even polluting cultural leftovers from the British colonial period incompatible with a pure “Chineseness” that must be eliminated in order to make Hong Kong “properly Chinese.” No one has articulated this hierarchy of purity and pollution more clearly than Jiang Yudui 姜玉堆, chairman of the China Civic Education Promotion Association, who, amid the 2012 controversy about national education as a form of brainwashing, all too openly asserted that “if a brain has problems, it needs some washing, just like dirty clothes need washing or sick kidneys need cleaning (nao you wenti jiu ying xi, zhengru yifu angzang yao xi, shenbing bingren yao xishen yiyang 腦有問題就應洗, 正如 衣服骯髒要洗, 腎病病人要洗腎一樣).”8 Whereas Jiang could not be surpassed in directness, undoubtedly the most colorful metaphor to express this not only hierarchical but indeed colonizing view of Hong Kong’s place within the motherland was articulated in May 2004 during a presentation by Cheng Siwei 成思危, former vice-chairman of the Chinese National People’s Congress Standing Committee. Meeting with a group of children at Hong Kong’s Heung To Middle School (Xiangdao zhongxue 香島中學), a well-known “patriotic” school, Cheng unexpectedly used this occasion to assail democrats and critics of the Beijing government, warning the children that some Hong Kong people are “bananas” (“yellow,” and thus Chinese on the outside, but “white” and thus Western on the inside), and that such “sinners of the Chinese nation . . . do not have a bit of national consciousness” and “would love to whiten their skin if they could do so.”9 6 

Politician Anson Chan Fang On-sang 陳方安生, when discussing Hong Kong’s “return” to the PRC, once commented revealingly that “the real transition is about identity and not sovereignty,” a statement that appears increasingly prescient with the passage of time. Cited in Allen Chun, “Hong Kong ‘Identity’ after the End of History,” 167. 7  Chinafile, “Document 9: A China File Translation.” 8  Quoted in Jennifer Cheng and Dennis Chong, “Talks Collapse over National Classes Delay.” 9  Gary Cheung, “Some HK People Are ‘Bananas.’” On the history of Heung To and other left-wing patriotic schools and organizations, see Zhou Yi, Xianggang zuopai douzheng shi; Zhao Yongjia, Lü Dale, and Rong Shicheng, Xionghuai zuguo.

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Cheng’s framework of selfhood implies that beyond having an exterior skin color representing one’s “race,” people also have an “interior” color representing one’s thoughts and essence.10 As a representative sent from the north to the new Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Cheng is unsurprisingly confident in his knowledge of what constitutes a proper internal “yellow” essence for his externally “yellow” compatriots, and finds it lacking. A disconnect between one’s exterior color and one’s interior self resulting from identification with what Cheng labels “white” values, such as a critical stance toward the Beijing government, or a failure to recognize state-cultivated patriotism as timeless Chinese culture, is then understood as anomalous, a source of confusion, and even (in his words) a debilitating “sin,” rendering one a nonhuman object to be consumed and digested by proper and internally consistent humans.11 This process of “banana digestion” has taken many forms, aiming to integrate Hong Kong not only into the PRC geo-body as occurred in 1997, but also into Cheng’s “yellow” official culture and identity, in a pattern readily recognizable to readers familiar with the nonautonomous fates of the PRC’s other “autonomous regions.” In the legal realm, in 2002 the government of the HKSAR under Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa 董建華 (r. 1997–2005) began promoting a restrictive national security amendment to the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution for post-1997 administration. Article 23, though given the self-justifying label of a “national security law,” was essentially an antisubversion law that aimed to ban “treasonous” speech, organizations opposed to the PRC government, and “subversive publications,” limiting Hong Kong’s uniquely open speech and publication environment.12 In the political realm, after more than a decade 10 

To examine the issue of racial nationalism and Chinese relations with Hong Kong and Taiwan, Cheng Yinghong has employed the fascinating vantage point of what he calls Gangtai 港臺 patriotic songs, observing that within these relations the sole anchoring point of commonality is an imaginary racial commonality, which is therefore emphasized in patriotic pop-culture articulations. See Cheng Yinghong, “Gangtai Patriotic Songs and Racialized Chinese Nationalism.” 11  This externalization of protest and dissent as “foreign,” prevalent in the People’s Republic, is becoming an increasingly common tactic among Hong Kong’s “patriotic” groups, who have begun to claim that all protests are funded by “external powers” (waiguo shili 外國 勢力) aiming to destabilize Hong Kong and thereby destabilize China. I observed protests in early 2017 in which all opposition to Beijing loyalists was portrayed as having been funded by conniving foreigners aiming to hinder China’s rise. The reality of contemporary Hong Kong politics, of course, is considerably more complex. Yet as tensions increase in Hong Kong, such conspiratorial claims are also becoming increasingly common in Chinese academic studies of the region, mirroring the simplistic analyses developed to explain issues in Tibet and Xinjiang, and feeding a misunderstanding of the current conflict even among noted Hong Kong specialists in Beijing. 12  The full text of Article 23 can be read at http://www.basiclaw23.gov.hk/english/

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of heated debate and stalling on political reform, in 2014, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee decreed that universal suffrage in the 2017 chief executive election could only be premised upon Beijing vetting and approving nominees, limiting Hong Kong’s uniquely developed political culture. And without any substantive legal basis, National People’s Congress Standing Committee spokespersons have nevertheless repeatedly emphasized the importance of chief executive nominees “loving China” and avoiding confrontation with the central government, interjecting extralegal stipulations into a political process that has been largely governed by the rule of law.13 This increasingly invasive logic was then extended to Legislative Council representatives in the 2016 election, arbitrarily disqualifying candidates accused of supporting independence. Alongside these steps by Beijing toward legal and political control of Hong Kong, national education is an attempt at cultural-educational control. In 2004, just months after the shelving of Article 23, the HKSAR government convened the National Education Working Group to oversee the national education of the youth of Hong Kong.14 This ambitious program includes such activities as developing curricula and textbooks (including the controversial China Model: National Conditions Teaching Manual [Zhongguo moshi: Guoqing zhuanti jiaoxue shouce 中國模式: 國情專題教學手冊]), establishing and promoting visits to the National Education Centre, and arranging patriotically themed trips to Mainland China under the guise of educational exchange (jiaoliu 交流).15 In an obviously politicized alliance, the National Education Centre component of the program was designed and overseen by the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers, an unabashedly pro-Beijing teachers’ union that has left behind its founding “revolutionary” rhetoric in recent decades for more straightforward patriotic parlance.16 From the center’s opening in 2004 until its closure in 2013, it hosted students from over a hundred primarily left-leaning educational institutions in Hong Kong (such as the aforementioned Heung To Middle School) for one-day national education visits, lectures on the national conditions, and download/CSA-markup-e3.pdf or in Chinese at http://www.basiclaw23.gov.hk/chinese/ index.htm. More detail on the role of Article 23 in “fashioning a new political order” in Beijing’s terms can be found in Christine Loh, Underground Front, 219–223; Suzanne Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, 358–367. 13  Stephen Hall, “Beijing’s Patriotism Test Finds No Support in the Basic Law.” 14  Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, “Speech at the National Education Centre.” 15  One such trip and its not-so-subtle political motivations are detailed in Hailan, “Wode jiaoliu tuan qinli ji.” 16  “About Us,” National Education Centre home page: http://www.hknec.org/content_ tc.php?id=1. The website is no longer available following the center’s closure in 2013.

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group visits to patriotic education sites in “the motherland.”17 Between 2004 and 2012, the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers received roughly HK$500,000 in assistance from the Hong Kong government each year, covering over 80 percent of the center’s operating expenses, toward the stated goal of “enhancing identification with national identity,” a contorted phrase providing perhaps the clearest expression possible of this founding double bind of an insufficient yet essential “Chineseness.”18 The establishment of such a new educational program after a series of protests has a revealing precedent in modern Chinese history. The birth of the Mainland’s “patriotic education” program in the immediate aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre highlights the relationship between protests and rehabilitative patriotic pedagogy. The patriotic education program’s apparent success in producing a critical mass of pro-authoritarian and xenophobic public opinion has combined with economic growth, draconian media controls, and harsh punishment of dissent to prevent a second Tiananmen.19 Similarly, despite the center’s naturalizing allusions to “understanding the national conditions,” “enhancing identification with national identity,” “cultivating outstanding morals,” and “realizing students’ potential,” it remains a product of its politically charged times, with the “real China” that it claims to represent being a thoroughly politicized imaginary construction that the center needs to make real in its visitors’ minds. Rather than presenting or sharing a culture that underlies people’s daily behavior and thought (a culture that would not then need to be taught on account of its already being present), an institution like the National Education Centre can only be understood as a vehicle to create a particular construction of culture, and thereby to transform its visitors into a particular model of “Chineseness.”20 The National Education Centre is founded upon an assumed opposition of purity and pollution, or anomaly and wholeness, which by extension produces the hierarchy of teacher and 17  A CCTV-9 report on the tenth anniversary of Hong Kong’s “return” titled “More Hong Kong People Find National Identity as Contact with Mainland Increases” claimed that over a hundred thousand Hong Kong students had visited the National Education Centre by 2007. No supporting evidence is provided to confirm this figure, which appears strangely high based upon my own observations of the number of visitors in 2009. 18  “Si pi Guomin jiaoyu zhongxin.” 19  Ironically, this xenophobia has in turn served as the main source of protests on the Mainland since 1989. However, as seen in the periodic anti-Japanese protests that arise every few years (e.g. 2005, 2010, and 2012), such protests are tolerated if not openly encouraged by the PRC state as a safety valve for popular anger, and then promptly shut down before they spread out of control. 20  On the transformative aspect of the museum experience as a civilizing ritual, see Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals.

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student, such that the people of Hong Kong are destined to be the passive students of their own national identity, in which they must come to recognize an externally produced image as their supposed essence. The following section examines how this process of self-recognition is produced, enacted, and affectively reinforced by guiding readers through a standard tour of the center. A Tour of the National Education Centre The National Education Centre was located in the Tai Po section of the New Territories, a liminal space between central Hong Kong and the “motherland” to the north. As visitors enter the courtyard leading into the center, the national flag of the PRC flies alone, without an accompanying H ­ KSAR flag anywhere in sight (see fig. 1). The Chinese character for “nation” (guo 國) is located prominently behind the flag on the central wall of the building, in the precise position where a deity would rest on the altar in a temple: the flagstaffs standing before “the nation” thus resemble incense sticks that never burn down. Here, students begin their day at the National Education Centre by observing and participating in a flag-raising ceremony, marching in unison, and singing the national anthem at the foot of this shrine to national identity. Children are next led up the steps into the center, entering the first of many classrooms that they will be visiting that day. There is no delay in delving into politics. On one side of the room hang images of Hu Jintao 胡錦濤, president of the PRC from 2002 to 2012, and other top leaders, along with diagrams explaining in precise detail the structure of the “People’s Government” (renmin zhengfu 人民政府) and very pleasant sounding yet practically fictional excerpts from the PRC constitution about the various rights and freedoms that citizens enjoy. Alongside these portrayals of the state are the five-star national flag and the words of the national anthem, each accompanied by thorough explanations of their symbolism: the flag’s four golden stars represent the unity of the Chinese people in relation to the larger golden star representing the Chinese Communist Party, while the new Great Wall very impractically built from “flesh and blood” (xuerou 血肉) in the national anthem demonstrates strength in unity. On the other wall, explanations of the Basic Law and the notion of “one country, two systems” are featured alongside all too familiar quotations from Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平 regarding the “patriotism of the Hong Kong people” and the paramount importance of patriotism. In this room, students hear a lecture on the PRC government and the symbols of the motherland that strives to represent a stagnant political system increasingly unable to adequately respond to the full complexity of contemporary Chinese society

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Figure 1: Exterior of the National Education Centre, January 2009 (photograph by the author).21

as somehow appealing and even compelling: simply the best model of governance for Mainland China’s “national conditions.” The next classroom transitions rapidly from politics to Chinese medicine, as well as from passive spectatorship to active participation. The walls of this room are covered with recipes for various Chinese medicinal concoctions, alongside admonitions to recognize the grandeur of Chinese tradition. In one corner of the room, an old cabinet holds medicinal ingredients in drawers: students are asked to join in the preparation of various types of Chinese medicine using the ingredients and chopsticks provided. A third room, named the Chamber of the Soaring Dragon (feilong ge 飛龍 閣), promotes the idea of “national strength” (guojia de qiangda 國家的強大), featuring images from the Beijing Olympics, juxtaposed with stock images 21 

All photographs are provided by the author. I was unfortunately forbidden from photographing any indoor exhibits or classrooms. Nevertheless, interested readers can find more detailed pictures of the National Education Centre at the center’s website (http://www. hknec.org). Although now defunct, a cache search can provide images.

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Figure 2: Obstacle course at the National Education Centre (photograph by the author).

of people climbing mountains and engaging in other such extreme physical activities. Slogans on the wall assert that only when a country is strong are its people able to enjoy a fulfilling life; yet in an incorporating nationalist dialectic, participants are also reminded of the importance of being strong in one’s personal life, so as to ensure that the nation can be strong. Performing this idea of inextricably intertwined national and personal strength, each feeding into the other, students exit the Chamber of the Soaring Dragon to an outside courtyard with a ramshackle obstacle course made of old tires and plastic vines (see fig. 2). Here, students are first divided into groups of two. Then, one student in each pair is blindfolded, and another student, as his or her “Chinese compatriot” (Zhongguo tongbao 中國同胞), is designated to guide him or her through an obstacle course. Heavy-handed commentary from teachers repeatedly reminds students that one is only able to make one’s way through this course with the help of one’s compatriots. Upon successful emergence from the course, students remove their blindfolds to face a nationalist mural featuring images of the renowned Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang 劉翔, a massive soldier holding a gun pointed

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into the distance, rows of tanks with huge, colorfully painted missiles, a section of the PRC flag, a rocket blasting off into space, and a scene from a classical Peking opera. The students proceed to line up again, so that the other student in each pair can be blindfolded and led through the obstacle course. The next stop on the tour is a classroom featuring photographs and replicas of ancient Chinese artifacts. Two categories of replica items are featured prominently within this display, embodying the “pessoptimism” of the modern Chinese nationalist narrative.22 The first are oracle bones, recognized as one of the earliest tools of Chinese script and thus culture, representing the length and grandeur of what is now rendered as “the Chinese nation.” The second are replicas of various artifacts looted from China by conniving Westerners in the modern era; students are invited to touch, feel, and personally hold items that are in this moment represented as having been stolen from them, producing a simultaneous experience of possession and loss. In the final classroom on the first floor, students are exposed to a telling juxtaposition of traditional Chinese festivals and the PRC’s “national minorities” (shaoshu minzu 少數民族), both presumed to be located in the past. Children have a chance to play with a few “traditional” toys, while viewing images of “ethnics” dressed in their fetishized traditional outfits. And in accordance with the careful adherence to official scripts, embracing one state talking point after another, the display is furthermore accompanied by admonitions to oppose “splittism” (fenlie zhuyi 分裂主義) and “evil cults” (xiejiao 邪教).23 Next, students proceed upstairs to a small room with various Chinese characters in elaborate calligraphy hanging from the walls: filial piety, patriotism, harmony, and commitment to the public good. In this room, students are shown a video of The Three Monks (San’ge heshang 三個和尚), one of the earliest animated features produced in the PRC’s reform era. The cartoon tells the story of three monks living in a monastery who persistently argue over the chores and have never-ending difficulties working together. Only when the symbolically charged figure of a rat, a dirty and disease-carrying outsider, comes to rummage through the monastery, and in the process knocks over a candle, do the monks finally come together to extinguish the resulting fire. From this experience, the monks learn that 22 

On the concept of “pessoptimism,” caught between a tragic past and a redeeming future, as central to Chinese nationalism, see William Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation. 23  I use the translation “evil cult” here not because I agree with the label, but rather solely to provide an accurate image of how the world is portrayed in these displays. “Evil cult” is the official translation of xiejiao, and is most commonly used to refer to Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that has been banned in Mainland China since 1999.

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“unity is strength,” and thereby the great power of such unity is communicated to the young viewers at the National Education Centre. Following this film, students proceed to a museum display detailing the history of China, with a particular focus on the glorious achievements of ancient history and the equally glorious achievements of the past thirty years. The historical narrative begins from the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi 黃帝), the mythical ancestor of all Chinese, and the father of civilization itself. Proceeding through other renowned ancient rulers and their superhuman accomplishments, including the great uniter Qinshihuang 秦始皇 (the first emperor of a unified China), the exhibit suddenly fast-­forwards to the far more recent past to feature supreme leaders Mao Zedong 毛澤東, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin 江澤民, and Hu Jintao alongside the celebrated emperors of old. The display’s historical narrative posits that the nation of China, always including an ever-existent Hong Kong as an inalienable part of its territory, had a grand history of over five millennia, during which time many great rulers appeared and great inventions were developed. Conveniently skipping over the Maoist era, the exhibit finally highlights the implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s policy of “reform and opening”: images represent the abundant economic and technological harvest obtained over the past three and a half decades, featuring a somewhat exhausting collection of economic figures, photographs of senior Beijing leaders with prominent global figures, images of lethal hardware representing “military modernization,” and a curious final section on scientific accomplishments featuring grainy images of a rather sickly looking cloned sheep.24 Toward the end of the tour, a life-size cardboard image of Mainland China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei 楊利偉, stares back at visitors as they make their way through an imitation section of a spaceship marking the end of their journey. Upon emerging from this spaceship, children are handed a sheet of paper asking “what will you do for the motherland?” Selections from students’ responses posted on the wall echo the images viewed throughout this tour, with respondents asserting that they hope to become athletes, astronauts, or soldiers or policemen: all, of course, for the good of the motherland.

24  There is considerable vagueness with regards to Maoism and the Maoist era in the center’s display. The emphasis on the past thirty years means that focus can be placed upon “the People’s Republic,” while at the same time conveniently skipping over some of the less “harmonious” moments of the Maoist era. This is a standard mode of representation in official histories: the “Road toward Renewal” display at the National Museum in Beijing, while focused on modern history, conveniently elides the decade of the Cultural Revolution, highlighting atom bomb tests and then fast-forwarding to the downfall of the Gang of Four.

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Three Moments in National Education Culture and Politics

The distinction between culture and politics has long been central to discussions of Chinese identity in Hong Kong and is consequently central to the identity constructions of the National Education Centre. According to standard narratives of identification, although the Chinese-descended residents of Hong Kong would generally see or describe themselves as culturally Chinese, or at least in some sense related to the abstract idea of Chinese culture, this notion of Chineseness has not generally extended to political identification with the orthodoxies promoted on the Mainland. There are of course exceptions, as a steadfast conglomerate of “patriotic” groups has closely followed the perplexing political variations emanating from Beijing over the past sixty years, all the way from extremist leftism to state-capitalist authoritarianism.25 Despite these exceptions, the totalizing fusion of culture and politics that has remained constant throughout these transformations on the Mainland has been largely absent in Hong Kong, insofar as in this special administrative region one can reasonably believe oneself to be “Chinese” without explicitly pledging allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party, a privilege rarely extended to compatriots to the north. As a national pedagogical site for the people of Hong Kong, the National Education Centre aims to close this gap, attributing cultural value to Beijing’s politics and even culturalizing the prevailing political framework: the PRC and its political culture are constructed as the sole representatives and indeed arbiters of “Chineseness.”26 The first stop on the National Education Centre tour focuses on such political and national symbols as the structure of the PRC government and the national anthem.27 Immediately afterward, the second workshop presents 25 

For a history of these organizations, see Zhou Yi, Xianggang zuopai douzheng shi; Zhao Yongjia, Lü Dale, and Rong Shicheng, Xionghuai zuguo. 26  The assumed “non-Chinese” nature of the center’s visitors is enacted in an odd exercise in the Chinese medicine classroom. When picking out and combining materials, students are told to use chopsticks; however, beforehand, they are perplexingly given a lesson in how to use chopsticks. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong knows that chopstick use is quite prevalent in Hong Kong, and no students ever showed any difficulties in using such chopsticks. Yet it almost appeared as though there was an assumption that these not yet “fully Chinese” visitors would be unable to use the utensils. 27  Liang Wendao (Leung Man-tao), “Zhuding tulao de guomin jiaoyu.” Leung Man-tao notes that the introduction of the Beijing political system to Hong Kong students should be “irrelevant,” as according to the “one country, two systems” framework affirmed in the Basic Law, Hong Kong is not being integrated into that system. Yet the primary role of the political education is not to inform students of what is relevant to them, but rather to beautify and

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recipes for Chinese medicine. Later in the tour, traditional Chinese customs and festivals are placed alongside warnings against “splittism” and “evil cults.” In the museum-like section on the second floor, images of the current political leadership are brought together with images of ancient rulers, both mythical and historical. In all cases, highly politicized ideals are placed alongside some of the better known traditions and figures from Chinese history, seemingly being granted equal, or even greater, value. These representations suggest a targeted awareness of the center’s audience and a careful public relations–based approach to tailoring burdensome messages of loyalty to the state through appealing culturalist symbols. However, beyond a savvy juxtaposition of cultural China and statedefined political Chineseness so that the latter may benefit from the value attached to the former, the displays within the National Education Centre further attempt to unite the two, so as to present particular politicized viewpoints as an essential component of culture. This process echoes a growing trend in Mainland politics that I call Panopticonfucianism, wherein state-sponsored political values are represented as naturalized “Chinese tradition” so that the former can not only derive value from the latter, but can indeed be viewed as the sole natural outcome of the latter. As a result of this constructed fusion, the voicing of any doubts about such culturalized politics leads to doubts about one’s proper Chineseness, which in turn devalues one’s opposition or criticism as the muddled misunderstandings of an outsider. When Panopticonfucianism is successfully inculcated, Beijing’s politics can be internalized as culturally authentic and then, in a turn of ressentiment, a disillusioning state of political repression becomes a source of eternal “uniqueness” that cannot be changed and demands “understanding.” A punitive manifestation of such a Panopticonfucianist framework can be seen in Cheng Siwei’s ruminations on “bananas” at Heung To Middle School. A considerably more self-­congratulatory manifestation can be found in the highly controversial textbook The China Model: National Conditions Teaching Manual, wherein such imaginary characteristics of the Beijing regime as “focus on helping ordinary people,” “rule of law,” “accountability,” “service to the nation and the people,” and, most memorably, its purportedly progressive and selfless nature are attributed to their roots in “traditional culture” and repeatedly contrasted with the “disaster” of “Western democracy.”28 idealize the current political system as the sole manifestation of “true Chineseness.” In that sense, the details of Beijing political structures become relevant. 28  Guomin jiaoyu fuwu zhongxin and Dangdai Zhongguo yanjiusuo, Zhongguo moshi, 2, 4, 8, 9.

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Within the National Education Centre, a clear example of such a Panopticonfucian construction can be found in the classroom on “traditional values,” where children view the video of The Three Monks. Hanging from the walls are scrolls citing such ancient cultural values as filial piety and concern for the public good in elaborately designed calligraphy. Yet alongside these seemingly ancient pearls of wisdom, many of which have been conceptually internalized as an inherent part of Chinese culture “since time immemorial,” students also view and ponder such politicized and state-defined concepts as “patriotism.” This presentation not only juxtaposes the political and the cultural for the benefit of the former, but also places “patriotism” alongside “filial piety” so as to re-create what is understood as “culture,” incorporating state-constructed values into this seemingly natural concept. The unity celebrated by The Three Monks is then not only a national unity, but indeed also a unity of culture and politics, so that the former may serve the latter. Similarly, throughout this process, passive learning (lectures or film viewing) is combined with active learning (exercises and question-and-answer sessions), again forming an all-­encompassing unity wherein students become active enactors of their own naturalized political culturalization. The self-described process of enhancing identification with national identity and realizing students’ potential is then intertwined with the highly politicized goal of making loyal politics appear to be a natural feature of culture, as well as the ultimate realization of the self: an issue to which we will now turn. Completing the Self and the Nation

One curious moment toward the middle of the center’s tour stands out from the rest: what, after all, does an obstacle course have to do with national education? Before we seek an answer to this question, let us first recount this unexpected moment. After visiting the Chamber of the Soaring Dragon, students step outdoors and are divided into pairs to line up for an obstacle course. One student in each pair is promptly blindfolded and then guided through the obstacle course by his or her partner, accompanied by reminders that one is only able to complete this course with the help of one’s “Chinese compatriot.” The roles are then reversed. Upon first glance, it is apparent that this exercise alienates relations of mutual assistance between two children within a concrete (although constructed) situation through the abstract framework of the nation and its imaginary ties. Yet, upon a closer examination of trends in Chinese national self-­ representation and the personal experience of this moment in the tour, this oddly placed exercise in fact appears to be a two-step enactment of the drama of national identification as submission.

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A first revealing point to highlight about this exercise is that visitors are rendered temporarily unable to see, or, in other words, actively disabled. Such disability has been a common yet underanalyzed current in national self-representation in modern China, and the ways in which such disability symbolism has operated within the state cultural sphere provide an unexpected perspective upon this moment of blinding. One of the best-known cases of disability, featured in the documentary Morning Sun (Bajiudianzhong de taiyang 八九點鐘的太陽), tells the story of a school of “deaf-mutes” during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) who are eventually able to overcome their disability through their diligent study of Mao Zedong Thought.29 Numerous other tales of models throughout the Maoist era describe people with disabilities or other perceived defects who are nevertheless able to overcome these issues to engage in extremely unexpected activities. One such story tells of Zheng Jieping 鄭階 平, a young man born without arms: despite apparent physical obstacles, “Little Zheng” was nevertheless dedicated to learning how to write, and through his diligent study of Mao Zedong Thought and the diary of Lei Feng 雷鋒, a hero of the People’s Liberation Army, he managed to become a master of calligraphy.30 Entering the post-Maoist era, Zhang Haidi 張海迪, a paraplegic member of the Communist Youth League, was celebrated by the CCP as the “new Lei Feng of the 1980s”: through her faith in “communism” and dedication to overcoming hardship, Zhang had managed to teach herself English, Japanese, German, and Esperanto, as well as become a well-respected author.31 And as the 2008 Beijing Olympics approached, no figure more poignantly represented the struggle to protect the “sacred” Olympic torch than Jin Jing 金晶, a Paralympic fencer who held back protestors during the torch’s tour through the streets of Paris. In an interview with the Xinhua News Agency after this symbolically charged moment, Jin recounted the source of her strength: “there were so many people there supporting me, shouting out from both sides of the streets for me to be strong. It made me feel that no matter what difficulties our motherland may face, we all have our fellow Chinese there to resolutely support us. . . . At that moment, the only thing on my mind was protecting the torch.”32 Through these examples extending from the Maoist era to the present, we can see that disability is not only a site of bureaucratic institutionalization and statistical 29  See Zhao Puyu, “Kao Mao Zedong sixiang dakai longya ‘jinqu.’” Also see the 1969 documentary “A Song of Triumph for Chairman Mao’s Proletarian Line on Public Health.” 30  Zhuang Zhiming and Cao Zhiguo, Cong xiao xue Lei Feng, 32–33. 31  Zhang Haidi, “Shi ke liuxing.” 32  “Jin Jing.”

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state-building.33 Disability is also an affectively resonant mode of national self-representation in post-1949 China. Yet if we review these national representations, which show surprising consistency amid the sociocultural shifts from the Maoist era to the present, what role does disability play therein? Surely the message coming from Beijing is not that China is disabled. Rather, the structure of these narratives presents a particular image of the relationship between citizens and the state. In each of these cases disability is not something to be understood so much as overcome; and it is inevitably overcome, from Zheng’s study of Mao to Jin’s embrace of “national strength,” only through an ideological supplement provided by the state.34 This deployment of disability thus evokes an image of citizens as fundamentally incomplete and in need of completion from a power beyond themselves, represented by the state: it is only through the power of the omnipotent supplement, whether it is Mao Zedong Thought, the Lei Feng spirit, continued faith in communism, or an essentialist nationalist unity and strong state, that the incomplete citizen can be made whole. Citizens are thus represented as subjects eternally reliant upon and indebted to the state, their “great savior” (dajiu­ xing 大救星). In light of this tradition of representing disability, we can see that the National Education Centre’s obstacle course exercise is located within an established symbolic framework, in this case taking the drastic step of literally disabling visiting students’ sight and forcing them to rely on fellow “Chinese compatriots” to guide them through the complex course. The core issue here, then, is not only that relations of assistance between human beings are alienated and appropriated by the national framework, but rather that the assistance itself is constructed as a forced gift incurring debt: students are purposefully rendered unable to complete a task that they could otherwise complete on their own, or crippled, and thereby forcibly made reliant on this assistance represented as “China.” A sense of dependence upon the nation for completion is embodied and enacted through this symbolically rich temporary crippling, such that subjects ironically come to express thanks to the same abstract entity in the ideological service of which they are being disabled. Yet this crippling moment in the tour is immediately followed by a corresponding moment of imaginary empowerment, revealing the 33 

Matthew Kohrman, Bodies of Difference. This interpretation is developed from the “cripple existentialism” outlined in Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life. Yet, whereas Sloterdijk uses “the cripple” as a model of self-overcoming, the deployment of “the cripple” in Chinese state representations communicates tones of reliance on an external power for this overcoming, which can be accomplished only via a state-supplied supplement. 34 

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Figure 3: Mural at the National Education Centre, viewed after completion of the obstacle course (photograph by the author).

Janus-faced appeal of identification with national identity. Upon emerging from the obstacle course and having the blindfolds removed, students face a massive mural that reads “China’s proud achievements,” or, breaking the structure of the phrase down further, “the accomplishments of China that make the people proud” (Zhongguo de jiaoren chengjiu 中國的驕 人成就; see fig. 3). In this mural, Olympic victories embodied in the figure of Liu Xiang and military strength displayed in rows of missiles and guns represent the power of the nation, interpellating students into this image. The nation, embodied in a fellow student, just guided them through a trying moment, and then, ever so briefly, their own emergence from the obstacle course is also magnified and added to these pride-inducing accomplishments on the wall, blurring the boundaries between the nation and the self to the benefit of each. Alongside the very real duties and responsibilities required of the subject as part of the nation, as enacted in their forced disabling, imaginary benefits and empowerment are conferred through this presentation of the omnipotent nation as a natural extension of the self.

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Although the images in the mural prominently feature singular people, the caption stretching across the images does not identify people as the enactors of these accomplishments. It reads “the accomplishments of China that make the people proud” rather than “the accomplishments of the Chinese people that make the people proud” (Zhongguoren de jiaoren chengjiu 中國人的驕人成就). Similar to the familiar claim that it was the Chinese Communist Party that singlehandedly “lifted millions out of poverty,” here people are erased from the process of accomplishments (chengjiu 成就), which are attributed to the abstract idea of China (Zhongguo 中國), and are present only in the feeling of pride (jiaoren 驕人), generalized to the people as a whole.35 This articulation emphasizes the alienated and fundamentally imaginary role of the nation as the sole enactor of these victorious moments, fittingly erasing the role of the person (ren 人) in any sense besides temporarily embodying the nation’s perceived accomplishments and permanently feeling the resulting mix of dependence and pride enacted in this obstacle course experience. Yet despite the erasure of people in these accomplishments appropriated by the nation, people continue to step into this contradictory space: recognizing oneself within this national image, a power far greater than oneself that nevertheless includes oneself, one is symbolically forced into dependence on the nation as the very basis for one’s existence and completion, while being imaginarily empowered by this nation as an extension and realization of oneself. The end product of this colonizing process is a state of voluntary servitude to an aggrandizing patriotic identity. Ritualized Expulsion and Rebirth

Through a combination of passive viewing and active participation, the tour process thus breaks down the barriers between culture and politics, and between the nation and the self, to promote an ideologically constraining yet imaginarily empowering image of “Chineseness” in which students are encouraged to recognize themselves. Yet to complete this conversion one final dichotomy has to be overcome: the dichotomy of “colonial pollution” and cultural purity, which serves as the founding assumption of the National Education Centre. And just as the drama of national identification was enacted in the obstacle course, this “purifying transformation” is enacted in a re-creation of the self in one final section of the tour. In the first step of this concluding ritual, the visitor walks through a tubelike imitation spaceship, with a cardboard cut-out of astronaut Yang Liwei 35  The erasure of people in the development process and subsequent projection of agency and accomplishments onto the CCP leadership is deconstructed insightfully in Stein Ringen, The Perfect Dictatorship.

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smiling at them on the other end. In the second step, each child takes a seat and fills out a blank sheet of paper detailing how he or she will contribute to the motherland. This liminal passageway, while relatively humble in appearance, is nevertheless completely unlike any other part of the tour. Considering the transformative role of the center, as well as the placement of this spaceship at the end of the tour, this passageway resembles the gateways or intermediary spaces that are common components of the ritual setting and that symbolize the transition from one state of existence to another within the ritual process.36 Is this a process of the expulsion of pollution or of the birth of a newly purified self? Within the context of the National Education Centre and its mission, both processes are present. Working through the founding assumption of pollution, the latent “banana” as a form of nonhuman waste is digested and expelled from this artificial waste orifice, large enough to process humans, thereby becoming fully and consistently “yellow.” At the same time, noting the similarity of this imitation spaceship to the vaginal orifice, this moment of expulsion is simultaneously a transformative rite of passage representing the visitor’s “rebirth” and nationalized baptism as a newly pure Chinese citizen. In this process, China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, serves as the midwife facilitating this delivery and welcoming the new subject into the world with a smile that emanates national pride. The blank sheet of paper that is then handed to the visitor serves a postritual reintegrating function, resembling the public testimonials of faith given by born-again religious devotees: only in this case, the authors are born-again citizens of the PRC, filling out their own birth certificates. Their articulation of how they will contribute to the motherland becomes at once an integrative and constitutive image of the self as having a newfound and pure purpose in life, recognizing their own potential through their contribution to the “motherland”: the responses that I observed, ranging from astronauts, to military generals, to Olympic athletes, remind us of the pleasingly unrealistic grandeur that surrounds the national imaginary and the self-aggrandizement that comes with subjection to this imaginary as good, patriotic citizens. This religious conclusion brings us back to the point from which the tour began: the seemingly sacred placement of the Chinese character for “nation” at the front of the National Education Centre building. Beyond the objectivist rhetoric of education in the so-called national conditions and the ideal of understanding national conditions, the National Education Centre is a temple to a state-constructed religion of national culture, and this final step in the tour embodies the process of conversion in rebirth. True to the combination of renunciation and empowerment characteristic 36 

Victor Turner, The Ritual Process.

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of the religious experience, the center’s essentialist vision is dedicated to having students abandon sinful “non-Chinese” thought as “colonial pollution” and converting visitors to its grandiose yet limiting image of “Chineseness,” providing an affective basis for a restrictive vision of the self. An educational process represented as decolonization thus presents a new form of colonization through essentialized national identity, aiming to ensure that the state-sponsored ideal of “harmony” celebrated to the north can and will be the only true form of proper Chinese selfhood “since time immemorial.” Conclusion: The Temptation of Essentialism The National Education Centre and the national education program of which it was a part were designed to purge perceived colonial pollution and integrate Hong Kong culturally and thus politically into the PRC. In an ironic twist, however, the National Education Centre and the national education program served as an unparalleled mobilizing force for activism against Mainland influence in Hong Kong, which has gradually grown into the increasingly pronounced political and cultural conflict that we see in Hong Kong today. When I first visited the National Education Centre in 2009, discussion of national education was almost completely absent from the public sphere, with the sole exception of occasional laudatory reports in the PRC state media.37 Yet in the spring and summer of 2012, the program’s doctrinaire textbook, The China Model: National Conditions Teaching Manual, ignited an outraged response from broader Hong Kong society, leading to a series of large-scale protests that eventually culminated in the occupation of the Hong Kong government headquarters in late August and early September 2012. These protests, led by groups like Scholarism (Xuemin sichao 學民思潮), provided the activist foundation for the Occupy Central (Zhan Zhong 佔中) protests that brought conflicts between Beijing and Hong Kong political cultures to the forefront of international discussion in the fall of 2014. And since the end of the Occupy Central protests, a new flurry of activism has pushed disaffected citizens in unexpected and indeed unprecedented directions, including the increasingly public discussion of self-determination and independence, thoughts that were largely taboo just a few years ago. 37  See CCTV-9’s special report “More Hong Kong People Find National Identity as Contact with Mainland Increases,” a brief report on the tenth anniversary of 1997 that describes activities at the National Education Centre. Also see CCTV-9’s documentary on Hong Kong in the tenth year of its “return.” Titled “My Chinese Heart,” the documentary features a number of references to the National Education Centre and its activities.

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In contrast to the model of patriotic education in Mainland China in the aftermath of Tiananmen, national education in Hong Kong in the aftermath of the Article 23 controversy has unintentionally served as a catalyst for a new round of even more deeply engaged critical activism, as well as more open and determined advocacy for real autonomy. Considering that such genuine autonomy has yet to be truly granted to any of the PRC’s socalled autonomous regions, the rapid development of the protest movements in Hong Kong, the sole territory under Beijing’s control in which protests and other forms of political activism can proceed without outright suppression, suggests that the emerging struggle between incorporation into “the Chinese nation” and the counter-imagining of a “Hong Kong nation” will be lengthy and torturous. Yet in the course of resisting the colonizing essentialism of national education and the influence of the broader contemporary Chinese political culture on Hong Kong, it is also immensely important that protestors and critics remember what they are fighting against, so as to avoid mirroring the National Education Centre’s structures of identification and exclusion in their own constructions. The power that critics and activists are opposing promotes essentialism, demonstrated in the belief that the people of Hong Kong have always been and will always be Chinese, and thus must abide by a Beijing-constructed vision of “Chinese values.” It promotes simplistic labeling and demonization, demonstrated in the tendency of pro-establishment figures to label critics as unpatriotic, traitorous, and, of course, “bananas.” It also promotes a vehemently nationalist and exclusionary ideology that endorses a grandiose vision of the subject premised upon subjection to the ideal of “proper Chineseness.” Seeing these patterns, proponents of democracy, autonomy, decolonization, and independence in Hong Kong would be wise to abstain within their own movements from such seductive but ultimately destructive ideologies, which are their true opponents, no matter what form they may take.38 An autonomous and democratic Hong Kong founded upon complete isolation from its neighbor and a simplistic hatred of a group of neighboring others would in the end be a Hong Kong in which the promise of autonomy and democracy are wasted through self-closure. A Hong Kong nationalism that promotes a simplistic and exclusionary vision of “us” versus “them” would be a nationalism that loses track of the promise and potential of Hong Kong, becoming merely an echo of the nationalism currently employed as a legitimizing ideology in Beijing, simply providing different “us” and “them” variables in the same nationalist equation. 38 

For a more detailed discussion of the temptations of essentialism, see Kevin Carrico, “Swarm of the Locusts.”

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Thus, in opposing the type of simplistic and essentialist ideologies promoted by the National Education Centre, the concerned citizens of Hong Kong should at the same time guard against the easy temptation of other simplistic and essentialist ideologies and identifications. Thankfully, leading groups in the opposition to national education and Mainland influence, such as Scholarism, the National Education Parents’ Concern Group, and even the authors of the controversial recent volume Hong Kong Nation (Xianggang minzu lun 香港民族論), have maintained their distance from this type of rhetoric, learning from the pitfalls of the Chinese state nationalism that they criticize.39 Yet if simplistic or essentialist nationalist ideologies take hold in broader society, whatever form they may take, the political conservatism promoted by national education will in fact have ironically been victorious in Hong Kong. The best way to oppose the limiting essentialism and political orthodoxies that the national education program represents, then, is to promote Hong Kong as a truly open society that rises above such tempting, self-aggrandizing, but in fact always stifling and limiting views of the world and one’s place therein. References Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1995. Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Callahan, William A. China: The Pessoptimist Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Carrico, Kevin. “Swarm of the Locusts: The Ethnicization of Hong KongChina Relations.” In Franck Billé and SÖren Urbansky, eds., Yellow Perils. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017 (forthcoming). Cheng, Jennifer, and Dennis Chong. “Talks Collapse over National Classes Delay.” South China Morning Post. August 15, 2012. Cheng Yinghong. “Gangtai Patriotic Songs and Racialized Chinese Nationalism.” In Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel, eds., Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Interactions, Nationalism, Gender and Lineage, 342–367. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Cheung, Gary. “Some HK People Are ‘Bananas’: NPC Official.” South China Morning Post. May 8, 2004. Available at http://www.scmp.com/ article/454900/some-hk-people-are-bananas-npc-official. China Human Rights Defenders. “‘Inciting Subversion of State Power’: A Legal Tool for Prosecuting Free Speech in China.” 2008. Available 39 

Erlingyisan niandu Xianggang daxue xueshenghui xueyuan, Xianggang minzu lun.

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Index

1967 Riots, 15, 16, 19, 22, 120, 143, 152, 154–155, 156, 167, 174, 196, 228–229, 232, 239, 243. See also Cultural Revolution 1997 Handover, significance in British decolonization, 3, 4, 12–13, 23. See also huigui 2003 demonstration. See Hong Kong, 2003 demonstration Africa, 28, 79; African (languages), 79, 88 Andar Company, 146 Arabic (language), 80, 222 Asian Financial Crisis (1997–1998), 199 Australia, 89, 227, 231 Baghdadi Jews, 22, 23, 70, 217–232 “banditry studies,” 240, 245, 246 Bank of England, 189, 192 Banque de l’Indo-Chine, 69, 71 Basic Law, 11, 12, 20, 34, 35, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 186, 199, 206, 207, 208, 237, 254, 263, 266, 271n27; Article 23, 2, 20, 129, 130, 263, 264, 280; Article 27, 131; Article 39, 124n41; Basic Law Committee, 125; Basic Law Drafting Committee, 71, 131; Hong Kong Basic Law Consultative Committee, 71; “Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong,” 34, 127; “one country, two systems,” 20, 35, 98, 130, 135, 254, 266, 271n27 Bao Cuoshi 包錯石. See Pao, Cho-shek

bao Diao yundong 保釣運動. See Defend the Diaoyu Islands Movement Bao Yiming 包奕明. See Pao, Cho-shek Beijing, 11, 12, 103, 117, 124, 125, 130, 135, 136, 154, 171, 172, 195, 196, 197, 200, 202, 205, 236, 254, 262, 263, 264, 270, 271, 272, 275, 280; Olympics (2008), 267, 268, 274, 276, 278; relations with Hong Kong, 2, 7, 12, 13, 20–21, 33, 34, 98, 100, 118, 126, 127, 128, 129, 135, 136, 172, 188, 239, 259, 261, 264, 279, 280; relations with PRC local regions, 20, 21 Bill of Rights (BOR), 124, 126. See also International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Black, Robert, 171, 172, 174 Bourdieu, Pierre, 78, 90 Bowring, John, 114, 218 British colonial legacies, in Hong Kong, 5, 7–13, 17, 24n94, 25, 30–31, 57, 68–72, 189–191, 208; in Weihaiwei, 35–36 British Empire, 4, 13, 15, 26, 67, 144n5, 145, 157, 188, 189, 190, 192n25, 195, 218; collaboration within, 57–58; colonial autonomy within, 18; informal, 13, 26, 57 Caine, William, 62, 114 Canada, 89, 227, 228, 231 Canton System, 60, 61 Cantonese, dialect, 9, 10, 12, 31, 35, 77, 78, 83, 88, 90, 94–103 passim, 122, 144, 159; people, 24, 59

286 Castro, Leonardo Horácio d’Almada e, Jr., 220, 224, 230 CCP. See Chinese Communist Party CEPA. See Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement Chan, Yuen-ying 陳婉瑩, 248 Cheng, Irene 鄭何艾鹷, 227 Cheng Siwei 成思危, 262–263, 272 Cheung, Water 張宗永, 53–54 Chiang, Kai-shek 蔣介石, 152, 155–156, 238 China Factor, 22, 24 China Mail, 65, 173 China National Currency, 192, 193 Chinese civil war (1945–1949), 117, 187, 188 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 2, 7, 10, 15, 17, 21, 25, 36, 98, 117, 118, 146, 149, 152, 153, 156, 157, 170, 186, 187, 191, 206, 237, 238, 239, 247, 266, 271, 277n35; and 1967 Riots, 154–155; colony of, 3, 6; economic reliance on Hong Kong, 188, 194–208 passim, 238; rule over Hong Kong, 11, 20. See also colonialism; (re)colonization; United Front Chinese culture, 87n35, 91, 240, 249, 259–260, 261, 263, 271–273 Chinese diaspora, 14, 27, 240, 242, 246 “Chinese managers,” 68, 69 Chinese Medium of Instruction (CMI), 86, 87, 88, 91, 93, 97, 104 Chinese Nationalist Party. See Kuomintang Chinese Representative Council, 70 Chinese University of Hong Kong, 87n35, 102, 241 Chineseness, 28, 30, 31, 241, 248, 260, 262, 265, 271, 272, 277, 279, 280. See also Hong Kong, nationalism Chow Aaon 曹亞安, 62 Chow Shouson 周壽臣, 70 code-mixing, 31, 78, 94–96, 101, 104 Cold War, 17, 22, 145, 188, 195, 197, 206, 241, 247; and Hong Kong, 14, 15, 18, 116–122, 143–160 passim, 167, 169, 182,

Index 194, 206, 240; cultural, 27, 145, 239, 240, 242 Colonial Office (UK), 18, 113, 120, 143, 145, 148–149, 150, 157, 158, 160, 191–192, 224. See also Commonwealth Office; Foreign and Commonwealth Office colonialism, collaborative, 7–9, 11, 27n104; internal, 5, 28–29, 31, 32–35; CCP/ Mainland Chinese/PRC, 1–3, 5, 6–7, 13, 21, 28–35; definition of, 2–3, 6. See also Mainlandization colonization. See colonialism; (re) colonization Common Law, 9, 121, 127, 135 Commonwealth, 152, 188 Commonwealth Office (UK), 18 Communist China, 15, 16, 28, 156, 169, 242, 247, 248 compradors, 8, 53–72, 83, 220, 246 Comprador’s Association, 69 Comprador’s Club, 67 Court of Final Appeal (CFA), 125, 127, 128, 131, 132, 135–136 Cultural Revolution, 15, 16, 20, 27, 143, 167, 196, 197, 239n5, 242–243, 243–244n20, 252, 270n24, 274. See also 1967 Riots daluren 大陸人. See Mainlanders decolonization, 1, 4, 5, 22–23, 28, 116, 236, 240, 260, 279, 280; British, 3–4, 5, 12–13, 19, 21–26, 32, 96, 167, 217, 238; definition of, 4, 25–26, 96n78, 237 Defend the Diaoyu Islands Movement, 27, 251–252 “democratic unification,” 27 Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平, 20, 55, 186, 188, 198, 247, 252, 266, 270 Deportation of Aliens Ordinance, 119 Diaoyu Movement. See Defend the Diaoyu Islands Movement Directive for Film Censors, 149, 157 director of Information Services, 143, 152, 155 Dongjiang 東江. See East River

Index East River, 166, 167, 171, 172, 173, 175, 176, 177, 181 Education Department, Hong Kong, 82, 97 Emergency (Principal) Regulations Ordinance, 116, 119, 120, 121, 122 Emergency Regulations, Hong Kong, 118, 120, 121, 122, 149 English Medium of Instruction (EMI), 86–97 passim, 104 ethnicity and ethnic groups, 29–30, 31, 32, 34, 79, 223–224, 228, 241, 250, 254, 269 Executive Council, 69, 230 Eurasians, 8, 22, 23, 54, 70, 217–232 passim Falun Gong, 131–132, 269n23 Far East, 15, 230 Far East Regional Censorship Board, 158 feiqing yanjiu 匪情研究. See “banditry studies” Film Censorship Board of Review, 154, 156, 158–159 Film Censorship Regulations, 146, 150 film censorship in Hong Kong, 15, 17, 18, 143–160 First Opium War, 5, 8, 13, 59, 60, 61, 64 First World War. See World War I Fishball Revolution. See Mong Kok unrest (2016) foreign direct investment (FDI), 186, 188, 200 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK), 18 Foreign Office (UK), 18, 148–149, 157, 171. See also Foreign and Commonwealth Office Four Modernizations, 247, 252. See also People’s Republic of China, reform and opening up Free World, 143, 145, 149, 151, 152, 241, 242 Fu, Che 傅奇, 121, 155 Gengyun 耕耘 (pen name), 249–251 Gittins, Jean, 221, 225

287 Grantham, Alexander, 117–118, 119, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151 Great Famine (1958–1962), 34, 179, 180, 195 Great Leap Forward (GLF), 34, 169, 179–180, 195 Guangdong, 34, 119, 205, 231; linkage with Hong Kong, 14, 15–16, 17–18, 32–33, 100n95, 166–183, 198–199, 201, 202, 204 Guangzhou, 54, 59, 60, 61, 62, 70, 71, 154, 170, 173, 179 Guangzhou–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott (1925–1926), 16, 238 Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong Express Rail Link, 33; controversy over construction, 159 Guizhou, 7, 28 guocuipai 國粹派. See homelandist Guomin jiaoyu zhongxin 國民教育中心. See National Education Centre Hampton, Mark, 14, 16n54 Han Chinese, 29, 34–35 Handover. See 1997 Handover Hennessy, John Pope, 85, 115–116 Heung To Middle School, 262, 264, 272 High Island Reservoir, 169 High Island Scheme, 175, 182 HKU. See University of Hong Kong HMS Amethyst, 147, 150 Ho, Robert Tung 何東, 54, 66, 71, 116n16, 220–225 passim Ho, Stanley 何鴻燊, 71 Ho Tung, Jean. See Gittins, Jean homelandist, 27, 248, 250, 251n35, 252 Hong Kong, 1958 communist campaign, 152, 153–154; 2003 demonstration, 2, 11, 20, 28, 32, 96n78, 130, 132; 2012 national education controversy, 98, 130, 259, 261, 262, 279; banking, 7, 17, 24, 187–207, passim; Blue Ensign of, 25, 130; British identity, 14, 222; chief executive, 1, 2, 11, 34–35, 97, 103, 122, 127, 129, 134, 202, 207, 263, 264; civil service and civil servants,

288 Hong Kong (continued) 7, 25, 35, 86, 125, 223; Chinese business elite, 7–9, 10–11, 19, 53–72 passim, 191; Chinese elites and philantrophy, 53, 54, 55, 67; Chinese intermediary elites, 8, 53–54, 55, 56, 57n17, 62, 67, 68, 69, 71; Chinese national identity, 28, 30, 31, 239, 240, 244, 245, 246, 248, 254, 259–281; communist activities in, 15, 27, 117–118, 145, 147, 152, 153, 155, 174, 232, 238, 247; corruption and anticorruption 7, 10, 31, 56, 62, 79, 114, 123, 126, 134, 157, 189n7; constitutional development, 19, 22, 127, 128, 166n1; core values, 2, 25, 30, 35, 122, 130, 134, 135, 208; democracy, 7, 9, 23, 24, 27, 33, 113, 121, 123, 124, 132, 135, 136, 253, 254, 280; Europeans, 22, 85n30, 114, 116, 218, 220, 223, 224, 225; HKSAR flags, 130, 131, 266; independence, 1, 3, 30, 128, 250, 254, 264, 279, 280; international financial center, 17, 33, 53, 186–208; judicial independence, 12, 124, 125, 127, 132, 135, 208; local identity, 2, 3, 7, 23, 27, 30–31, 78, 101–102, 103, 104, 123, 130, 135, 237, 240, 250–251, 254–255; localism, 25, 30, 98, 166, 175, 177, 254; localization, 10, 15, 22, 122, 155, 156–158; national security legislation, see Hong Kong, 2003 demonstration and Basic Law, Article 23; nationalism, 27, 30, 86, 98, 239–253 passim, 280, 281; postcolonial, 6, 23–24, 96n78, 127; rule of law, 2, 8, 9–10, 11–12, 25, 30–31, 112–136, 208, 264, 272; self-determination, 2, 3, 24, 30, 254, 279; sovereignty issue, 1, 3, 16, 19, 25, 27, 124, 173, 252–253; transitional period (1984–1997), 2, 11, 16–17, 19, 23, 27, 135; universal suffrage, 2, 136, 264. See also British colonial legacies; Basic Law, Article 23 Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), 53, 63, 65, 68, 189, 192, 219 Hong Kong Artificial Flower Factory, 154, 155

Index Hong Kong Chinese Reform Association, 121, 169 Hong Kong City-State Autonomy Movement, 130 Hong Kong Club, 63, 223 Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers, 261, 264, 265 Hong Kong Island, 3n8, 4, 144, 166n2, 168, 229, 238 Hong Kong Nation, 30, 281 Hong Kong Speak. See code-mixing Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC), 220, 224, 225 Hong Kong’s autonomy, 5, 253; administrative, 5, 19, 20, 166; after 1997, 20, 96n78, 252, 253, 280; financial, 5, 17, 20n77, 24, 32, 187, 188, 189–192, 199, 206; from Beijing/PRC, 2, 19–21, 103, 130, 135; from business and professional elite, 19; from London, 17–19, 145–146, 160, 167, 206; in film censorship, 17, 145–146, 157–158, 160; political, 236 Hongkonger, 25, 113, 126, 127, 129, 130, 134, 135, 136; as ethnicity, 29–31; as identity, 31, 101–102, 123, 249–251, 254, 255; as nation, 30, 280, 281 HSBC. See Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Hu Jintao 胡錦濤, 133, 203n89, 266, 270 Huajingli 華經理. See “Chinese managers” Huamin daibiaohui 華民代表會. See Chinese Representative Council Huangdi 黃帝. See Yellow Emperor huigui 回歸, as notion, 5, 22, 27–28, 236–255, 261 Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 54 India, 59, 79, 80, 84, 144n5, 146 industrialization, 245; in China, 55, 100, 181, 182, 188–189, 198; in Hong Kong, 71, 100n95 Information Service of the United States (USIS), 151–152

Index internal colonialism. See colonialism internal colony, 7, 29, 32, 33. See also colonialism, internal International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 124, 131 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 204, 205, 207 Japan, 10, 91, 174, 176, 188, 190, 192, 193, 194, 238, 251n36 Japanese occupation, of Hong Kong (1941–1945), 3, 13, 21, 22, 23, 70–71, 77n1, 188, 193, 217, 224–226, 227, 230, 232, 238, 239n7; of Southeast Asia, 21, of Weihaiwei, 35, 36; prisoners-of-war, 227, 228 Jardine Matheson & Co., 53, 54, 69, 71 Jiang Yudui 姜玉堆, 262 Jiang Zemin 江澤民, 131, 203, 270 July 1 (Handover anniversary), 2, 21n81, 96n78, 122, 127, 130, 132 Kadoorie, Lawrence, 220, 222, 226, 230; Peninsula Group, 230; Peninsula Hotel, 220 “Know the Mother Country” Movement, 27, 248, 252 Korean War (1950–1953), 53, 195, 238 Kowloon Peninsula, 3n8, 144, 166n2, 168, 219, 238 Kowloon Riots (1956), 120 Kuomintang (KMT), 14, 15, 35, 36, 117, 119, 146, 149, 153, 156, 157, 187, 188, 191, 192, 193, 194, 206, 237, 238, 240, 244n21, 251n36 Kwok Acheong 郭甘章, 64, 66 Lam Cheng, Carrie Yuet-ngor 林鄭月娥, 35 language education in Hong Kong, bilingualism, 9n24, 87; Chinese, 87n35, 96–103, 241; English, 9, 12, 54, 58, 77–104 passim Lau, Chu Pak 劉鑄伯, 69–70 Lau, Emily Wai-hing 劉慧卿, 1n1, 129

289 Lau, Siu-kai 劉兆佳, 3, 7, 11 Lee, Nelson K., 167, 169n17, 175, 180 Legislative Council (LEGCO), 1, 33, 116, 120, 121, 125, 129, 224, 264; members of, 1n1, 70, 129, 170, 220, 223, 230. See also Provisional Legislative Council Lei Feng 雷鋒, 274, 275 Leung, Chun-ying 梁振英, 35, 103, 134, 202 Leung, Man-tao. See Liang Wendao Li, Andrew Kwok-nang 李國能, 131 Li Keqiang 李克強, 133, 187n5, 201, 204, 205 Li Yi 李怡, 243, 252 Liang Wendao 梁文道, 271n27 Liu Xiang 劉翔, 276 Lo, Een-teen 羅見田, 62 Luk, Gary Chi-hung, 56, 96n78, 112, 181 Lyttelton, Oliver, 148, 149 Macanese, 222, 224, 228, 230 Macau, 14, 22, 71, 85, 153, 172, 219, 220n10, 224, 225 MacDonnell, Richard, 115 MacLehose, Murray, 19, 156, 158 maiban 買辦. See compradors Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), 32, 34, 200–201, 202, 204 Mainlanders, 30, 31, 102n107, 123, 135 Mainlandization, 2, 32, 123, 126n46, 130, 135 Malaya, Federation of, 15, 83–84, 147–148, 150, 158. See also Malaysia Malaysia, 91, 241 Mandarin, 12, 25, 28, 32, 78, 98–104, 159 Mao Zedong 毛澤東, 116, 117, 143, 152, 188, 197, 206n103, 239, 270, 275 Mao Zedong Thought, 155, 274, 275 Maoism, 270 Maoist China, 15, 27, 34, 177, 208, 243, 270, 274, 275 Maoists, 243 Mark, Chi-kwan, 4, 19, 173 minority nationalities. See shaoshu minzu

290 Mong Kok unrest (2016), 12, 254 Morrison Education Society School, 84–85n26, 85 Murray, John L., 150–151, 152, 158 Muslim, 58 Nanjing, 146, 147, 239 national conditions (guoqing 國情), 259, 260, 261, 264, 265, 267, 278 National Education Centre, 28, 259–281 national education in Hong Kong, 21, 28, 31, 254, 259–281; 2012 controversy over, 98, 130, 259, 262 national minorities. See shaoshu minzu National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC), 12, 113, 128, 133, 262, 264 neidiren 內地人. See Mainlanders Nationalist China, 28, 29n110, 239; Nationalist government, 35, 36, 119, 238. See also Republican China New Asia College, 87n35, 240, 241, 251 New China, 238, 246, 252 New Confucianism, 27, 240, 241, 242, 249, 251 Neo-Confucianism (modern). See New Confucianism New Territories, 3n8, 35, 166n2, 176, 238, 239n7, 252, 259, 266 Ng, Margaret Ngoi-yee 吳靄儀, 1n1, 129–130 Occupy Central (2014). See Umbrella Movement (2014) October 10 Riots (1952), 119 Olympics in 2008. See Beijing One Belt, One Road, 21, 33 One China Policy, 28 “one country, two systems.” See Basic Law One Way Permit Scheme, 34, 102n107 Ozorio, Horatio, 222, 223–224, 228, 230 Pacific War (1941–1945), 22 Pao, Cho-shek 包錯石, 244–248, 251

Index Pan Ku 盤古 magazine, 242–245, 247–248, 251, 253 Panel of Film Censors, 153, 154, 156, 158 Panopticonfucianism, 272–273 patriotic education in Hong Kong. See national education in Hong Kong Patten, Christopher, 125–126, 127n48 Pearl River, 60, 171, 179 Pearl River Delta, 33, 60, 100n95 Pearl River Estuary. See Pearl River Delta Peninsula & Oriental (P&O) Steam Navigation Company, 64 Pennycook, Alastair, 83, 91 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 2014 White Paper, 20, 135; democracy, 124, 245, 252; national anthem, 152, 154, 260, 266, 271; national day (October 1), 152, 154; national emblem, 152, 154; national flag, 130, 131, 132, 152, 153, 154, 266, 269; reform and opening up, 17, 20, 54, 55, 186, 188, 198, 203n89, 252, 270; State Council, 20, 135, 201, 204 PRC. See People’s Republic of China Persia, 58 Persian Gulf, 58, 59 pidgin, 58, 94–95 Plover Cove, 169, 174, 175, 176 Po Leung Kuk, 70 Portugal, 218, 225 Portuguese, language, 59, 88; people, 22, 23, 70, 217–232. See also Macanese Pottinger, Henry, 113 pound sterling, 188, 192, 195; devaluation, 18, 24, 190, 196 Provisional Legislative Council, 125 Public Order Ordinance, 122, 131 Public Works Department, Hong Kong, 168, 171, 176 Putonghua. See Mandarin Qing dynasty (1636–1912), 3n8, 13, 14, 28, 29n110, 35, 54, 56, 60, 61, 238; officials, 60, 67, 68 Qinshihuang 秦始皇, 270

Index (re)colonization, CCP/PRC/Mainland Chinese, 2–3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 32, 34, 96n78, 112, 126, 128, 130, 135, 136, 260, 262, 277, 279, 280; British, 21–22 Red China, 27, 123, 156, 243, 244, 245. See also New China regionalism (water supply), 33, 166, 167, 173, 175–181, 182 renminbi (RMB), 17, 189, 196, 197, 200, 201, 205, 207 Republic of China (ROC), 143, 145, 146, 152, 154, 155, 156, 239. See also Republican China; Taiwan Republican China, 14, 238 Republican Revolution (1911), 86, 115, 238 “retrocession.” See huigui “return.” See huigui “reunification.” See huigui “reunification movement,” 27, 242, 246, 248, 250, 253 rule by law, 12 Sassoon, Frederick David, 220, 223 Scholarism, 279, 281 Seamen’s Strike (1922), 70, 116 Second Sino-Japanese War. See SinoJapanese War (1937–1945) Second World War. See World War II secretary for Chinese affairs, 156, 158 secretary for home affairs, 156, 159, 254n41 Sedition Ordinance, 118, 119, 122 Self-Strengthening Movement (1861–1894), 56 Shanghai, 13, 24, 56, 58, 59, 100, 146, 187, 193, 201, 205, 207, 219, 222, 229, 230 shaoshu minzu 少數民族, 29, 30, 269 shehuipai 社會派. See “social activists” (shehuipai) Shenzhen, 134, 202, 205; reservoir, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173, 179, 180, 181 Shenzhen-East River water scheme, 175, 176, 178–179 Shi Hui 石慧, 121, 155

291 Singapore, 15, 146, 147–148, 150–151, 158, 219, 227n61, 230, 241 Sino-British Joint Declaration (1984), 11, 19, 23, 124, 126, 254 Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), 10, 187, 188, 192–193, 194, 238, 242–243n16. See also Pacific War (1941–1945) “social activists” (shehuipai 社會派), 250–251 South China Sea, 28 Southeast Asia, 13, 14, 21, 53, 59, 148, 153, 176, 240 Southern Film Corporation, 146, 152, 153–154, 155 Sovexportfilm, 146, 147 Soviet Bloc, 195 Soviet Union, 15, 117, 143, 146, 195, 196, 197 Special Drawing Rights (SDR), 205 Stanley Internment Camp, 225–226, 227 Sterling Area, 188, 190, 195, 197 Sudan, 58 Sun Yat-sen 孫中山, 238, 239 Supreme Court, 113–114 Symons, Catherine Joyce, 218n3, 221–222, 224, 229–230 Ta Kung Pao 大公報, 118–119, 169 Tang, Henry Ying-yen 唐英年, 1 Tang Junyi 唐君毅, 27, 240–242, 244, 246. See also New Confucianism Tai Po, 28, 259, 260, 266 Taiwan, 14, 15, 20, 22, 28, 91, 98, 117–118, 119, 120, 143, 152, 251n36, 263n10 Terms of Reference for Film Censors, 149 The Three Monks, 269, 273 Third World, 28, 166, 247 Tiananmen crackdown (June 4, 1989), 124, 133, 136, 261, 262, 265, 280 Tianjin, 56, 58 Tibet, 7, 20, 28, 29, 263n11 Touch Base Policy, 31, 34, Treasury (UK), 149, 191 Treaty of Nanjing (1842), 59, 61 treaty ports, 59, 61, 191, 239

292

Index

Trench, David, 120, 153, 174, 175, 179 Tsang, Donald Yam-kuen 曾蔭權, 35, 134, 207 Tung, Chee-hwa 董建華, 11, 35, 97, 99, 127, 128, 129, 134, 263 Tung Tau Riots (1951), 119 Tung Wah Hospital, 55, 67, 70 “two Chinas,” 152, 153, 154, 239

Whitehall, 18, 120, 149 World Bank, 204, 207 World War I, 191, 192, 220 World War II (WWII), 3, 5, 13, 18, 21, 22, 69, 71, 77n1, 85n30, 100, 115, 116, 146, 190, 191, 217, 218, 219, 224, 226–232 passim, 238, 240. See also Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)

Umbrella Movement (2014), 2, 12, 96n78, 133–134, 136, 254, 279 United Front, 10–11, 117, 242, 247, 252 United Nations, 155, 195, 243 United States (US), 15, 22, 89, 117, 119, 133, 143, 145, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 186, 189, 190, 195, 197, 199, 227, 228, 231, 240, 243, 244n21, 245, 246, 247 University of Hong Kong, 7, 86, 87n35, 134, 135n77, 240n10, 248, 249 Urban Council, 19, 230

Xiangdao zhongxue 香島中學. See Heung To Middle School Xianggang minzu lun 香港民族論. See Hong Kong Nation Xiangshan 香山, 61 Xi Jinping 習近平, 21n81, 203, 204 Xinhua News Agency, 11, 129, 147, 152, 169, 171, 274 Xinjiang, 7, 28, 29, 263n11 Xu Dunle 許敦樂, 153, 154 Xuemin sichao 學民思潮. See Scholarism Xunhuan ribao 循環日報, 66

water supply in Hong Kong, 15–16, 166–183; desalination, 175, 176, 181, 183; shortage in 1967, 175, 177; water price, 175–177; water diplomacy, 16, 167, 169–175 Watt, Nigel J. V., 143, 152–153, 154, 155, 157 Weihaiwei, 35–36 Wen Jiabao 温家寶, 201, 203, 208 Wen Wei Po 文匯報, 119, 169

Yang Liwei 楊利偉, 270, 277–278 Yanghang banfang lianhehui 洋行辦房聯 合會. See Comprador’s Club Yellow Emperor, 270 Zhang Dejiang 張德江, 20 Zhou Enlai 周恩來, 119, 194, 196, 197, 208, 247 Zhujiang 珠江. See Pearl River

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY INSTITUTE OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES The Institute of East Asian Studies was established at the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall of 1978 to promote research and teaching on the cultures and societies of China, Japan, and Korea. The institute unites several research centers and programs, including the Center for Buddhist Studies, the Center for Chinese Studies, the Center for Japanese Studies, the Center for Korean Studies, and the Group in Asian Studies. Director: Associate Director:

Kevin O’Brien Martin Backstrom

CENTER FOR BUDDHIST STUDIES Chair: Robert Sharf CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES Chair: You-tien Hsing CENTER FOR JAPANESE STUDIES Chair: Dana Buntrock CENTER FOR KOREAN STUDIES Chair: Laura C. Nelson GROUP IN ASIAN STUDIES Chair: Aihwa Ong

CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES

CRM 75 FINAL 11.30.indd 1

CRM 75

INSTITUTE OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ● BERKELEY

INSTITUTE OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES

“This volume contains a variety of thoughtful essays covering important topics relating to Hong Kong’s colonial history. At a time when Hong Kong’s present and future are in the news, this historical examination is timely and useful.” —Rana Mitter, University of Oxford

From a British to a Chinese Colony?

Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover

Luk

“Gary Chi-hung Luk’s thoughtfully edited collection is a timely and significant intervention in the growing scholarship of Hong Kong. Timely, because this year marks twenty years since the return of the former British colony to China. In view of such recent events as the Umbrella Movement and Mongkok Incident, it is indeed time to take stock of all the controversies and momentous changes in Hong Kong after 1997. Significant, because this collection brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars who approach some of these controversies and changes in terms of colonization and recolonization—ranging from the debate of ‘internal colonialism’ to the cultural politics of Mandarinization and the ‘myth’ of the rule of law— with a clear-eyed historical perspective. This thought-provoking collection should belong to the bookshelf of everyone interested in Hong Kong and the general questions of colonialism and postcolonialism.” —Fu Poshek, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

From a British to a Chinese Colony?

“With the issue (or non-issue) of Hong Kong independence becoming the subject of increasingly acrimonious debate, From a British to a Chinese Colony? is the first book to place the region’s unique political, economic, social, and cultural transitions within their wider historical context. Decolonization, recolonization, or something else—each of the ten chapters in this timely, interdisciplinary volume offers a fresh perspective.” —John M. Carroll, University of Hong Kong

Edited by Gary Chi-hung Luk CHINA RESEARCH MONOGRAPH 75

12/12/2017 10:42:43 PM