The Rise of Kong Identity and Political Mobilisations vis-a-vis , 1949-1997 Pak Kin Wan {BA, MPA, MA}

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Queensland in 2018 School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry ii

Abstract

The emergence of a identity was neither sudden nor preordained; instead, it was a gradual historical process, one that was decades in the making and the climax of which witnessed some of the most consequential political mobilisations in the history of modern China. This dissertation charts transformations in Hong Kong from 1949 to 1997 concerning how men and women there interpreted their relationships with Great Britain, the People Republic of China (PRC), and the (CCP), the ruling Chinese political organisation the partisans of which were always eager to recruit new supporters in the city. This project analyses how Chinese in Hong Kong evolved from sojourners in the city during the immediate postwar era, to members of a settled population who viewed the colony as their permanent home, and finally to engaged citizens who were willing and able to participate in protests or popular campaigns to defend what they perceived to be the interests of their Hong Kong. This dissertation examines how acts of oppression and injustices that occurred within the context of everyday life served as building blocks for political protests. Differing opinions regarding whether Hong Kong Chinese should be loyal to the regime in control of similarly led to political confrontations between pro-PRC partisans and local activists who were unconvinced that their Chineseness was dependent upon loyalty to Beijing. Replying upon interviews with witness to and participants of momentous events in the city’s past and utilising archival sources, this PhD thesis illustrates how the rise of a sense of belonging among Chinese in Hong Kong was inextricably tied with the development of the city’s ‘culture of protest’, as controversies that arose out of tensions between the local population and Beijing only highlighted that the soon-to-be-former British colony was and would likely continue to be a unique entity within the PRC even after 1997.

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Declaration by author

This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my thesis.

I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including statistical assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures, professional editorial advice, financial support and any other original research work used or reported in my thesis. The content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the commencement of my higher degree by research candidature and does not include a substantial part of work that has been submitted to qualify for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution. I have clearly stated which parts of my thesis, if any, have been submitted to qualify for another award.

I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University Library and, subject to the policy and procedures of The University of Queensland, the thesis be made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968 unless a period of embargo has been approved by the Dean of the Graduate School.

I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the copyright holder(s) of that material. Where appropriate I have obtained copyright permission from the copyright holder to reproduce material in this thesis and have sought permission from co-authors for any jointly authored works included in the thesis.

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Publications included in this thesis

A draft version of the first chapter of this thesis was presented at the International Symposium on the Studies of Hong Kong's History and Society that was organised by Chu Hai College, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Hong Kong Museum of History. The conference paper was subsequently published. See Kent Wan,‘Postwar Hong Kong: Trials, Tribulations, and the Emergence of a Local Identity, 1949 to 1966’, in Lu feng gu jin: Xianggang lishi wenhua lun ji 鑪峰古今: 香港歷史文化論集, 2016, eds. by Xiao Guojian 蕭國健 and You Zi'an 游子安 (Xianggang: Zhuhai xue yuan Xianggang li shi wen hua yan jiu zhong xin, Chu ban, 2016), pp. 154-184.I was the sole author or this publication.

Contributor Statement of contribution Pak Kin Kent Wan (Candidate) Conception and design (100%) Analysis and interpretation (100%) Drafting and production (100%)

Submitted manuscripts included in this thesis

No manuscripts submitted for publication.

Other publications during candidature

Wan, Kent. Review of Xianggang zhaoshangjiu qiyi 60 zhounian (1950-2010) (60th Anniversary of the China Merchants’ Company’s Insurrection in Hong Kong, 1950- 2010), Guojia hanghai 国家航海 / National Maritime Research, Vol. 19 (2017), pp. 150- 156

Wan, Kent and Chenchen Wang. ‘An Examination of Brisbane’s Chinatown and Chinese Communities: A Summary of Professor David Ip’s Presentation on 15th May, 2018’, UQ History Seminars, 15 May 2018, pp. 1-3

Contributions by others to the thesis

No contributions by others.

Statement of parts of the thesis submitted to qualify for the award of another degree

No works submitted towards another degree have been included in this thesis.

Research Involving Human or Animal Subjects v

This thesis utilises oral interviews. The ethics clearance approval letter is included in the appendix. The ethics clearance application was approved by Dr. David Pritchard on behalf of School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry on December 23rd, 2016.

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Acknowledgements While this PhD project has truly been a labour of love, it was made possible through the generosity of friends, family, and mentors whom I met over the course of this amazing journey. With the exception of my parents, the two persons who have helped me the most are Professors Chi-Kong Lai and Andrew Bonnell. Professor Lai has been the best supervisor any PhD student could have hoped for, and will be the role model for me to emulate for the rest of my academic career. Professor Bonnell has been the embodiment of patience, integrity, and decency. I left a group of amazing friends in Toronto to begin my PhD journey in Brisbane. Theo, who will be getting married this September, is not my friend; he is my brother. Jiayi helped me booked my first flight to Brisbane; in a sense, my PhD journey was made possible by her. I still remember in 2014, when I was so tired and burnt out that I wanted to give up on my dream of obtaining a PhD, it was the music of Tali that inspired me to continue. I still listen to her music when I am stressed out, and I cannot wait to hear more of her work. James, Esther, Elaine, Matt, Susu, Michelle and Kaya are the core members of my French group in Toronto; my friendship with them has always sustained me. My uncle Tony, and members of his family, have hosted me repeatedly in their home. It is always wonderful to return to Hong Kong knowing that I am supported by this wonderful man and his amazing family. My dad is the person who instilled in me the love of reading. It was the books he brought for me from China that got me interested in China studies. Through her example, my mother taught me how to me kind, generous, and understanding towards others; these character traits have allowed me to be a good interviewer when conducting field works for this dissertation. My little sister’s flair for self-promotion has taught me the importance of selling oneself, especially when applying for grants! I was supported by numerous men and women of Hong Kong who were witnesses to or participants of the city’s political conflicts. Political figures like , , and Jasper Tsang took time out of their busy schedules to assist me in my project. Albert Ko (高兆 楨), Xu Yun Cheng (許雲程), Huang Liangying (黃良英), and Chen Shi Yuan (陳仕源), all members of the pro-PRC camp, were generous with their time and highly supportive of my project, our political differences notwithstanding. Their integrity and determination to uphold historical truth transcend any partisan allegiance.

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Financial support This thesis was partially supported by the National Library of ’s Study Grant

Keywords China studies, Hong Kong studies, popular mobilisations, identity formation, nationalism

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC) ANZSRC code: 210302, Asian History, 100%

Fields of Research (FoR) Classification FoR code: 2103, historical studies, 100%

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Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1-34

Postwar Hong Kong: Trials, Tribulations, and the Emergence of a Local Identity, 1949 to 1966...... 35-85

The 1967 Riots: , , and Everyday Resistance in Hong Kong ...... 86-126

Protests, Student Activism, and the Conflicts between Local Identity and Chinese Nationalism in Hong Kong, 1967-1979 ...... 126-163

Protests, Constitutional Reforms, and Consolidation of a Hong Kong Identity: The Politics of Mobilisations during the Sunset Period of Colonial Rule ...... 164-197

Conclusion ...... 198-207

Bibliography ...... 208-225

Appendix ...... 226 1

Introduction

Overview

At midnight of June 30th, 1997, as British rule came to a peaceful end and

Colony of Hong Kong officially became the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

(HKSAR) under the sovereignty of the PRC, China redeemed the humiliating defeat it had suffered in the . If the cession of Hong Kong to the in the aftermath of the First Opium War was the commencement of the so-called ‘’, a period that witnessed China’s geopolitical decline during the final decades of

Qing rule, then the city’s retrocession to Chinese sovereignty could be seen as yet another monumental step in the PRC’s relentless march toward the status of a leading world power.

Even as Chinese global ascendency continued, however, certain segments of the Hong Kong population remained wary of the PRC, and the willingness of some local residents to participate in popular movements that were critical of the Hong Kong government could be seen as indicative of rising resentment against the policy choices adopted by the city’s political leaders.

More than twenty years after the conclusion of British colonial rule, Hong Kong is still a vibrant society containing members who expect their voices to be listened to and respected by those in positions of power.

Even during British rule, Hong Kong was seen by its residents as a unique Chinese society. This study chronicles the development of a Hong Kong identity from 1949 to 1997 and explore the question of how inhabitants of the colony came to see themselves as a distinct group of Chinese. The central argument of this dissertation is that the emergence of a local identity among men and women of Hong Kong motivated them to challenge the legitimacy of political operatives who were perceived to be undermining the stability of the city.1

1 While this dissertation will focus on Hong Kong’s Chinese majority, Hong Kong, being a Chinese global city and a former British colony that served as Britain’s Far East trade and financial hub, has always been a multicultural society containing men and women of different races and faiths. Accordingly, there had been the publication of monographs in recent years that concentrated on Hong Kong’s cosmopolitanism. Emma Jinhua 2

There is a need to chronicle how expression of Hong Kong identity came to be associated with efforts by local men and women to resist political partisans who were seen as determined to undermine Hong Kong’s stability and how the territory came to be perceived as unique precisely because so many of its residents were able to defend their collective interests.

Hong Kong was transformed from being the launching point of Chinese nationalistic agitations against British in the 1920s to a site of popular protests and mass mobilisations to defend the interests of the city in the 1980s and 1990s. My dissertation is the first to examine how the realisation that Hong Kong represented a distinct society motivated political activists to engage in mass political mobilisations to safeguard the city’s distinctiveness.

Historiographical Review

From the 1960s to the 1980s, the most prominent chroniclers of Hong Kong’s past, such as G. B. Endacott, Norman Miners, and Elizabeth Sinn, focused on the examination of Hong

Kong’s political structure and cooperation between the Chinese elites and colonial officials in the governance of the colony.2 Works produced by Hong Kong specialists who were active from the 1960s to the 1980s therefore did not reveal much about the daily life of average men and women who did not reach the pinnacle of wealth and power. Nevertheless, G. B. Endacott was regarded as the ‘foremost historian of Hong Kong until the 1970s’, and Norman Miners’

Teng’s monograph focused on the experiences of Eurasians in Hong Kong and examined how their lives and careers was shaped by global migration trends. Emma Jinhua Teng, Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842–1943 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Paul O’Connor’s insightful work highlighted the vibrancy of the Muslim community in Hong Kong. Paul O'Connor, in Hong Kong: Muslims and Everyday Life in China's World City (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012). John Nguyet Emi and Lisa Yuk-ming Leung produced an outstanding volume on the lives and daily challenges of South Asian minorities in Hong Kong. John Nguyet Emi and Lisa Yuk-ming Leung, Understanding South Asian Minorities in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014). 2 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, 1841-1962: A Constitutional History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1964); Norman Miners, The Government and Politics and Hong Kong (Hong Kong: University Press, 1975); Elizabeth Sinn, Power and charity: A Chinese merchant elite in colonial Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003). Commenting on G.B. Endacott’s Government and People in Hong Kong, Hugh D. R. Baker argued that the work’s title was misleading, for Chinese inhabitants of the colony were almost entirely absent in the author’s analysis of constitutional development in Hong Kong. Hugh D. R. Baker, ‘Review of G. B. Endacott: Government and people in Hong Kong, 1841-1962: a Constitutional History', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 29. 1 (February 2006), 204-205 (pp. 204-205). 3 monographs are available in most university libraries as textbooks for undergraduate students.3

Sinn’s monograph is still seen as a classic, as it shed light on how although 19th century Chinese merchants were not represented at the highest organ of state power, they still were relied upon by the British as vital partners in the governance of Hong Kong, especially since they wielded great influence in the colony due to their presence in charitable organisations that delivered social services to local residents. This reliance on local Chinese institutions to provide social services, especially in the domain of care, was still evident after the unveiling of Hong

Kong Baptist Hospital in 1963, thus demonstrating the enduring effectiveness of the local elites as well as the organisations they led.4

When it became evident that Hong Kong would once again become part of China in

1997, the impending end to British rule created an imperative to rediscover a historical narrative whereby Chinese who resided in Hong Kong were not merely servants of the colonial state but were instead key participants in the Chinese resistance efforts against imperialism in the . Accordingly, in the 1990s, Ming K. Chan produced works that highlighted the role played by non-elite Chinese in various anti-colonial movements against British establishments in South China and rulers of colony in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.5

Based on his dissertation on South Chinese labour movement from the late 19th century to the

1920s, a group that was responsible for political actions that ‘came very close to liquidating

British interests in South China’, Chan’s chapter in a collection of academic essays focusing on Hong Kong Chinese’s refusal to meekly submit to colonial authority was especially relevant at a time when there were widespread criticisms against Sino-British negotiations leading to

3 Carroll, A Concise (New York: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2007), p. 12. 4 Michael Kam 甘穎軒, Quan ren yi zhi ban shi ji : Xianggang jin xin hui yi yuan sh i 全人醫治半世紀: 香港 浸信會醫院史 (History of Baptist Hospital since 1963)( Xianggang : San lian shu dian (Xianggang) you xian gong si, 2015), p. 30, p 84. 5 Ming K. Chan, ‘Hong Kong in Sino-British Conflict: Mass Mobilization and the Crisis of Legitimacy’, in Precarious Balance: Hong Kong Between China and Britain, 1842-1992, ed. by Ming K. Chan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1994), pp. 27-59. 4

1997 that largely ignored the wishes of men and women residing in the colony.6 Chan’s works reveal that Chinese in Hong Kong possessed the capacity for mass mobilisation against unpopular government policies. Chan further emphasised that the colony had historically been governed by British rulers and their Chinese collaborators who were often unwilling and unable to improve the lives of lower class Chinese. 7 British governance, not surprisingly, was frequently dependent upon suppression of those who challenged colonial rule.

The works of Chan therefore demonstrated the willingness of the Chinese workers in

Hong Kong to combat their colonial masters and the important roles they played in successive local challenges to British rule. Indeed, the ‘bizarre status’ of Hong Kong as a that was tolerated by its population in the age of decolonisation emerged only after the colonial state successfully overcame political threats presented by pro-PRC partisans in the 1960s.8 The social-political peace that was prevalent in the 1970s, one that led scholars such as Peter Harris and Siu-kai Lau to view Hong Kong as essentially made up of apolitical Chinese, was a historical abbreviation, one that came about after the supporters of the CCP in Hong Kong, arguably the most powerful political group in the colony, was forced into retreat after its members had been defeated by the British in the 1967 riots.9 The cliché, that Hong Kong was fundamentally an apolitical colony, one that was governed by the ‘Jockey Club, Jardine and

Matheson, the Hong Kong and Bank and the – in that order’, was never an

6 Ming K. Chan, ‘Labor and Empire: The Chinese Labor Movement in the Canton Delta, 1895-1927’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Stanford University, 1975), p. 67. For a concise overview of Sino-British negotiations from the 1980s to the 1990s, see Steve Tsang, Modern History (: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2007), chapters 15-16. 7 Ming K. Chan, ‘Hong Kong: Colonial Legacy, Transformation, and Challenge’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 547, The Future of Hong Kong (Sep., 1996), 11-23 (p. 14-15); Ming K. Chan, ‘The Legacy of the British Administration of Hong Kong: A View From Hong Kong’, , Issue. 151, (Sep 1997), 567-582 (p. 568); Ming K. Chan, ‘Democracy Derailed: Realpolitik in the Making of the , 1985-1990’, in The Hong Kong Reader: Passage to Chinese Sovereignty – An Interdisciplinary Reader, eds. by Ming K. Chan and Gerard A. Postiglione (Armonk: East Gate Book, 1996), pp. 8- 41 (p. 15). 8 Peter Harris, Hong Kong: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics (Hong Kong: Heinemann Asia, 1978), p. 132. 9 Harris, Hong Kong, p. 57; Siu-kai Lau, Society and Politics in Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press, 1984); Ming K. Chan, ‘Hong Kong Workers toward 1997: Unionisation, Labour Activism and Political Participation under the China Factor’, Australian Journal of Politics and History: Volume 47, Number 1, 2001, 61-84 (pp.63- 64). 5 accurate representation of the city’s complexity.10 Harris and Lau assumed that a unique and transitory period to be the norm in the history of , a perception not shared even by colonial policymakers, as instead of assuming the political passivity of local residents to be permanent, they were actively enacting policies to secure the goodwill of the local population. The legitimacy of the colonial state was enhanced by its willingness to deviate from its lassize-faire economic outlooks, a development that was largely the by-product of how successive riots in 1966 and 1967 exposed the frustration felt by the average residents concerning the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor and the need of the colonial state to invest heavily in various social programs.11

In spite of the overall contributions he made to Hong Kong studies and the fact that he was able to establish a truly novel historiographical framework by analysing successive challenges to British colonialism presented by the Chinese working class in Hong Kong and other parts of the Pearl River Delta, there were elements of the colonial past that were left unexplored by Chan. Chan either saw Chinese in Hong Kong as potential foot soldiers for popular mobilisation or a population that was largely left out of the machinery of government.

There is a need to investigate how residents of Hong Kong could transform themselves, sometimes within a relatively short time span, from being members of a politically apathetic population, to partisans that played prominent roles in some of the most significant anti- colonial movements in South China. While Chan did an excellent job in describing the often miserable working conditions of Chinese labourers in Hong Kong, he did not convey whether it was the accumulation of humiliating experiences while living and working in a colonial context, sudden eruptions of anti-colonial and nationalistic sentiments, or a combination of

10 Richard Hughes, Hong Kong: Borrowed Place - Borrowed Time (London: Andre Deutsch, 1968), p. 17. 11 Carroll, Concise History, p. 150. 6 both that sparked acts of political mobilisations participated by Hong Kong’s Chinese working class.12 In other words, the voices of Chinese workers were missing from Chan’s works.

Of course, this absence of Chinese workers’ voice should not be seen as a failing of

Chan. In other British colonies, officials often obsessively chronicled the rituals and customs of their subjects for the purpose of formulating policies that would further consolidate imperial power.13 The determination to control all aspects of colonial life and the obsessive attention to detail that was common in other colonies manifested themselves in interactions between the colonisers and the colonised in British Hong Kong. As it was ably demonstrated by Christopher

Munn, early colonial Hong Kong contained a substantial ‘apparatus of control and regulation’, and ‘[the] extraordinary powers accumulated’ by the colonial state ‘were repeatedly reworked, frequently supplemented, and only occasionally relinquished’.14 A powerful law and order apparatus was necessary to suppress ‘the periodic riots, strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, and disturbances that became a feature of life in Hong Kong in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’.15 It was this obsession to maintain control and the resultant need to generate the paperwork and records necessary for the colonial machinery’s continued functions that gave Munn the archival sources he needed for his groundbreaking work. These records contained vital information on how the colonial government ruled its subjects, not how colonialism was viewed by Chinese in the colony. After all, how Chinese in the colony viewed

British rule was less important than the enactment of laws and regulations to preserve colonial public order and the maintenance of statistics and other requisite information that would keep

British policymakers most informed on how the Chinese population could be kept under control.

12 Chan, ‘Labor and Empire’, Chapter IV. 13 For an in-depth examination on colonial officials’ compulsion to record and control the lives of their subjects, see Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Form of Knowledge: The British in (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996). 14 Christopher Munn, Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841-1880 (Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001), p. 376 15 Munn, Anglo-China, p. 376. 7

The recordkeeping methods of the colonial government thereby prevented Chan from chronicling how oppressions that occurred in the context of daily life motivated Chinese workers in Hong Kong to engage in acts of political mobilisations against the British.

While Hong Kong’s colonial past demonstrates that its Chinese residents possessed historical experiences that were radically different from those of their compatriots in China, the tendency of scholars to highlight the colony as a bastion of anti-imperialism and Chinese nationalism reinforced the impression that Hong Kong was simply an extension of China.

Utilising the historiographical framework that interpreted Hong Kong as a constituent part of

China, Stephanie Po-yin Chung’s book argued that as ‘the Chinese in Hong Kong identified themselves politically’ with China, or more precisely, , and ‘not with British Hong

Kong’. As such, political struggles in South China represented ‘the…arena that attracted their attention and participation’.16 The politics of merchants depicted in Stephanie Po- yin Chung’s monograph possessed a regional orientation, as they had financial interests all over

Guangdong, meaning that if they wanted to create a political environment favourable to their businesses, they had to support the creation of a regional government or facilitate the emerge of a coalition of regional leaders that would be supportive of businessmen and men of finance.

Before and after the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, historians such as Steve Tsang,

David Faure, and Pui-tak Lee emphasised that the colonial past of the city and its Chinese population deserved closer scrutiny by historians. 17 Analysing the social, economic, and political histories of Hong Kong through the compilation of primary sources and the providence of commentaries on important documents, these scholars asserted strongly that only a thorough understanding of the city’s historical heritage would allow its inhabitants and rulers to decide

16 Stephanie Po-yin Chung, Chinese Business Groups in Hong Kong and Political Change in South China, 1900- 25 (London: Macmillan Press, 1998), p. 16. 17 Steve Tsang, ed., A Documentary History of Hong Kong: Politics (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1995); David Faure, ed., A Documentary History of Hong Kong: Society (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997); David Faure and Pui-tak Lee, eds., A Documentary History of Hong Kong: Economy (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004). 8 which aspects of colonial legacy should be discerned or preserved.18 Operating within the same intellectual trend that Hong Kong possessed a distinctive history that deserved scholarly attention, Wai Kwan Chan (henceforth W. K. Chan) produced a monograph that, while acknowledging the importance of Chinese nationalism, highlighted the specific socioeconomic conditions within the colony that led to strikes and boycotts by the Chinese working class against their colonisers in the 1920s.19 Reviewer Michael Tsin stated that W. K. Chan’s work deserved ‘a wide and serious reading’ due to the author’s contribution to a growing literature that portrayed Hong Kong as more than 'a mere appendage of Sino-British history' and ‘a discrete entity’ in its own right.20 While one of the focal points of his analysis, Hong Kong’s

Seaman Union, did not leave behind a large amount of archival documents due to its depository being destroyed by a fire, through his skilful utilisation of available materials from British companies such as Swire Group, Chinese merchants, and local officials, W. K. Chan was nonetheless able to produce a work that could be seen as a counterbalance to monographs that underemphasised Hong Kong’s historical status as a distinct Chinese society.21 According to

W. K. Chan, abysmal working conditions and exploitations by British merchants as well as their Chinese allies led to the emergence of a class consciousness among Chinese workers in

Hong Kong. It is important to note that although a determination to undermine British imperialism in South China was a motivating force, the need to improve their living standards was the primary impetus behind the political activism of the colony’s workers in the early

1920s. Despite the fact that the Chinese working class in Hong Kong often played significant roles in nationwide anti-imperialist movements, there remains a need to investigate the

18 Steve Tsang and David Faure, preface to A Documentary History of Hong Kong: Economy, eds. by David Faure and Pui-tak Lee (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), vii-viii (vii). 19 Wai Kwan Chan, The Making of Hong Kong Society: Three Studies of Class Formation in Early Hong Kong (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 20 Michael Tsin, ‘China and Inner Asia: Review of The Making of Hong Kong Society: Three Studies of Class Formation in Early Hong Kong. By Chan Wai Kwan’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 51. 4 (November 1992), 881- 882 (pp. 881-882). 21 Chan, The Making of Hong Kong Society, pp. 1-2. 9 contrasting perspectives on colonialism between residents of the colony and their compatriots in China. Even with the British serving as the common enemy, the goal of Chinese workers in

Hong Kong was often to force colonial officials to become more responsive to their needs, not to eradicate colonialism or to make foreign establishments completely subservient to the interests of the Chinese political parties determined to obtain control over all of China.

Complementing Ming K. Chan’s PhD dissertation and revealing how the cooperative relationship formed between Chinese workers in Hong Kong and those who were employed in other cities in Guangdong enabled the Chinese working class in the region to emerge as a powerful political force, W. K. Chan’s work demonstrates that in addition to Chinese nationalism, a determination to create a better society in Hong Kong for men and women who had to seek employment there was another motivating factor for political mobilisations.

Hong Kong studies in the post-1997 period was dominated by works that concentrated on the policies implemented by the colonial government as well as their allies to maintain

British authority and counteract political threats presented by Chinese political actors. As demonstrated by John Carroll, although many Chinese workers in Hong Kong participated in political campaigns orchestrated by Chinese political parties to weaken British colonialism as the result of intense dissatisfaction with the local administration, colonial policymakers emerged victorious in the Canton–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott of 1925-1926 because they were strongly backed by their local Chinese allies who were convinced that the CCP and the

Kuomintang (KMT) was waging ‘an ideological and economic war’ that threatened the survival of a prosperous Chinese territory.22 Made up mostly of elite merchants, ‘loyal Chinese’

22 John Carroll, Edge of Empires: Chinese elites and British Colonial in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), p. 132. The first KMT-CCP United Front was formed in 1923 for the purpose of eliminating warlordism and imperialism in China. This first KMT-CCP United Front constituted the ruling coalition of Canton during the Canton-Hong Kong Strike of 1925-1926. The Canton regime provided financial as well as political support to the strikers and members of their families. While the Strike-Boycott was ignited by the killing of Chinese protestors at the hands of British law enforcement agents in Shanghai and Shameen, those who participated in the campaign to cripple British Hong Kong were also strongly motivated by local concerns. During the height of the Strike-Boycott, Hong Kong strikers presented the local administration with a series of demands, 10 such as Chow Shouson and their colleagues did everything within their power to ensure that

Hong Kong did not become paralysed when a large number of its workforce departed for

Canton in support of the Strike-Boycott, and some of them even performed tasks that were normally below their social status such as waste disposal and street patrol.23 While he did not utilise previously undiscovered archival materials, Carroll did build on the historiographical trend established by Sinn by stating that elite Chinese merchants in Hong Kong collaborated with the British not only because of material self-interests, but also due to their commitment to a city the preservation of which would ensure its emergence as a distinct Chinese society superior to the various regimes vying to control China. While Chinese workers in Hong Kong remained highly mobile, especially as the lack of border control between the colony and other cities in the Pearl River Delta further facilitated the ease of travel between British and Chinese jurisdictions, businessmen like Chow had by the 1920s identified Hong Kong as their permanent home.24 A recurring theme in all of Carroll’s monographs was that while they wanted to played a meaningful role in China’s development as a modern nation-state, if the

Chinese government and Hong Kong were engaged in political conflicts, prominent Hong

Kong Chinese merchants in the 1920s would choose to defend British Hong Kong, a key point that was overlooked by Chung as her analysis ended just before the Strike-Boycott.25 What

Chung ignored was that while Hong Kong Chinese businessmen did indeed possess business interests all over Guangdong, their wealth and social status were dependent upon the preservation of Hong Kong’s colonial status. As stated by Zheng Wan Tai and Siu-Lun Wong, business successes and social-political prominence of the leading Chinese in Hong Kong was based on their ability to serve as intermediaries between the local population, the Chinese

the most prominent of which included direct elections to the , the introduction of eight-hour workday, and the end of legal discrimination against Chinese in the colony. Chan, ‘Hong Kong in Sino-British Conflict’, p. 45, p. 48. 23 Carroll, Edge of Empires, p. 139, p. 152, p. 186. 24 Carroll, Edge of Empires, p. 86; Chan, ‘Labor and Empire’, p. 98. 25 Carroll, Concise History, pp. 75-76, p. 105; Carroll, Edge of Empires, p. 139, p. 152. 11

(Guangdong) government, and the British colonialists, a skillset that would become unnecessary had the colony fell to the KMT-CCP coalition in the 1920s.26

Due to availability of recently declassified documents in the British National Archive and the willingness of key participants to discuss the roles they played in past political events,

2009 and 2010 witnessed the publication of monographs that focused on the 1967 riots, during which CCP officials stationed in Hong Kong and their local supporters essentially waged a low-intensity war against the colonial administration.27 In 1967, public support for colonial rule once again ensured the survival of British Hong Kong.28 As argued by Gary Ka-wai

Cheung, Robert Bickers and Yep, the defeat suffered by CCP cadets not only further marginalised their supporters in the colony, but also led to public appreciation of the colony’s status as a distinct Chinese territory and renewed support for the colonial state as the most credible defender of Hong Kong Chinese’s welfare.29 While including a brief comparative study between the 1925-1926 Strike-Boycott and the 1967 riots and a scope of analysis spanning from Hong Kong’s place within the British imperial system to the colony’s domestic politics, the collection of essays edited by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep provided excellent snapshots of important historical moments in the city’s past without explaining in detail how these historical moments came to be.30 Although Cheung strongly asserted that riots led to the emergence of a Hong Kong identity, readers were not given an analysis of how this rise of a local consciousness impacted Hong Kong going forward, as Cheung’s work represented a study

26 Zheng Hongtai 鄭 宏 泰 and Wong Siu-Lun 黃紹 倫, Zheng Wan Tai and Siu-Lun Wong 政商兩和 : 何東 (Politics and Business: )( Xianggang : San lian shu dian (Xianggang) you xian gong si, c2013), p. 169. 27 Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, (eds.), May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009); Gary Ka-wai Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed: The 1967 Riots (Hong Kong: University Press, 2009. 28 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, p. 133. 29 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, p. 5, p. 132; Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, ‘Studying the 1967 Riots: An Overdue Project’, in May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, eds. by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp. 1-19 (p. 12). 30 John Carroll, 'A Historical Perspective: The 1967 Riots and the Strike-Boycott of 1925-26', in May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, eds. by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp. 69-87; Bickers and Yep, ‘Studying the 1967 Riots’, p. 16. 12 of events in 1967 only. Instead of being a definitive study, Bickers and Yep themselves admitted that their volume should be seen as the point of commencement for students interested in investigating postwar Hong Kong and the 1967 riots.31 There is a need for a historical analysis that would take into consideration Hong Kong’s postwar history in its entirety to explain how the Hong Kong population’s identity formation process culminated in the majority of its members supporting the colonial government in 1967 and the ways in which the rise of a sense of belonging impacted social-political development in the city as the colonial era was coming to an end.

Renewal academic interest in the 1967 riots did not lead to the 1960s monopolising scholarly attention at the expanse of later periods of colonial rule. The mid-to late 2000 continued to witness the publication of high-quality books focusing on Hong Kong. Leo

Goodstadt’s tetralogy on the colonial government’s socioeconomic policies from the postwar era to the end of the colonial period deserves careful reading for the author’s crisp writing and insightful commentaries on how collaboration between elite Hong Kong Chinese merchants and colonial officials continued right to the end of British rule.32 In stark contrast to this careful examination of colonial policymaking process, there was a noticeable absence of scholarly works that concentrated on mass mobilisation efforts from the 1970s to the 1980s.

Indeed, it is surprising that scholars did not build on the works published by scholars such as

Ming K. Chan and Gerard A. Postiglione that detailed how fear created by the impending resumption of Chinese sovereignty led to mass protests before 1997. 33 Suzanne Pepper’s monograph on the history of pro-reform movements was an outstanding contribution to Hong

31 Bickers and Yep, ‘Studying the 1967 Riots’, p. 16. 32 Leo F. Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005); Leo F. Goodstadt, Profits, Politics And Panics (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007); Leo F. Goodstadt, Reluctant Regulators (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011); Leo F. Goodstadt, Poverty In The Midst Of Affluence (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014). 33 Ming K. Chan and Gerard A. Postiglione, (eds.), The Hong Kong Reader: Passage to Chinese Sovereignty (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1996). 13

Kong studies, and it merits praise as a historical monograph that charted the evolution of how local efforts to implement constitutional changes went from being led and participated mostly by middle class professionals to popular campaigns involving significant segments of the population.34

Hong Kong studies received further academic attention after the 2014 Umbrella

Movement, as the political chaos of that year once again demonstrate the capacity of the local population for popular mobilisations. Both Richard C. Bush and Lynn T. White wrote well- received volumes on the prospect for constitutional reforms in Hong Kong after the events of

2014. 35 In many ways, White and Bush were operating in the historiographical tradition established by prominent practitioners of Hong Kong studies like Ming K. Chan, in that Hong

Kong was analysed as a unique Chinese city, one that could become a facilitator for positive changes within China. White explicitly stated that Hong Kong could be seen as a case study to determine whether constitutional changes within the PRC were possible, while Bush emphasised how Beijing interacted with the city could give analysts clues on how the CCP leadership would deal with other peripheric Chinese territories such as .36 At the same time, there had been a rising tendency among scholars based in Hong Kong to treat the city and developments within it as almost the singular focus of analyses.37 It was almost as if distrust towards the CCP, a sentiment that was gaining in prominence, was influencing a rising generation of Hong Kong scholars a large segment of which was increasingly unwilling to

34 Suzanne Pepper, Keeping Democracy At Bay (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008). 35 Lynn T. White III, Democratization in Hong Kong – and China? (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016); Richard C. Bush, Hong Kong in the Shadow of China (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2016). 36 Bush, Hong Kong, chapter 11; White, Democratization in Hong Kong, chapter 8. 37 Monographs produced by Chen Yun and Cheng Chung-tai are examples of Hong Kong-centric scholarship. Chen Yun 陳雲, Xianggang cheng bang lun : yi guo liang zhi, cheng bang zi zhi, shi Xianggang sheng si you guan zhi shi 香港城邦論 : 一國兩制, 城邦自治, 是香港生死攸關之事 (Hong Kong as a City-state: One Country, Two systems, City-state Self-rule, a Key Issue in the Survival of Hong Kong) (Xianggang : Tian chuang chu ban she you xian gong si, 2011). Cheng Chung-tai 鄭松泰, Civic Nationalism and State Formation 由本土民 權到建邦立國 (Xianggang : Re xue shi bao you xian gong si, 2016 Chu ban). 14 examine evolutions within Hong Kong alongside the momentous changes that were occurring within the borders of the PRC.

Significance of this Project:

While accepting that the unique historical circumstances surrounding Hong Kong since the establishment of the Crown Colony in 1842 has made it a unique Chinese territory and arguably the most globalised and cosmopolitan city in all of China by 2018, this dissertation studies the history of Hong Kong from 1949 to 1997 through an emphasis on ‘the China factor’

– an acknowledgement that the city’s relations with China and political parties that sought to control the mainland was, and is, an inescapable part of the Hong Kong story.38 Indeed, as it was pointed out by Helen Siu, Hong Kong was part of the southern Chinese (Lingnan) cultural sphere of influence and activists in the city had historically been determined to play meaningful roles in Chinese national politics.39 In explaining how and why large segments of the Hong

Kong population went from being merely apprehensive about the PRC in the immediate postwar era, to unwilling to follow the commands of CCP partisans in 1967, and to openly calling for the enactment of political reforms within the city as well as the PRC in 1989, my project addresses to what degree mass rallies for constitutional changes in the sunset period of colonial rule were motivated by the imperative to safeguard the city’s welfare and a determination to transform Hong Kong into a more liberal political entity, one that could serve as an example for the PRC to emulate.

38 According to Saskia Sassen, ‘Since its inception, Hong Kong has been a key intersection of different worlds, forever a strategic exchange node for firms from China to the rest of the world and from the rest of the world to China…Hong Kong could only lose this historic role if all investor interest in China would cease, or if Shanghai could replicate the combination of resources represented by Hong Kong. Both of these conditions are unlikely in the near future’. Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 174. 39 Helen Siu, ‘Remade in Hong Kong: Weaving Into the Chinese Cultural Tapestry’, in Unity and Diversity: Local Cultures and Identities in China, eds. by Tao Tai Liu and David Faure (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1996) pp. 177-197 (p. 177, p. 180).

15

This project asserts that the objective of prominent Hong Kong activists, such as Martin

Lee, was not simply to implement constitutional changes in city, but also to ensure that a liberal political system would serve as a guarantor of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula that promised the post-1997 HKSAR a significant degree of autonomy. Through the organisation of mass popular movements that were able to attract the participation of record number of local residents, local activists cemented a political culture that oriented towards the preservation of

Hong Kong’s peace and prosperity. Mass protest that erupted in Hong Kong as 1997 was approaching led to the consolidation of a local identity in the city.

Theoretical Underpinnings

Instead of treating the emergence of a Hong Kong identity as a sudden event, my dissertation instead examines its development as a historical one, something that was decades in the making. My dissertation demonstrates that Hong Kong identity had a historical root, an evolutionary product that grew alongside changes that was occurring in the colony. My dissertation assumes that the Chinese residents of Hong Kong shared a baseline of togetherness that was created by a common language, ethnic background, and cultural heritage. Their commonality was then accentuated by not only the policies of the colonial state, but by escalating Beijing-Hong Kong tensions and the belief that the PRC was unwilling to acquiesce to constitutional reforms in the city that would have granted local residents a greater say in the affairs of the city. Life in Hong Kong create within local society an unwritten moral code, one that was seemingly disregarded by political partisans whose loyalty was centred around organisations outside of Hong Kong. As conflicts between those who viewed Hong Kong as the focus of their political activities and those who were determined to propagate loyalty towards organisations outside of the city intensified, the colony was increasingly being seen as a distinct entity, especially since controversies concerning the proper political allegiance of its inhabitants only accentuated the fact that it was distinct from other Chinese cities. When acts 16 of resistance that took place within the context of everyday life appeared to be unable to preserve the city’s way of life, a large segment of the Hong Kong population became convinced that mass mobilisation represented the only way for inhabitants of the city to defend their core values. This dissertation demonstrates how acts of resistance that took place in the context of everyday life gradually became massive mobilisations efforts that fundamentally challenged the existing political system.

The arguments presented by Michael Billig, that various insignificant aspects of daily living constantly reminded residents that they resided in a geopolitical entity possessing a unique cultural heritage that set it apart from other nation-states, and that these reminders often became so embedded in the daily life of the members of the national community that they became unexceptionally, could be applied to British Hong Kong as well.40 Hong Kong, after all, was geographically a part of South China that was separated from the Chinese state due to the Qing Empire’s defeat in the Opium War. By the 1960s, however, the separation between

Hong Kong and the PRC appeared to be a part of natural order in East Asian geopolitics because, by then, the city’s colonial status had been in existence for over a century and its legitimacy was constantly reinforced by the British administration’s ability to issue its own currency and enforce border restrictions, capacities that were associated with modern nation- states. Each time a person who grew up in Hong Kong utilised the Hong Kong currency for his or her daily purchases, he or she was reminded of the fact that he or she was residing in a state that was separated from the PRC. The perpetuation of Hong Kong’s colonial status contributed to the emergence of a local identity, as the longer Chinese in Hong Kong resided in a polity separated from the PRC, the easier for them to perceive separation between them and other

Chinese as something natural. In the eyes of many residents of Hong Kong, colonialism, instead

40 Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 1995), pp. 22-21. 17 of being viewed as something that was imposed upon them, represented a normal part of their daily existence.

Of course, colonialism was often challenged, especially by pro-PRC partisans in Hong

Kong, and the city was never safe from the volatility of Chinese politics. As noted by John

Hutchinson, it was often intra-ethnic conflicts that were the most contentious, as rivals were convinced that they were the better representatives of their ethnic groups, and that their opponents were traitors that had to be crushed.41 In the case of Hong Kong, in addition to confrontations between the KMT and the CCP over which party was the legitimate representative of China, tensions in the 1960s erupted between those who viewed that being

Chinese meant being loyal to the regime currently in power in China and those who were convinced that the capacity to preserve and appreciate Chinese cultural heritage represented the essence of being members of the Chinese civilisation in the 20th century. Even when Sino-

Hong Kong tensions were at their peak, Hong Kong Chinese did not abandon their cultural heritage, as it was immediately after the pro-PRC partisans waged an existential struggle against the colonial regime that the campaign to make Chinese an official language intensified and captured popular imagination. 42 In addition to being a conflict between Chinese nationalism and British colonialism, the 1967 riots could be classified as an attempt by pro-

PRC Chinese nationalists, who were keen to enforce national unity at the expanse of the emerging identity in the city, to impose their ideology on their compatriots in Hong Kong, a course of action that partisans of the CCP believed to be in the best interests of those residing in the colony.43 As stated by Hutchinson, it was possible for members of an ethnic group to become so alienated from their peers that political conflicts became inevitable.44 Conflicting interpretations among members of the same cultural group over their proper responsibilities to

41 John Hutchinson, Nations as Zones of Conflict (London: Sage Publications, 2005), pp. 77-78. 42 Wai-man Lam, Understanding the Political (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), p. 127. 43 Hutchinson, Nations as Zones of Conflict, p. 44. 44 Hutchinson, Nations as Zones of Conflict, p. 101. 18 each other and to the ethnic community of which they were a part represented a fundamental tension in postwar Hong Kong.45

During the 1967 riots, it was Hong Kong resident’s ‘everyday resistance’ against political actors who were perceived to be acting in a manner that was harmful to the stability of the city that preserved its British status.46 Using the theoretical approach of James C. Scott, who stated that ‘the aggregation of a host of petty, self-interested acts of insubordination or desertion’ could have profound impact on the outcomes of political campaigns to either consolidate or destabilise a ruling regime, my project highlights how Hong Kong Chinese’s collective refusal to acquiesce to the collapse of colonial rule saved British Hong Kong when it faced an existential threat in 1967.47

That there were Hong Kong residents who were unwilling to accept the collapse of the city’s colonial status reveals that by the 1960s, Hong Kong was becoming a distinct Chinese society, one that was developing a set of unwritten code of conduct the adherence to which by local inhabitant was necessary for their collective prosperity. This dissertation chronicles the ways in which Hong Kong’s moral regulations, which represented ‘a tacit collective convention, unwritten, but legible to all dwellers through the codes of language and of behaviour’, emerged during the postwar era.48 Arguing that the actions of partisans of Chinese political parties often seemed determined to violated Hong Kong’s ‘unwritten moral code’, the cardinal principle of which was the preservation of the city’s prosperity and the collective well-beings of its residents, this dissertation analyses how supporters of the CCP gradually became marginalised in local society, so much so that they even formed a subsociety, or to use a Bordieuan term, a

45 Hutchinson, Nations as Zones of Conflict, p. 77. 46 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 294. 47 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 294. 48 Michel De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life – Volume 2: Living and Cooking, trans by Timothy J. Tomasik (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), p. 16. 19

‘habitus’, in Hong Kong, one containing its own values, distinctive culture, and ideology.49 In this way, there existed in post-1967 Hong Kong a pro-PRC habitus in which ‘symbolic capital’ was accumulated through acts of loyalty to the PRC.50 As ‘adherence to an institution is directly proportional to the severity and painfulness of the rites of initiation’, the fact that pro-

PRC partisans were consigned to the margins of Hong Kong society meant that they had no choice but to form a habitus if only for mutual support and defence against an often hostile mainstream society. 51 This project demonstrates that unity and cohesion were maintained within the pro-PRC camp through the establishment of a series of interconnecting personal, professional, and even familial ties that promoted loyalty to Beijing. Such a policy ensured that actions contrary to the wishes of the party-state would constitute a betrayal to one’s friends, family members, and colleagues. Borrowing Michel Foucault’s argument concerning how the utilisation of non-violent means could nevertheless crush the spirits of those who broke established societal rules, I will demonstrate that while no longer relying upon violence to preserve loyalty after the 1967 riots, the pro-PRC habitus defended itself against external enemies not through physical domination, but by the destruction of its opponent’s reputations in various public forums.52

While there existed a very substantial number of PRC sympathisers in Hong Kong, distrust towards the CCP fully manifested itself in 1989, when protests after protests erupted in the city before and after leaders in Beijing were seen as using excessive force in the removal of student protestors assembled in Tiananmen Square. Participated by about one-sixth of the total population of Hong Kong at their absolute peak, the rallies and protests of 1989 became

49 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, Sociological Theory, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), 14-25 (p. 17, p. 19); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. by Richard Nice (New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1977), p. 21. 50 Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, p. 23. 51 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Rites of Institution’, in Language & Symbolic Power, ed. by John B. Thompson, trans. By Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 117-127 (p. 123). 52 Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 7, p. 15. 20 so inseparable from Hong Kong identity that they evolved into an annual tradition, one participated by all those in Hong Kong who were critical of the CCP year after year since

1989.53 Given the fact the protests and rallies to commemorate the Tiananmen Square incident occupied the busiest areas of Hong Kong, a city in which land represented a highly valued commodity, it would be proper to examine popular mobilisations during the sunset period of colonial rule using the analytical lenses of Henri Lefebvre. As stated by Lefebvre, instead of constituting nothing, space actually represented ‘a framework of power’, as each form of sovereign authority, be it a city-state, an imperial state, or a nation-state, had its own ‘particular way of partitioning space’.54 If utilisation of space represented the demonstration of power by a sovereign authority, then occupy of space should be seen as challenge or repudiation by men and women who were unwilling to acquiesce to those who had power over them. Given the fact that protestors were shouting anti-CCP slogans at sites such as Victoria Park, it is difficult to escape the impression that this determination to occupy the most expansive area of Hong

Kong represented a challenge to the outgoing and incoming sovereign powers, both of which were seen as unwilling and unable to defend the interests of Hong Kong. At a time when the

CCP was determined to inherent the British administrative structure, one the power of which was highly concentrated in the hands of elite policymakers, protestors in Hong Kong were mobilising against a governing system that, in the words of Crawford Young, was often able to be ‘freed…from responsiveness to its subjects to a remarkable degrees’ due to it unaccountability.55 My dissertation demonstrates that in the process of engaging in popular

53 Alvin So, ‘The Tiananmen Incident, Patten’s Electoral Reforms, and the Roots of Contested Democracy in Hong Kong’, in The Challenge of Hong Kong’s Reintegration With China, ed. Ming K. Chan, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997), pp. 48-85 (p. 52); Daniela Wei, Fion Li, and Miaojung Lin, ‘Tiananmen Vigil in Hong Kong Draws Smallest Crowd Since 2008’, Bloomberg, 5 June 2017, in ‘ https://www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2017-06-04/tiananmen-vigil-in-hong-kong-draws-smallest-crowd-in-nine-years’, [accessed 17 February 2017]. 54 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans by D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1991), pp. 280-281. 55 Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 59. 21 mobilisations against their current and future sovereign masters, the population of Hong Kong acquired an identity that was distinct from their compatriots in China, one that was, to use a term popularised by Craig Calhoun, ‘categorical’, as it was a sense of belonging that convinced

Hong Kong Chinese that they had a direct relationship that was not mediated by other

‘networks of concrete social relations’ with the polity on the behalf of which they were protesting. Hong Kong identity therefore was much more ‘salient’ than other forms of identifications, as there existed a conviction that the advancement of the city’s social, economic, and political interests would benefit the majority of its residents.56

Theoretical Considerations

1) Everyday Resistance as the Building Block for Popular Mobilisations

- Everyday resistance represented a series of defensive campaigns waged by members of a

population who were unwilling to risk opened confrontations against those in positions of

power. According to Scott, while each act that violated societal norms would provoke acts

of resistance that would undermine the violators’ standing in the community, even character

assassination campaign, one of the principal ‘weapons of the weak’, could not force its

targets to engage in new behaviours; rather, the best hope for the powerless was to force

those in positions of power to cease acting in a manner that was harmful to their social

inferiors. 57 This dissertation demonstrates, however, that everyday resistance often

possessed accumulative effects, as each minor act of defiance and successful deployment

of weapons of the weak established precedents concerning which types of behaviour were

socially acceptable. While each weapon of weak concentrated on specific violations of

societal norms, successive everyday resistance established moral code that members of

56 Craig Calhoun, ‘Social Theory and the politics of Identity’, in Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, ed. by Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), pp. 9-37 (p. 26). 57 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, pp. 24-25.

22

society had to abide. Successful implementation of everyday resistance therefore provided

the groundwork for popular mobilisations, as weapons of the weak not only led to the

creation of moral code against which all members of society would be judged, the

successful defence of their immediate interests by men and women without political power

also allowed them to conserve strength so that when they were powerful enough to openly

challenge those who harmed their welfare, they would have sufficient justifications for their

defiance. If those in positions of power were acting in a manner contrary to societal

interests, everyday resistance and weapons of the weak enabled those without formal power

to safeguard their strength before attempting to impose their values on authority figures

whose actions were deemed to be harmful to society.

2) Intrapopulation Conflicts as Engines for Societal Changes

- Ultimately, Scott, De Certeau, and even Billig, with his concentration on the capacity of

stable nation-states to reinforce a sense of unity through the creation of items bearing

distinctive nationalist symbols and insignias, represented works that analysed well-

functioning societies possessing few existential stifles. All three of them examined societies

that were already formed, not those that were coming into existence or were transforming.

Sceptical about the durability of ‘revolutionary consciousness’ that demanded sweeping

societal changes and the viability of revolutions that sought the destruction of existing

social norms, transformations did not constitute one of Scott’s focuses. 58 To examine

postwar Hong Kong, the analytical frameworks of Scott, De Certeau, and Billig had to be

used alongside that of Hutchinson, whose work highlighted conflicts among those who

lacked formal power. The modern history of Hong Kong not only reveals that crises that

threatened to upend existing social norms and traditions did occur, but also that

confrontations could erupt between the rulers and the ruled as well as between those who

58 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 332, p. 341 23

did not occupy formal positions of authority, especially within societies that were

undergoing profound transformations. Confrontations between different groups within the

same population could also significantly enlarge the social space available for political

engagements, as those in formal positions of authority either were too preoccupied by other

matters during periods of great societal changes to intervene in intrapopulation conflicts,

or that the defeat of one group necessarily enlarge the ability of its vanquishers to play a

larger role in public affairs. Either way, this type of intrapopulation conflicts usually

sharpened the ability of common men and women to participate in public affairs, so that

when the time came that they had to confront those in actual positions of authority, these

veterans of past political conflicts would be ready for new engagements.

3) Popular Mobilisations as Means to Cement a Local Identity

- Large mobilisation efforts in Hong Kong, most noticeably the protests in the aftermath of

the Tiananmen incident, failed to achieve their objectives of transforming the city’s

constitutional structure. At the same time, while they failed in their stated goals, popular

mobilisations, as reveal in the history of Hong Kong, often created changes. As stated by

Eric Hobsbawn, acts of revolts by the common people, while often doomed to failure, could

nevertheless live on in popular memory, thereby serving as foundations for future popular

movements.59 Even Henri Lefebvre, when he asserted that the overcoming of inequalities

could only be achieved first ‘by occupying space’ and then ‘by producing a space’, was

advocating for a two-step process that would end with common people reclaiming their

ability to carve out a spatial area separated from global capitalism, thereby demonstrating

that the objective of popular mobilisations was never to succeed on the first attempt.60 For

better or worse, the popular movements in 1989 arguably gave birth to Hong Kong’s

59 E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (New York: The New English Library Limited, 1962), p. 20 60 Quoted in Andy Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 122. 24

‘protest culture’ that had come to be a defining feature of the city’s political environment.61

In this sense, political mobilisations were often future-oriented, as they could be seen as

the first steps in the process of transforming existing social, economic, and political

structures.

- The assumption of this dissertation is that, similar to the emergence of working class

solidarity in from the 18th to the 19th century, during which a vibrant working class

culture, a refusal to submit meekly to aristocratic rule, and a willingness to politically

mobilise to challenge those in positions of authorities led to a ‘collective self-

consciousness’ of the English workers, the men and women of Hong Kong, through

experiencing together British rule, participation in everyday resistance, and common

engagement in monumental political mobilisations the primary purpose of which was to

alter the existing political system that the CCP was determined to inherit from the departing

British, gained a sense of belonging before the end of colonial rule.62 This dissertation

therefore subscribes to Craig Calhoun’s argument that strong identity manifested itself in

collective action, and its intensity was often reinforced when a group was mobilised for the

achievement of a common purpose or the defence of a moral code accepted by the majority

as legitimate.63 In Hong Kong, ‘participants in collective action seek to build, legitimate,

or express an identity’.64 The purpose of large-scale protests in Hong Kong was to ‘make a

nonstandard identity acceptable and to make that identity livable in the context of the

movement itself’.65 Even popular movements that failed to achieve their stated objectives

could become means for a fractured population to achieve a sense of cohesion or unity.

61 Bob Beatty, Democracy, Asian Values, and Hong Kong: Evaluating Political Elite Beliefs (Praeger: Westport, 2003), p. 90. 62 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 913. 63 Craig Calhoun, ‘The Problem of Identity in Collective Action,'' in Macro Micro Linkages in Sociology, ed. by Joan Huber (Newbury Park, Cal.: Sage, 1991), pp. 51-76 (p. 53, pp. 64-67). 64 Calhoun, ‘The Problem of Identity’, p. 51. 65 Calhoun, ‘The Problem of Identity’, pp. 51-52. 25

Violently contradictory memories of popular protests could help a population achieve

unity, as the very fact that members of a polity fought over the significance of past events,

or even engage in political mobilisations against one another over conflicting

understandings of historical incidents, meant that they did indeed share a common history,

their disagreement over its interpretation notwithstanding. The monumental political events

that occurred in postwar Hong Kong changed the city, as popular mobilisations became an

engine for the city’s identity formation process.

The Emergence of a Local Identity in Hong Kong

British colonialism created a basic sense of distinctiveness and belonging

Everyday resistance was utilised to defend British Hong Kong during the 1967 riots

Living conditions in Hong Kong necessitated the creation of an A pro-PRC habitus emerged after unwritten moral code the the 1967 riots that enforced unity purpose of which was to defend through interconnecting the collective welfare of those professional or familial ties residing in the city

Conflicts between different factions in Hong Kong reaffirmed a local identity

Dramatic political events led to popular mobilisations that further consolidated a local identity

Chapter Outline

Chapter One charts how Hong Kong transformed from a territory made up primarily of sojourners to a city with a permanent population, even in the absence of concerted identity formation efforts by British policymakers and in spite of local Chinese residents’ political, economic, as well as cultural ties with mainland China. Policy changes such as the democratic reform package proposed by Governor Mark Young in 1946, one of the objectives of which was to create civic pride among residents of Hong Kong by giving them the right to vote and a direct stake in local affairs, was rejected by Governor and his political 26 allies in 1952.66 Prominent Confucian scholars who found teaching posts in Hong Kong such as Ch'ien Mu similarly did not advocate for the emergence of a local identity. Motivated by the an anti-communism that viewed the PRC as an ideological enemy due to its leaders’ perceived disrespect of Chinese traditions, Ch'ien Mu and his colleagues at New Asia College espoused a nationalism that focused on appreciation of China as the site of origin for Chinese culture and admiration of past cultural achievements as a means to safeguard colonial residents’ ethnic identity.67 Hong Kong residents, like many of their compatriots who resided in jurisdictions outside of China during the immediate postwar period, overwhelmingly identified themselves as ethnically and culturally Chinese.68 As pointed out by Pui-Tak Lee, men and women who left their home provinces and came to the colony in order to escape political conflicts, even businessmen and financiers who were ideologically opposed to the communist regime, never entirely terminated their ties with China. They regularly conducted financial transactions with

PRC officials and sent money as well as goods to assists their relatives in China.69 Nevertheless, as stated by Billig, modern geopolitical realities such as the closure of borders between states inevitably reinforced the belief among residents that, instead of being able to freely move between different jurisdictions, they had to pick a polity to be their definite home.70 As the colonial administration began to exercise border control by 1949 to limit the influx of Chinese refugees into the colony, by the 1960s, there were many local inhabitants who grew up in the colony and had not previously resided in any other jurisdictions.71 Hong Kong’s ability to

66 Steve Tsang’s work is the best historical account available on attempted constitutional reforms in Hong Kong from the 1940s to the 1950s. Steve Tsang, Democracy Shelved: Great Britain, China, and Attempts at Constitutional Reform in Hong Kong, 1945-1952 (London: Oxford University Press, 1988). 67 For an analysis on how scholars exiled from China operated in postwar Hong Kong and the ideology of Chinese intellectuals active in the colony, see Grace Ai-Ling Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the : Chinese Cultural Education at Hong Kong's New Asia College, 1949-63 (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2012). 68 Peter Harris, ‘Nation and Nationalism in China’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 39.1 (April 1998), 111-124 (p. 120). 69 Pui-Tak Lee, ‘Avoiding Isolation by the Revolution: K. P. Chine’s Dealings from Hong Kong with Shanghai and Taipei, 1948-1956’, in The Capitalist Dilemma In China's Communist Revolution, ed. by Sherman Cochran (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014), pp. 45-65 (p. 65); Tsang, Modern History, p. 159. 70 Billig, Banal Nationalism, p. 23. 71 It is important to note that without the cooperation of the PRC, measures to enforce border control were difficult to strictly enforce. Refugees continued to pour into Hong Kong in the 1950s and the 1960s. It was not 27 provide its new arrivals with opportunities to start their lives anew due to the remarkable growth of the manufacturing sector, and the resultant capacity to absorb migrants into the local workforce meant that instead of overwhelming the city, successive waves of refugees were assimilated into Hong Kong society.72 Since the PRC was often embroiled in political chaos, those who arrived in Hong Kong as refugees were discouraged from returning to their native provinces. A sense of permanency, however, did not necessarily translate into loyalty towards the colonial government. Colonial rule was often ‘repressive and racist’, and corruption permeated almost all levels of government in the postwar period. Social services in Hong Kong were seen as inadequate in the 1960s, and in spite of Hong Kong’s incredible economic growth,

‘considerable improvement in living conditions’ merely ‘inspired the desire for still further improvement’.73 As revealed by the 1966 riots, a disturbance that was provoked by the Star

Ferry’s price increase, an undercurrent of anger and resentment existed among Hong Kong

Chinese, and it was unclear whether a significant number of them would rally to the defence of the colonial state in the event of a major political crisis.74

Chapter Two examines how British policymakers turned the tide against pro-PRC partisans during the 1967 riots and the far-reaching effects the disturbances had on Hong Kong society. In the absence of popular support given to the colonial administration, it was possible that London would not have granted Governor the permission to begin the crackdown on pro-PRC establishments that successfully neutralised the threats posed by the rioters. This chapter proposes that while men and women of the colony, especially those who

until 1956 that the colonial government began to repatriate Chinese refugees. Chi-Kwan Mark, ‘The “Problem of People”: British Colonials, Cold War Powers, and the Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong, 1949-62’, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 41, Issue 6 November 2007, 1145-1181 (p. 1148). 72 The rapid expansion of Hong Kong’s population transformed Hong Kong into one of the most densely populated territories on the planet. As stated by David Trench, Hong Kong Chinese lived ‘in a quite appallingly overcrowded city, in a fiercely competitive environment, where poverty and considerable wealth are seen side by side’. TNA: PRC: FC0 40/103: ‘Hong Kong: A Review of Principal Developments’, p. 1. 73 Carroll, Concise History, p. 5, p. 174; TNA: PRC: FC0 40/103: ‘Hong Kong: A Review of Principal Developments’, p. 1. 74 Carroll, Concise History, p. 149. 28 were not supportive of the CCP, did not stage counter-protests against pro-PRC partisans, their willingness to continue their daily life and act as if the riots were having no effects on them constituted a gesture of protest against those who were determined to undermine the stability of Hong Kong. The calmness with which the common people of Hong Kong conducted themselves during the 1967 riots should also be seen as a vote of confidence for the colonial administration. The 1967 riots had often been described as a ‘watershed’ event in the history of Hong Kong, one that led to the emergence of a local identity among inhabitants of the colony.

Consequently, academic works relating to the struggles between British Hong Kong and its adversaries in 1967 mostly ignored how, after their defeat, partisans of the PRC became even more strident in their support for Beijing. The criminal records of pro-PRC partisans that were the by-products of their involvement in the 1967 riots often meant that they could only secure employment in organisations affiliated with Beijing. Imprisonment, perceived maltreatment at the hands of British officials, and isolation from mainstream Hong Kong society forced supporters of the PRC to band together against those who viewed participants of the 1967 riots as mere criminals. Pro-PRC partisans’ inability to re-enter mainstream society after the 1967 riots reinforced solidarity within the pro-Beijing camp in Hong Kong. The 1967 riots strengthened the Chinese nationalism of pro-PRC partisans at a time when other inhabitants of the territory increasingly viewed the colony as a political entity distinct from the PRC.

Chapter Three sheds light on the ways in which political mobilisations in Hong Kong during the 1970s impacted Hong Kong society and further contributed to the growth of a local identity. As locally born residents of Hong Kong gradually formed a majority in the city, a significant number of university students in the 1970s saw the colony as the only home they ever knew. As exemplified by the protests against corruption that led to the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 1974, student activists were uncommonly interested in improving the lives of those who were socioeconomically disadvantaged. The pro- 29

PRC elements within the Hong Kong student movement were able to rebuild the image of the

CCP after the 1967 riots, especially as Beijing established itself as a responsible world power after U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit in 1972, and perceived Japanese encroachment on the Diaoyutai Islands provoked massive protests. Many pro-PRC partisans, however, abandoned their political commitment to Beijing after the downfall of the in 1976, the faction that was previously portrayed as unfailingly loyal to . Adherence to and appreciation for Chinese culture, sentiments that were exemplified by the campaign to make Chinese an official language, gradually took precedence over political allegiance to the

PRC among Hong Kong residents who saw mainland China as their ancestral homeland. While economic relations between Hong Kong and the PRC would deepen after the launch of Chinese economic reforms in 1979, protest movements galvanised a local consciousness that motivated residents of the colony to see themselves as citizens with rights and responsibilities in their

Hong Kong. This chapter demonstrates how injustices that occurred in the everyday life of the colony compelled student activists to wage campaigns to improve local living standards and how these efforts in turn encouraged the rise of a Hong Kong identity.

The final chapter focuses on Sino-British interactions in the final years of colonial rule and the ways in which local political figures and average men and women reacted to momentous changes that were occurring in Beijing when it became clear that Hong Kong would become a part of the PRC in 1997. After the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, it became evident that local residents’ collective fate would be controlled by the CCP after 1997. The political disturbances that occurred within the PRC in the late 1980s convinced most of the colony’s political activists that only substantial constitutional reforms could safeguard the territory’s autonomy after 1997. The struggle for constitutional reforms from

1989 onwards became an existential one for many involved, as it was believed that without a liberal governing structure, Hong Kong could not preserve its distinctiveness. A determination 30 to protect the city’s autonomy fuelled the commitment of pro-reform politicians to engage in political struggles to transform Hong Kong. By 1992, the imperative to defend Hong Kong’s interests and safeguard the welfare of its residents became the foundations of a local political culture that is still in existence in today’s Hong Kong.

In addition to offering a recapitulation of this dissertation’s key arguments, the

Conclusion provides a summary of political events that took place in Hong Kong from 1949 to

1992. When assumed the post of governor in 1992, a Hong Kong identity had been firmly established. With the establishment of two political blocs, one that advocated for political reforms and the other asserted the need for closer alignment with Beijing, the city had by 1992 a vibrant political culture in which partisans on both sides felt compelled to appeal to the public that they were the better defenders of Hong Kong’s interests, a stance adopted even by the sympathisers of the PRC. Even after the establishment of a local political culture and the consolidation of an identity in 1992 as well as the termination of the British status of the city in 1997, Hong Kong studies, to this day, remains a highly vibrant subfield of China studies.

The dissertation ends on a contemplation on the future of Hong Kong studies and the possible directions of the city more than twenty years after retrocession.

Methodology My dissertation pays close attention to the political elites, leaders of protest movements, and local constitutional developments. This focus on high politics had already been put to effective use by Hong Kong specialists such as Steve Tsang in his classic study on the governance of Hong Kong, which highlighted that in a colony in which political power was concentrated in the hands of a selected few, a focus on the political elites was almost unavoidable.75 My dissertation focuses on materials produced in Hong Kong from 1949 to

1992 that were recognised by contemporaries as highly important, thus deserving the attention

75 Steve Tsang, Governing Hong Kong: Administrative Officers from the 19th Century to the Handover to China, 1962-1997 (London: I.B.Tauris, 2007). 31 of future generations. It would therefore be imperative for my dissertation to analyse items such as important speeches by political leaders, editorials published by newspapers during important historical moments, and even the proceedings of popular protests to gain a better understanding of their social, economic and political contexts. My dissertation aims to not only study the objectives of political leaders, but also to analyse their motivations and constraints that were created by the society in which they inhabited.

High politics is not the singular focus of my dissertation, as my stated goal is also to shed light on the daily existence of Hong Kong’s common people. The objective of reconstituting the daily life of Hong Kong Chinese would be accomplished through the consultation of government publications and declassified documents from archives in Hong

Kong and London. Newspapers, periodicals, and memoirs published by Hong Kong activists with insights into daily living in the colony is invaluable as well. At the same time, while there are sufficient resources available for aspiring historians to compose a dissertation that solely focuses on documentary sources, it would be a missed opportunity if actual voices of those who resided in the colony were not heard. Indeed, as demonstrated by Bickers and Yep, Hong

Kong Chinese are now increasingly willing to speak openly about their experiences during turbulent periods of the colony’s past.76 As such, oral interviews represent a vital component of my dissertation. I interviewed several men and women who were imprisoned by the British government due to their involvement in the 1967 riots. I also interviewed political activists to obtain their testimonies concerning political confrontations that took place in Hong Kong during the postwar era.

As stated by Brubaker et al, overly structured interviews or questionnaires often produced results that aligned with the researchers’ perceptions, as the questions that were posed

76 Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, ‘1967: Witnesses Remember’, in May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, eds. by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp. 163-183. 32 were composed in such a way that would create responses that most suited the questioners’ needs.77 In this way, my conversations with my interviewees were free flowing, and my talks with my interviewee did not simply produce the results that I desired. With my fluency in

Cantonese, I was able to acquire substantial data using the ‘informal interview’ technique, meaning that my interviewees were able to speak openly and freely without the constraint of a prepared questionnaire on the topics that I wished to discuss.

Sources

Documents located in the British National Archives contained detailed information regarding the action and policies of Chinese political parties in Hong Kong and plans by British officials to counter them. The CAB 129, CAB 134, CO 537, CO 1030, CO 1035, FO 371, FCO

40 and T 317 series hold records detailing how officials in London interpreted political conflicts that engulfed Hong Kong, apprehensions they had regarding security threats that confronted the colony, and how public servants formulated policies that they perceived to be in the best interests of Hong Kong. Concerning archival research relating to the 1967 riots, I used recently declassified materials that are now part of the FCO 371/120922, FCO

371/120923 and CAB 134/2945 files containing correspondences between Trench and his colleagues during the crisis and how policymakers in London interpreted events in Hong Kong.

Government publications such as the Hong Kong Annual Reports grants me further understanding of British officials’ policy formulation process. Archival resources in Hoover

Institution such reports compiled by American diplomats stationed in Hong Kong on important local events has been consulted as well.

In addition to well-known political figures such as Jasper Tsang, the founding leader of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, Martin Lee, as well as his eventual successor, Albert Ho, I

77 Rogers Brubaker, and Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox, Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 15. 33 interviewed men and women who were imprisoned by the British during the 1967 riots. I also made use of the Newspapers and Periodicals Collections of the Special Collections of the

University of Hong Kong Library in order to study the viewpoints expressed by local publications regarding important political events that took place in Hong Kong from 1949 to

1992. Publications like the student journal of the , the Undergrad

(學苑) have helped me explore the ways in which members of the younger generation felt about their lives in the territory. 78 I also utilised the testimonies of Hong Kong Chinese detailing how they viewed the colony’s socioeconomic conditions and political environment during the postwar period that are now part of the Hong Kong Oral History Archives.

University of Toronto’s Canada-Hong Kong Library contains extensive primary materials relating to social, economic, and political conditions of postwar Hong Kong that were highly useful to me as well.

Concluding Remarks

Utilising archival sources from Britain, Canada, China, Hong Kong, and the United

States, my aim is to present a history of political struggles that took place in postwar Hong

Kong. My dissertation examines how the rise of a Hong Kong identity led to popular mobilisations the purpose of which was the preservation of the city’s status as a distinct Chinese city. PRC acquiescence to the colonial status of Hong Kong was absolutely vital to the colony’s survival.79 The fact that the colonial status of Hong Kong was beneficial to the PRC meant that

CCP leaders were willing to tolerate the continuing presence of a polity containing a population that Beijing could not control. Indeed, even today, the distinct status of Hong Kong ensures the indispensability of its financial sector, one that continues to contribute to the

78 For the sake of clarity and precision, throughout this dissertation, translations with Chinese characters of romanised Chinese names, titles, concepts, and locations that are not common knowledge or easily searchable will be provided. 79 Tsang, Modern History, p. 188. 34 internationalisation of renminbi (RMB).80 The willingness of the CCP to exercise relative restraint when interacting with Hong Kong during various periods of the postwar era was instrumental to the emergence of a local identity, as the common people there were free to develop their distinctive social, economic, and political values. In addition to being a scholarly inquiry on the emergence of a society the inhabitants of which saw themselves as different from their fellow countrymen residing in China, this dissertation is an in-depth analysis of how the political activists in Hong Kong were able to organise some of the most important mobilisation efforts in modern Chinese history.

80 Bush, Hong Kong, p. 180. 35

Chapter One – Postwar Hong Kong: Trials, Tribulations, and the Emergence of a Local Identity, 1949 to 1966

Introduction

The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was created when was formally ceded to Great Britain through the 1842 , following the defeat of the Qing Empire in the First Anglo-Chinese War. 1 The colony expanded to include the

Kowloon Peninsula and after the ratification of the 1860 Convention of

Peking.2 Another crucial development of Hong Kong occurred when the geographical area known as the was leased to Great Britain for a period of ninety-nine years, until 1997, under the terms of the 1898 .3 The acquisition of the New

Territories greatly expanded the size of the colony, as the new area was about ten times the size of the rest of Hong Kong.4 The total area of the colony by 1898 was roughly 391 square miles.5

Bordering on the south-eastern coast of Guangdong and the eastern portion of the Pearl River estuary, Hong Kong’s geographic propinquity to the mainland, as well as the colony’s first- rate harbour, made it an ideal entrepôt for products destined for South China.6 As the result of its proximity to China, Hong Kong assumed geopolitical importance that was disproportionate to the colony’s actual size. During the Cold War, the establishment of the PRC necessitated the gathering of reliable intelligence on the CCP regime, which was obtained by agents stationed in Hong Kong.7 Often referred to as the ‘Berlin of the East’ due to its status as a free port

1 Tsang, Modern History, pp. 14-15; Carroll, Concise History, p. 1. 2 Tsang, Modern History, p. 35. 3 Report on Hong Kong for the Year 1949 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1950), p. 150; Tsang, Modern History, p. 38. 4 Tsang, Modern History, p. 38. 5 Report on Hong Kong for the Year 1949, p. 137. 6 Carroll, Concise History, p. 1, p. 19. 7 Chi-Kwan Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-American Relations 1949-1957 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 180-181. 36 situated just outside of communist China, the colony became a symbol of hope for those fearful of communism’s triumph in China and other parts of Asia.8

Geoffrey Howe once compared Hong Kong to a Ming vase that was so precious and delicate that the CCP and British governments needed to handle it with extreme care.9 In spite of its seeming fragility, postwar Hong Kong survived successive crises, such as the establishment of the PRC, the , the resultant embargoes that nearly crippled the territory’s trade with the mainland, as well as political disturbances caused by partisans of

Chinese political parties that threatened to overwhelm the colony.10 This chapter will examine what changed and what remained the same in the colony from 1949 to 1966 and will analyse why specific alterations to Hong Kong’s social, economic, and political structures occurred.

Beginning with an inquiry into Britain’s postwar geopolitical position and the reasons behind

London’s insistence on preserving the British status of Hong Kong, this chapter will then provide a detailed description of the colony’s constitutional structure. The absence of democratic reforms, in spite of Governor Mark Young’s attempts to change the existing constitutional structure, was perhaps the greatest failure of British rule in Hong Kong during the postwar period. This determination to depoliticise Hong Kong society also manifested itself in colonial educational policies. Curricula were designed in such a way to compel pupils to concentrate on their cultural heritage, and not on contemporary affairs. In spite of the colonial administration’s various deficiencies, the colony did emerge under British rule as a manufacturing powerhouse that was able to create employment opportunities for workers in

Hong Kong, and resettlement and housing programs did provide affordable housing for

Chinese who had chosen the city as their permanent home. Nevertheless, intense dissatisfaction against colonial rule began to manifest itself in the 1960s, and British officials, instead of ruling

8 Wm. Roger Louis, ‘Hong Kong: The Critical Phase, 1945-1949’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), 1052-1084 (p. 1082). 9 Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (London: MacMillan, 1994), p. 370. 10 Carroll, Concise History, pp. 140-142, p. 244. 37 over sojourners who had no stake in the long-term prosperity of the colony, were responsible for men and women who saw Hong Kong as the only home they ever knew. The absence of representative governance, an educational system that attempted to dissuade students from becoming politically conscious, and the emergence of popular discontent in the 1960s all demonstrate that while the local administration was able to endure during a period of geopolitical chaos, policymakers failed to construct a governing system capable of maintaining the legitimacy of British rule.

Britain, Hong Kong, and Postwar Geopolitics

Before diving into Hong Kong studies, it is important for scholars to examine the international context that surrounded the colony, especially as British policymakers were often hostages to geopolitical forces that were beyond their control. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to assert with confidence that the British Empire was doomed to disintegrate after 1945, as the imperial centre was drained of both manpower and financial resources after years of war.11 Indeed, how could London remain an imperial centre when food rationing in Britain ended only in 1954 and the sterling was devalued by 30% five years prior?12 Christopher Layne even commented on the 'predatory nature of U.S. economic strategy', observing that the

11 John Darwin’s work provided a succinct and nuanced perspective on the history of decolonisation by arguing against the notion that the end of the British Empire was preordained or that ‘the British World System’ was destroyed by the Second World War. Rather, he found that a series of unforeseen geopolitical disturbances and financial crises in the postwar period progressively weakened London’s ability to control events beyond its borders. John Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (London: Macmillan, 1988). For an extended overview of the historiographical framework employed by Darwin that emphasised how the congruence of unforeseen events ultimately terminated the British Empire, see John Darwin, The End of the British Empire: The Historical Debate (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006), and John Darwin, ‘', in The Oxford history of the British Empire, Volume 5: Historiography, ed. by Robin W. Winks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 541-557. The collection of essays by Wm. Roger Louis contained works covering the Suez Crisis that detailed the complicated Anglo-American relationship in the postwar era. Louis highlighted that while the United States was clearly the leading western power, Britain was reluctant to be a mere sidekick to the Americans, and there were incidents during which Whitehall pursued policies that were seen by its American allies as detrimental to western interests. Wm. Roger Louis, Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization – Collection of Essays (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2006). 12 Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls, and Consumption, 1939-1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 31; Jim Tomlinson, British Macroeconomic Policy Since 1949, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 54. 38 postwar financial system that was based on currency convertibility put London at the mercy of

Washington.13 The decision to transform the sterling into a convertible currency was due to

American insistence that convertibility be the key condition under which a much needed loan was extended to London in 1946 to alleviate Britain’s dollar shortage.14 The convertibility of the sterling meant that members of the sterling zone would be tempted to embark ‘on immense import programmes from all sources, unrestricted by the limitations of supplies available’ from the or countries that once fell under the umbrella of imperial preference, thereby dooming any prospect of a London-led trade bloc.15 Convertibility could also make

Britain financially dependent on the United States. In fact, between July and August of 1947,

Britain recorded a net drain of $868.9 million (the equivalent of $9,235.16 million in 2015).16

The loan that was supposed to solve the dollar shortage problem could potentially make the problem permanent. The drain on dollar reserves was so severe that full convertibility was suspended until 1958.17 The suspension of convertibility notwithstanding, it became apparent that whenever London was confronted by an economic or financial crisis, it would need to appeal to Washington for assistance. Without overseas assets that could act as cushions when international crises led to selling of the sterling, London would always be dependent upon

Washington for a bailout in the event of a disaster. Dependence on Washington was exemplified in 1956 when the run on the pound and American insistence that no bailout would be forthcoming in the absence of British withdrawal from Egypt ultimately forced London to

13 Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 47. 14 E. J., ‘Sterling in 1947: The Problem of Convertibility’, The World Today, Feb. 1947, p. 63. 15 E. J., ‘Sterling in 1947’, p. 68. 16 M. W. Kirby, The Decline of British Economic Power Since 1870 (London: Routledge, 1981), p. 99. Calculations concerning historical inflation of the US dollar were made using tools provided in this website: US Inflation Calculator < http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/> [Accessed February 21st, 2017]. 17 John Singleton, Central Banking in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 154. 39 stage a humiliating withdrawal at the height of the Suez Crisis.18 Knowing that uncritical support towards Britain would undermine American world standing, Washington simply refused to assist London until the Eden government abandoned its attempt to invade a sovereign nation-state in order to reverse the Egyptian government’s decision to nationalise the Suez

Canal.19

Even taking into account the financial and political crises that confronted Britain, it is impossible to ignore the sheer determination of London to preserve its great power status. In the case of India, the British government wrongly assumed that promptly granting independence in 1947 would ‘would reap a rich reward in Indian gratitude, and that Congress would respond in a spirit of fraternity’. British policymakers thus operated on the erroneous assumption that an Anglo-Indian strategic partnership would materialise, thereby ensuring that

Britain could provide guidance to Indian leaders who were seen as unschooled in international relations.20 While Britain’s postwar colonial policies may have appeared to be in disarray, with one colony granted independence, another remaining a British possession, and yet another transformed into constituent part of a new federation, these seemingly chaotic policies were designed to preserve London’s influence in different regions of the world.21 If British influence could endure even after decolonisation, as it was perceived to be the case in Southeast Asia after Indian independence, then withdrawal was an acceptable course of action. If a military stance had to be made in a particular region so that British authority could be preserved, then policymakers were willing to pursue this route. As noted by John Darwin, arguably the greatest living historian of the British Empire, ‘the onslaught on the Malayan Communist Party, Mau

18 For a detailed description of the Suez Crisis, see Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman, The Suez Crisis (Routledge: New York, 1997), chapters 3-4. 19 Wm. Roger Louis, ‘American Anti-Colonialism and the Dissolution of the British Empire’, International Affairs, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Summer, 1985), 395-420 (pp. 414-415). 20 John Darwin, ‘British decolonization since 1945: A pattern or a puzzle?’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 12:2 (1984), 187-209 (p. 192). 21 Darwin, ‘British decolonization since 1945’, p. 190. 40

Mau, EOKA or the Front for the Liberation of South Yemen scarcely resemble a staged retreat in the face of nationalism’.22 It was essential for Britain to continue to play an important role in world affairs, for what would be a better method to obtain political or economic favours from Washington than being a useful great power, especially one that could be counted on to help stop the advent of communism? To preserve London’s great power status, Britain had to be a stabilising geopolitical actor, one that, having learnt the hard lessons of Suez, refrained from needlessly antagonising Washington and potential allies and advanced the interests of the western world by acting as a check against communist aggression around the world.

It would therefore be a mistake to simply view British postwar history in a linear manner, with London gradually became more and more dependent on the Americans and losing its great power status in the process. For most of the postwar period, Britain was the undisputed

‘third world power’, one that was valued by Washington as an essential ally in maintaining global peace and stability.23 Colonial nationalism, something that was commonly attributed as another leading cause for the termination of the British Empire, was not necessarily fatal to maintenance of imperial possessions. In the Cold War world, having Britain as a protective ally even after obtainment of political independence could be essential for survival. While regional powers, such as India, could forsake ties with their former colonial master, for smaller countries, survival necessitated the continuation of cordial relations with London. Post-independence

Malaysian politicians no doubt were grateful for British military intervention that helped their country withstood Indonesian aggression from 1963 to 1965. 24 Self-preservation in a dangerous region of the world was the primary motive that led independent to successfully lobby for the maintenance of the British base in the city-state after its expulsion

22 Darwin, ‘British decolonization since 1945’, p. 190. 23 John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 575, pp. 609-610; Wm. Roger Louis, ‘Presidential Address: the Dissolution of the British Empire in the Era of Vietnam’, The American Historical Review (2002) 107 (1): 1- 25 (pp. 13-15). 24 Louis, ‘Presidential Address’, pp. 13-15. 41 from the Federation of in 1965. While there were frequent discussions of closing the

Singapore base, talk of withdrawing from Southeast Asia became unrealistic as both the United

States and another important British ally, Australia, were vehemently opposed to any suggestion of Britain reducing its commitments before the region was deemed stable.25 The

Singapore base, the primary raison d'etre of which was the preservation of regional stability, was only dismantled completely in 1976, eleven years after the independence of the city-state.26

Singapore almost certainly got the better end of the deal, as London most likely would have closed the base, thereby depriving the Singaporean government of British military protection, had the Federation of Malaysia been a sufficiently strong political entity to protect itself from external threats. 27 Britain’s colonial and imperial legacies imposed privileges as well as burdens. On the one hand, being seen as a great power afforded it authority on the international scene that would otherwise be unavailable to a mere European nation-state. On the other hand, to remain a great power, Britain had to assume global obligations, and that meant accepting costly overseas military commitments.

Of course, there were concrete financial incentives for London to preserve British authority in different parts of the world. When considering why Britain became involved in the

Malayan Emergency, the conflict with local communist forces from 1948 to 1960 that motivated Whitehall policymakers to support the creation of the Federation of Malaysia by amalgamating Brunei, Malaya, North , , and Singapore to prevent further destabilisation of the region, one should not discount that Malaya was a significant producer of rubber and tin. These resources, according to one writer, represented ‘by far the most

25 David Easter, ‘British and Malaysian Covert Support for Rebel Movement in Indonesia during the "Confrontation", 1963-1966’, in The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945-65: Western Intelligence, Propaganda and Special Operations, eds. by Richard J. Aldrich, Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley (London: Frank Cass, 2005), pp. 195-211 (p. 204). 26 Louis, ‘Presidential Address’, p. 18. 27 Louis, ‘Presidential Address’, p. 13. 42 important sources of U.S dollars in the whole of the British ’.28 Hong Kong was similarly an important contributor to the postwar British economy. In 1949, Hong Kong was the destination of £24 million worth (the equivalent of £765 million in 2015) of British exports.29 Hong Kong contained about £156 million worth (the equivalent of £4972.5 million in 2015) of British investment as well.30 Hong Kong’s importance was further highlighted by the potential loss of around £256 million (the equivalent of £8160 million in 2015) worth of

British investment in Shanghai after the establishment of the PRC. 31 Nonetheless, the determination to preserve British economic interests was only one of the reasons behind

Britain’s decision to reinforce the in order to defend the colony in the event of a PRC attack in 1949.32 It was believed that a successful attempt by the CCP to reclaim

Hong Kong would undermine British prestige and cripple the will of Asian political leaders to resist communist aggression.33 It was also important to demonstrate British willingness to defend its possessions at a time when colonies such as Malaya were threatened by communist insurrections. 34 In addition to the colony’s economic importance, the decision of British policymakers to reinforce the Hong Kong garrison was based on their resolve to maintain

Britain’s status as a world power able to resist ‘communist expansionism’ during the Cold

28 Leon Comber, Templer and the Road to Malayan Independence: The Man and His Time (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015), p. 119; Andrew Mumford, The Counter-Insurgency Myth: The British Experience of Irregular Warfare (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 26; Andrew Holt, The Foreign Policy of the Douglas-Home Government: Britain, the United States and the End of Empire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 105. 29 Report on Hong Kong for the Year 1949, p. 33; calculations concerning historical inflation of the sterling in this chapter were made using tools provided in the website of the Bank of England. Bank of England, Inflation Calculator [Accessed March 10th, 2016]. 30 The National Archives: Public Record Office: CAB 129/35/10: ‘Cabinet: Hong Kong: Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 23rd May, 1949,’ p.1. 31 TNA: PRO: CAB 129/35/10: ‘Cabinet: Hong Kong: Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 23rd May, 1949,’ p. 2. 32 Report on Hong Kong for the Year 1949, pp. 4-5. 33 TNA: PRO: CO 537/4806: ‘Outward Telegraph from Commonwealth Relations Office (Sent 23.30 hours 7th September 1949),’ p. 2. 34 Nicholas White, Decolonisation: The British Experience Since 1945 (London: Longman, 1999), p. 14. 43

War.35 While the forces sent to reinforce the Hong Kong garrison were subsequently reassigned to participate in conflicts in Korea and Malaya, Britain in 1949 simply was not prepared to lose

Hong Kong.36 While withdrawing from Hong Kong due to its seeming indefensibility in the event of a Chinese invasion was certainly considered in the 1940s and 1950s, successive British governments repeatedly decided against this policy.37 The British status of Hong Kong meant that the colony was a site where London’s commitment to remain a world power was tested.

While Britain was willing to grant independence to some of its possessions in Southeast

Asia, it was not prepared to let Hong Kong fall to the CCP. All this demonstrates a refusal to be humiliated on the international stage. This image of being a reliable political actor was not only important in the case of Hong Kong, where British policymakers were willing to take a stance against the CCP, but also in areas of the world where London was prepared to retreat. It is important to note that during the era of ‘the Wind of Change’, when British possessions in

Africa were granted independence, it was essential for imperial officials to be seen as reliable partners in colonies’ path to independence. Only by being seen as dependable would the British be viewed as worthy partners in negotiations. Only by engaging in orderly negotiations could catastrophes, be they communal riots or the emergence of radical politicians, be prevented.38

Of course, decolonisation still occurred at a much faster pace than was hoped for by Whitehall officials, who were acutely close to a state of panic as they witnessed British power steadily eroded throughout Africa.39 The inability to impose political changes that could have alleviated racial tensions on the white settler regime of Southern was the most glaring example

35 TNA: PRO: CO 537/4806: ‘Outward Telegraph from Commonwealth Relations Office (Sent 23.30 hours 7th September 1949),’ p. 2. 36 Karl Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in South-East Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941-1967 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 64. 37 Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War, p. 74. 38 Darwin, The Empire Project, p. 621. 39 John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012), p. 369. 44 of British weakness.40 Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that British policymakers played the hand that was dealt to them with utmost skill. The transfers of power were largely peaceful and, at least immediately after independence, British institutions and machineries of power remained in place. Even when British withdrawal was all but certain, British officials had one trump card that ensured that they were treated as partners in negotiations: The authority to bestow constitutional legitimacy on inheritors of the colonial state. One is struck by the willingness of African politicians to perform the roles that were assigned to them once British departure became assured. One chronicler of Kenyan history went as far as to claim that the

1963 transfer of power in Kenya ‘proved comfortable both for [the British] and for their successors’. Indeed, Jomo Kenyatta received Kenya’s Articles of Independence in an elaborate ceremony that made it clear that he was the successor to British authority, not just a freedom fighter who expelled the British.41 In the end, even opponents of foreign rule had a stake in preserving at least the appearance of colonial power, for no aspiring leaders would want to assume control over status apparatuses that were broken beyond repair. Only a Britain that had its dignity intact could declare its successors worthy of inheriting British authority. The preservation of British authority was a cooperative effort; its success was contingent upon

London playing the role of a responsible power until the very end and anti-colonial politicians being content to share the stage with their soon-to-be former imperial masters.

All the pomp and circumstance in the world, however, could not hide the fact that by the late 1960s, Britain was gradually running out of resources to preserve its status as a world power. Ernest Bevin in the 1940s and 1950s could still play the role of global statesman.42

Harold Macmillan could claim with a straight face that Britain had ‘not lost the will or even the power to govern’; rather, British withdrawal represented a selfless act of a people, who,

40 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, p. 372. 41 Charles Hornsby, Kenya: A History Since Independence (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), pp. 19-20. 42 Peter Weller, Ernest Bevin (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 196. 45 upon fulfilling the responsibility of spreading their values around the world, voluntarily bestowed self-rule on those who deserved it. Harold Wilson, due to circumstances beyond his control, became the prime minister who oversaw the final phase of the Empire’s dissolution.43

After successive financial crises in the 1960s, the sterling was once again devalued in 1967, and the Wilson government, even amidst American protests, announced the commencement of

British withdrawal east of the Suez.44 In an era when Britain seemed to be increasingly content with its role as a European middle power and policymakers there were keen to secure British membership in the European Common Market, why did Hong Kong remain a Crown Colony?

Hong Kong contributed to the stability of the sterling, since it was one of the largest holders of the currency in the world. Decades of disciplined spending policies meant that by 1967, the

Hong Kong government had in its possession between £350 to £400 million in its official reserves (the equivalent of £5730.33 to £6549 million in 2015).45 Since postwar Hong Kong rarely required financial assistance from London, British officials had little interest in maintaining strict control over the financial policies of the colony. Moreover, Hong Kong policymakers were determined to assert local autonomy when it was perceived that the home government was interfering in the city’s policymaking process. These factors ensured that instead of establishing a massive welfare state, a course of action judged by the Colonial Office in the 1940s and the 1950s as the most sensible one, successive and their financial secretaries were able to accumulate budgetary surpluses that contributed to the growth of Hong

Kong’s official reserves.46 The preservation of Hong Kong’s sterling assets, however, should

43Darwin, Unfinished Empire, p. 354; Darwin, ‘British decolonization since 1945’, p. 188. 44 Darwin, ‘British decolonization since 1945’, p. 191; Louis, ‘Presidential Address’, p. 13. 45 TNA: PRO: FC0 40/103: ‘Colonial Secretariat File: SCR 1/4841/55, 13th February, 1968’, p. 6. 46 Goodstadt, Profits, Politics and Panics, p. 51, p. 56, pp. 62-63; Gavin Ure, Governors, Politics and the Colonial Office: Public Policy in Hong Kong, 1918-58 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), p. 215. Of course, the Hong Kong government did begin to invest significantly in public housing in the 1950s. Investment in social welfare, however, was implemented in such a way that the capacity of the colonial administration to accumulate surpluses remained intact. Indeed, from 1946 to 1997, the Hong Kong government only presented six deficits in its annual budgets. Chi Kuen Lau, Hong Kong's Colonial Legacy (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1997), p. 76. 46 not be viewed as the primary reason for continued British presence in the city. Indeed, even if the colony was under PRC control, Hong Kong’s sterling assets could have been frozen before falling into the hands of the CCP, thereby preventing its officials from flooding the market with the pound.47 In the end, the British remained in Hong Kong due to the lack of any other alternatives. During the height of the 1967 riots, Whitehall policymakers concluded that the

PRC would not grant Britain a dignified exit if British authority in Hong Kong collapsed.48 An orderly emergency evacuation without the acquiescence of local CCP supporters and the PRC government would be nearly impossible.49 A ‘Macao-type situation’, whereby effective control of the colony would be handed over to pro-PRC partisans, was deemed unacceptable, as this manner of capitulation would leave Britain with no bargaining power in the event of an actual withdrawal.50 In the absence of acceptable alternative policy options, Britain preserved the colonial status of Hong Kong until 1997.

For most of the postwar period, Britain was, after the United States and the Soviet

Union, the third world power. Even after India obtained independence and was partitioned into two sovereign nation-states, London still retained powerful influence in almost all areas of the

47 Catherine R. Schenk, ‘The banking and financial impact of the 1967 riots in Hong Kong’, in May Days in Hong Kong: Riots and Emergency in 1967, eds. by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp. 105-126 (p. 109). 48 TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945, ‘K(67) 1st Meeting. Cabinet. Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong Interim Report by Officials. Minutes of a Meeting of the Committee held in Conference Room 'A,' Cabinet Office, S.W. 1., on Monday, 24th July 1967 at 4.00 pm,’ p. 1; TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945, ‘K(67) 2, 21st July 1967, Cabinet: Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong – Interim Report by officials,’ pp. 1-2, p. 5 49 TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945, ‘K(67) 2, 21st July 1967, Cabinet: Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong – Interim Report by officials,’ p. 5; TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945: ‘K(67) 2nd Meeting. Cabinet. Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong Interim Report by Officials. Minutes of a Meeting of the Committee held in Conference Room 'A,' Cabinet Office, S.W. 1., on Friday, 22nd September 1967 at 10:30am,’ pp. 6-7; for information on British evacuation plans, see Robert Bickers, ‘On not being Macao(ed) in Hong Kong: British official minds and action in 1967,’ in May Days in Hong Kong: Riots and Emergency in 1967, eds. by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp. 53-67 (pp. 65-66). 50 In the Portuguese colony of , the local administration essentially had to share power with Beijing after PRC supporters there staged riots in 1966 that forced the colonial regime to capitulate. For information on the confrontations between the Portuguese colonial administration in Macau and PRC supporters and how British officials in Hong Kong and London became determined not to be ‘Macao(ed),’ see Bickers, ‘On not being Macao(ed) in Hong Kong’, pp. 55-57; TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945, ‘K(67) 2, 21ST July 1967, Cabinet: Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong – Interim Report by officials,’ p. 5. 47 world. While the Suez disaster was a shocking defeat, policymakers were still remarkably determined to preserve Britain’s role as a world power. Harold Wilson, not exactly a Curzonian figure, once proclaimed ‘we are a world power and a world influence, or we are nothing’.51 An important factor that sustained this imperial will to power was the fact that Britain was one of the victorious nation-states that emerged out of World War Two. At the same time, damages sustained by Britain during World War Two, postwar geopolitical realties, and successive financial crises made it extremely difficult for London to continue to be the third world power.

The sterling was consistently weak, making London dependent on the goodwill of Washington for bailouts. The most important lesson of the 1956 Suez Crisis was that there could be no foreign adventures without at least the acquiescence of the Americans. By the late 1960s,

Britain was in full retreat, and the best that policymakers could hope for were dignified exits.

A controlled retreat, one of the most difficult military or diplomatic manoeuvres, was something that Britain could not envision being able to engineer if it decided to withdraw from

Hong Kong. The world was changing around it in a rapid manner, but Hong Kong continued to be a British enclave in South China until 1997. At a period when nationalism was destroying empires around the world, Hong Kong not only remained a British possession, but also retained its Crown Colony constitutional structure.

Governance of Hong Kong, 1949: Distribution of Political Power within a Crown Colony

Men who assumed leadership positions in Hong Kong usually began their careers as members of the Hong Kong Cadet Service. Created by Governor Sir Hercules Robinson in

1861, who was alarmed by the fact that officials in his government were men of inferior intellectual quality and did not possess the linguistic competence necessary to communicate with the colony’s Cantonese-speaking population. The original purpose of the Hong Kong

51 Quoted in Paul M. McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945-1965 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2013), p. 272 48

Cadetship was to train young men from British universities as government interpreters and, after a period in that capacity, promoted them on a fast track to senior government positions.52

Alexander Grantham, as well as Colonial Secretary from 1945-1949, David MacDougall, were products of this system.53 To enhance his career prospects, Grantham actually took a pay cut and requested a transfer out of Hong Kong to , where he acquired more administrative experience before returning to Hong Kong in 1947 as its governor.54 The political leadership of postwar Hong Kong was therefore very much part of the ‘networked and circulating colonial world’ of the British Empire.55 The fact that senior administrative positions were either filled by British university graduates who entered the government as cadets or officials who had previously served in other parts of the Empire meant that power was concentrated in the hands of ‘expatriate mandarin[s]’.56 By 1949, only one person of Chinese descent, Paul Tsui, became a government cadet and joined this group of elite administrators.57 According to Steve Tsang, the absence of efforts to encourage Chinese to join the government, the lack of pressure from the Hong Kong population to force the colonial administration to recruit qualified local candidates, and the fact that there were very few residents in the colony who actually possessed native fluency in English, one of the key requirements for being admitted to the Cadet Service,

52 Tsang, Documentary History, pp. 148-149. 53 Alexander Grantham, Via Ports: From Hong Kong to Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965), p. 5; Philip Snow, ‘MacDougall, David Mercer’, in Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography, eds. by May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), pp. 297-299 (p. 297). 54 Grantham, Via Ports, p. 19. 55 Bickers and Yep, ‘Studying the 1967 Riots’, p. 5. 56 Sze-yuen Chung, Hong Kong’s Journey to Reunification: Memoirs of Sze-yuen Chung (Hong Kong: the Chinese University Press, 2001), p. 34. 57 Tsang, Governing Hong Kong, p. 56; Norman Miners, Hong Kong Under Imperial Rule, 1912-1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 85. Paul Tsui wrote an unpublished autobiography that is currently available online. Tsui’s autobiographical account provides crucial details concerning how only a Chinese person possessing an exceptional educational background and an almost flawless command of the could gain entry into the Hong Kong Cadet Service. Paul Tsui Ka Cheung, Paul Tsui Ka Cheung’s Memoirs: My Life and My Encounters (Self-published, Publication Date Unknown), , [accessed 23 November 2018].

49 meant that the elite administrators of Hong Kong were almost universally of European descent.58

Two chambers responsible for assisting the Governor in the administration of Hong

Kong were the Executive and Legislative Councils. By 1949, the Executive Council, which was an advisory body consulted by the Governor on all important policy issues, was made up of the senior Military Officer in the colony, the Colony Secretary, the Attorney General, the

Financial Secretary, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, one additional official member (the

Governor), and six unofficial members, three of whom were Chinese. In the same year, the

Legislative Council, which was responsible for approving funds and the passing of legislations, consisted of the same five ex-officio members mentioned above, three additional official members, and seven unofficial members, three of whom were Chinese.59 While the Governor was by far the most powerful figure in Hong Kong, it was not in his interest to constantly act against Executive and Legislative Councillors, as doing so would signify that he was not respectful of viewpoints held by the colony’s population that unofficial members of the two chambers were supposed to represent.60

Below the Legislative and Executive Councils were administrative bodies responsible for the governance of Hong Kong’s urban and rural areas. Upon its reestablishment following the restoration of civilian government in 1946, the was responsible for public sanitation, parks, and recreation in the colony. It consisted of five official members, including its chairman, four governmental health bureaucrats, and six unofficial members. The Urban

Council was therefore the only governing institution in Hong Kong with an unofficial majority during the time period covered by this chapter.61 Another important aspect in the governance

58 Tsang, Governing Hong Kong, pp. 120-123. 59 Report of Hong Kong for the Year 1949, p. 152; Meeting of 12 , Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1949 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1949), p. 1. 60 Tsang, Modern History of Hong Kong, p. 19. 61 Miners, The Government and , p 176. 50 of Hong Kong involved the New Territories, the rural area of the colony that encompassed 91% of its land mass.62 It was jurisdictionally separated from the rest of the colony and still governed by Qing custom laws. The official responsible for the administration of the New Territories was the District Commissioner, a position originally intended to be the area’s ‘father and mother official’ possessing administrative, legal, and police powers. The District

Commissioner was assisted by three District Officers, each responsible for a specific region in the New Territories. Yet another unique feature of the New Territories was the Heung Yee

Kuk, which was essentially an assembly of village elders that offered advice to the District

Commissioner concerning the administration of the region.63

Attempts at Constitutional Reforms in Hong Kong, 1946-1952

Upon the return of Hong Kong to British rule at the conclusion of Second World War, there were intense discussions behind the scene among British policymakers concerning the introduction of representative government to the colony. Mark Young, the governor of Hong

Kong who had been interned by the Japanese during the war, firmly believed that fundamental changes to the colonial political system was necessary if British rule was to endure.64 To this end, he proposed the creation of a municipal council with democratically elected members that would gradually assume greater responsibilities as councillors became more adept at exercising power.65 Members of the council would be chosen on the following basis: One third of the councillors would be elected directly by Chinese in Hong Kong; one third would be elected by non-Chinese residents of the colony; the rest would be nominated by Chinese and non-Chinese organisations.66 It was expected that the endowment of political rights and the responsibilities to govern the colony would enhance Hong Kong’s ties with Britain and cement the loyalty of

62 Report of Hong Kong for the Year 1949, p. 139. 63 Report of Hong Kong for the Year 1949, pp. 154-155. 64 John Carroll, Concise History, p. 131. 65 Tsang, Modern History, p. 147. 66 Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 34. 51

Chinese men and women of Hong Kong to the British crown.67 The ‘’ envisioned that the colony would become a diarchy, with municipal councillors and colonial officials acting as equal partners in the governance of Hong Kong’s urban areas.68 With the municipal council eventually assuming control over all policy matters excluding finance and defence,

Young hoped that Hong Kong would emerge as a self-governing city-state within the British

Empire.69

If the Young Plan had been passed, the proposed municipal council would likely have eventually replaced the Executive and Legislative Councils as the most important decision- making body in the colony.70 The potential game-changing effects of the Young Plan led John

Carroll to call it the most radical reform proposal in the history of Hong Kong.71 Radical though it might have been within the postwar political , the Young Plan, if seen within the context of changes that were occurring within the British Empire, was actually quite modest. As stated by John Darwin, British officials implemented constitutional reforms in other colonies so that indigenous leaders would be endowed with democratic legitimacy and authority over government departments that were most able to improve the lives of colonial subjects. In doing so, a new generation of local leaders that were trusted by colonial subjects would emerge to become useful allies to colonial policymakers.72 This deliberate attempt to create democratically-elected collaborators that was the central feature of the Young Plan was consistent with constitutional changes that were occurring in other parts of the British Empire.

67 Carroll, Concise History, p. 131; Tsang, Documentary History, pp. 127-128. 68 While the Young Plan largely focused on urban areas, and it was envisioned that the existing political structure of the New Territories would remain in place for the foreseeable future, it is difficult to imagine that democratisation would not have eventually expanded to all regions of the colony, thereby ‘completely changing the constitutional structure’ of Hong Kong once the proposed reforms proved to be viable. Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 35, pp. 184-185. 69 Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, p. 95; Carroll, Concise History, p. 131; Gavin Ure, Governors, Politics and the Colonial Office: Public Policy in Hong Kong, 1918-58 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), p. 117. 70 Tsang, Democracy Shelved, chapter 7. 71 Carroll, Concise History, p. 131. 72 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, chapter 11. 52

Indeed, if compared to other colonies, the pace of constitutional changes in Hong Kong was strikingly slow. In 1931, the Statute of Westminster gave all the self-rule.73 The first election for Municipal Commission (later renamed City Council) was held in Singapore in 1949.74 Of course, the pace of constitutional changes in Hong Kong was significantly retarded by political chaos in China and the fear that the implantation of political changes would lead to retaliation and efforts to destabilise British rule.75 It was fear of provoking the

PRC and the belief that constitutional changes would lead to instability that gave critics of the

Young Plan the ammunitions needed to doom any prospect for adopting Mark Young’s proposal.

The Young Plan received cautious support from the Colonial Office, and it seemed in the late 1940s that despite the legislative councillors’ skepticism about the advisability of constitutional changes, political reforms would finally be implemented in the colony. Hong

Kong legislative councillors were justifiably alarmed, as the triumph of the Young Plan would mean the emergence of an alternative power centre.76 As well, Young coupled his plan for the implementation of a municipal council with a reform proposal for the Legislative Council.

According to this scheme, the membership of the Legislative Council would be reduced from seventeen to fifteen.77 Two legislative councillors would be selected by the democratically- elected members of the municipal council.78 The reconstituted Legislative Council would have five ex-officio members, two official members, and eight unofficial members. 79 British

73 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, p. 450. 74 Annual Report, 1949 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1950), p. 4. 75 TNA: PRO: CO 537/4806: ‘To the Secretary of State for the Colonies. From the Governor, Hong Kong. Date: 21th November, 1949,’ pp. 1-2; Tsang, Modern History, p. 207. 76 Tsang, Modern History, p. 147. 77 The Legislative Council in 1949 already included only fifteen members. The existing arrangement, however, allowed for the appointment of nine official members and eight unofficial members, meaning that a maximum of seventeen members could be appointed. The Young Plan would have reduced maximum membership allowed by law to fifteen. Report of Hong Kong for the Year 1949, p. 152. 78 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 81. 79 Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 35. 53 policymakers feared that the municipal council could be easily infiltrated by Chinese agents.

While the franchise was restricted to Chinese in Hong Kong with British nationality, officials in the Foreign Office worried that ‘if it suited the policy of the Chinese People’s Government at some future date [it] could probably persuade a very large number of Chinese’ to claim

British citizenship, thereby enabling it to influence the outcomes of elections in the CCP’s favour.80 If the municipal council was infiltrated by Chinese agents and had the power to appoint legislative councillors, then the Young Plan could lead to the contamination by Chinese political parties of all important political institutions in Hong Kong. As stated by Wm. Roger

Louis, Young was never able to refute the argument that reforms would bring political instability and infiltration by Chinese political operatives.81 Young’s inability to placate the fear of his critics and his opponents’ skilful political manoeuvres meant that the governor’s retirement in 1947 marked the beginning of the end for constitutional reforms in Hong Kong.

In an attempt to demonstrate their commitment to reforms, critics of the Young Plan put forward their own proposal to alter the configuration of the colony’s Legislative Council.

In 1949, unofficial legislative councillors tabled a reform plan proposing to increase the number of unofficial members from eight to eleven. Six of the eleven unofficial members would be directly elected by those in Hong Kong who held British citizenship. Four of the six democratically-elected unofficial members would be Chinese. Under this scheme, an unofficial majority of five would be produced, as there would be only six official members. 82 The reconstituted Legislative Council would then seek to reform and enlarge the existing Urban

Council.83 The unofficials were decidedly unenthusiastic about constitutional reforms, and they saw their proposed scheme as ‘the price to pay for superseding the Young Plan’, the principal

80 TNA: PRO: FO 371/83268: ‘Letter from H.P. Hall. To N. C. C. Trench. Date Unknown. Reference# 54145/4/50’, p. 1. 81 Louis, ‘Hong Kong: The Critical Phase’, p. 1068. 82 Tsang, Democracy Shelved, pp. 184-185; Meeting of 22 June 1949, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1949 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1949), p. 195. 83 Meeting of 22 June 1949, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 200. 54 aim of which was to counteract the authority of the Legislative Council through the creation of a powerful municipal council, and ‘for satisfying Whitehall as well as the articulate public’.84

Whitehall officials were nonetheless unimpressed by the unofficials’ proposal, as they were especially concerned about the large unofficial majority and the possibility that the governor would have to rely on his reserve powers to preserve British interests in the event that radical legislative councillors came to power in Hong Kong.85 Accordingly, in 1950, a new scheme was put forward by Grantham after consulting the Executive Council and the Colonial Office.

He proposed increasing the number of unofficial members from eight to eleven. Six out of eleven members would be elected by Justices of the Peace, the General Chamber of Commerce, and the Urban Council.86 The absence of direct elections significantly reduced the possibility that radical legislative councillors would be elected. Nevertheless, with only four official members, unofficial members of the Legislative Council would outnumber their official counterparts by six.87 Lack of interest from London, trepidation about implementing reforms during a time of economic and geopolitical instability, and continued fear of infiltration by

Chinese agents allowed the unofficials, with cooperation from Grantham, to keep watering down their reform proposals without facing serious opposition from their superiors in the

Colonial Office. In the end, even the 1950 proposal was pushed aside, and the introduction for the first time of two elective members to the Urban Council in 1952 allowed Grantham and his allies to claim that political changes had finally come to Hong Kong.88

The addition of two democratically-elected members to the Urban Council was an anti- climactic conclusion to constitutional reforms in Hong Kong. After years of debates, the plan

84 Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 198. 85 The reserve powers of the governors included the reservation of royal assent, the refusal of assent, the disallowance of legislations, and the abrogation of colonial legislation by prerogative legislation. Tsang, Democracy Shelved, pp. 106-107. 86 Meeting of 22 June 1949, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 194; Tsang, Documentary History, p. 90; Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 115. 87 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 90. 88 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 91. 55 to create a powerful municipal council was scrapped and the composition of the Legislative

Council remained unchanged. External circumstances played an important role in the abandonment of the Young Plan. The most active champion of the Young Plan, Secretary of

State for the Colonies Arthur Creech-Jones, lost his seat in the election of 1950 (by just eighty- one votes).89 Creech-Jones actually approved the Young Plan, but nothing was done due to

Young’s retirement in 1947. Moreover, in 1949, officials in the Colonial Office remained reluctant to implement constitutional changes in Hong Kong without prior consent from the

PRC.90 Creech-Jones’ successor, James Griffiths, while supportive of reforms, simply did not view Hong Kong as one of his top priorities.91 In spite of the British cabinet’s formal approval of the Young Plan, the absence of a strong political drive at the top of the Colonial Office enabled officials in London, who had reservations about reforms, to essentially drag their feet.

It is important to note that historians have yet to find within British archives notes of formal protest submitted by either the KMT or the CCP about objections to reforms in Hong Kong when the Young Plan was being debated in the colony. 92 In his memoir, Grantham did comment on his fear of Chinese retaliations, but according to Steve Tsang, his correspondences with Whitehall did not mention concerns regarding potential KMT or CCP reprisals due to the implementation of the Young Plan.93 Indeed, officials in the Foreign and Colonial Offices even feared that half-baked reforms that failed to grant Hong Kong a greater degree of self-rule

89 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 88. 90 Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 108; TNA: PRO: CO 537/4806: ‘Hong Kong Constitution. 8/9/1949’, p. 5. 91 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 88. 92 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 92. While it appears that the CCP did not issue a formal protest when debates regarding the Young Plan were taking place in the colony, journalists in Hong Kong recently discovered documents in the National Archives revealing that in the late 1950s, Chou Enlai warned Harold Macmillan that the implementation of reforms without the permission of the PRC would be interpreted as a ‘very unfriendly act’. Mao Lai You 毛來由, 'Weihe yingguo bu zao gei xianggang minzhu? Yingguo dangan tigong de daan’ ‘為 何英國不早給香港民主？英國檔案提供的答案’, 輔仁, 二零一四一月十一日, (進接：二零一六年三月二十九日) [Mao Laiyou, ‘How Come Britain Did Not Give Hong Kong Democracy? Answers from the British Archives’, Fun Ren, January 11, 2014 (Accessed 29 March 2016)]. 93 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 92; Grantham, Via Ports, pp. 111-113. For more information on the political crisis sparked by the Patten reform package, see Tsang, Documentary History, pp. 97-101. 56 would become propaganda materials for KMT or CCP operatives determined to expose alleged

British hypocrisy.94 According to Steve Tsang and Wm. Roger Louis, the greatest fear held by

British officials was the utilisation of democratic reforms by Chinese political operatives to infiltrate the colony.95 It was a fear that was skilfully exploited by Grantham at a time when the colony often appeared dangerously close to collapse.

The situation in Hong Kong was complicated considerably by the perilous political of East Asia during the Cold War. The Korean War, which broke out in 1950, not only made Hong Kong a tempting target for PRC aggression, but also posed a fundamental challenge to the economy of the colony. Historically, Hong Kong had been an entrepôt for goods destined for South China. Grantham even went so far as to say that trade was Hong Kong’s ‘lifeblood’.96

As the result of the PRC’s military intervention in the Korean War, the United States and the

United Nations imposed embargoes on China, which had the potential of crippling Hong

Kong’s trade relations with the mainland. 97 The negative impact of the embargoes was immediate. According to Grantham, the ‘total volume of trade in 1951 was a million tons less than in 1950’.98 In addition to the genuine fear regarding the collapse of trade with China, the impression that Hong Kong was always on the verge of descending into chaos was compounded by instability within the colony itself. In 1948, the violent eviction of squatters in

Kowloon Wall City led to one death, which in turn sparked protests in China, culminating in the burning down of the British in Canton.99 In 1952, the decision to deny entry into

Hong Kong a Chinese relief mission the stated purpose of which was to assist victims of the

94 TNA: PRO: FO 371/99251: ‘Constitutional Reform in Hong Kong. From K.R. Oakeshoot, 31/3/52’, p. 1; TNA: PRO: FO 371/99251: ‘Letter to C. H. Johnson. From J.B. Sidebotham, 19/3/1952’. 95 Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 163; Louis, Hong Kong, p. 1066, p. 1068. 96 Meeting of 8 March 1950, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1950 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1950), p. 38. 97 Meeting of 5 March 1952, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1952 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1952), p. 63. 98 Meeting of 5 March 1952, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 63. 99 Alan Smart, The Myth: Squatters, Fires, and Colonial Rule in Hong Kong, 1995-1963 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), p. 61. 57

Tung Tau village fire led to riots by disgruntled fire victims and sympathisers of the PRC.100

With chaos engulfing the colony, there was considerable reluctance among officials, in the

Colonial and Foreign Offices, to introduce major reforms in Hong Kong.101 It was in this context that Grantham sent a telegram in 1952 to J. B. Sidebothan, the head of the Hong Kong

Department at the Colonial Office, that he and his allies had come to the conclusion that major reforms constituted ‘a danger’.102 According to Steve Tsang, ‘danger’ was the ‘ word’ that ‘would induce the Colonial Office to apply brake on reforms’.103 It was on this basis that the reconfiguration of the Urban Council was accepted as the end of constitutional reforms in

Hong Kong.

The abortion of the Young Plan effectively ended British efforts to democratise Hong

Kong in the postwar period. While no other serious reform proposals were put forward in the

1950s, as the 1960s approached, there was an increasing sense that the existing system of governance was not effective in representing the voices of Chinese residing in the colony.

Governor David Trench, in a private correspondence with his colleagues in London, described debates at the Legislative Council between men who were supposed to be representatives of different segments of the Hong Kong population as ‘inexpressibly tedious’.104 There were attempts to revive public debates for constitutional changes by organisations such as the

Reform Club and the Civic Association. In August 1960, these two groups held a joint meeting to discuss the need for political changes. They then followed up their meeting by going to

London to forward a petition to Whitehall pressing for reforms.105 Nothing came of these attempts to jump start another round of constitutional talks since there was no groundswell of

100 Smart, The Shek Kip Mei Myth, p. 76. 101 TNA: PRO: FO 371/83268: ‘Out File. From J. S. H. Shattook. To J. B. Sidebotham. 28/12/1950’, pp. 1-2; TNA: PRO: CO 537/4806: ‘Hong Kong Constitution. 8/9/1949’, p. 5. 102 Quoted in Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 162. 103 Tsang, Democracy Shelved, p. 163 104 TNA: PRO: CO 1030/1591: ‘Letter to W. I. J. Wallace. From , Hong Kong, 9/7/1964’, p. 17. 105 Far Eastern Economic Review 1961 Yearbook (Hong Kong: Far Eastern Economic Review Ltd., 1960), p. 65. 58 support for political changes in Hong Kong. Changes proposed by the Hong Kong government in the 1960s were for the purpose of improving the line of communication between the general public and the highest level of the colonial state.106 Nothing as bold as the Young Plan was contemplated.

The fear of infiltration by Chinese agents, the unwillingness of local British officials to broaden the basis of political participation in the colony, and the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the general public on the need for democratic reforms all contributed to the demise of the

Young Plan. One of the chief purposes of the Young Plan was to create a sense of civic pride among Chinese in Hong Kong. The Young Plan was never implemented precisely because this sense of identity was missing among the Chinese in the colony. Indeed, this was the key argument asserted repeatedly by the critics of the Young Plan. Chau Tsun-Nin, one of the unofficials who opposed the Young Plan, stated that it ‘would perhaps be expecting too much of the inhabitants to ask them to forget their native origin but to merge their respective individualities into a common bond of Hong Kong citizenship’.107 It was for this reason that it was thought to be futile to give the Hong Kong population the right to vote, since a population without a strong sense of civic pride or a sense of belonging would be liable to be manipulated by external political influences. Hong Kong and London policymakers were therefore convinced that Chinese in Hong Kong would never develop a sense of civic belonging that would act as the foundation for liberal governance in the colony.

Postwar Colonial Educational Policies in Hong Kong

Education was an especially important policy issue in a colony that was seen as lacking civic pride. It was assumed that a population without any cohesiveness would be difficult to control by its colonisers. Young and uneducated men and women were seen as liable to

106 Local Administration Report by Colonial Secretariat, 1966, Preliminary Inventory of the James Hayes Papers, Box 14:1, Hoover Institute Archives, pp. 70-71. 107 Meeting of 22 June 1949, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 201. 59 delinquency, an issue that could develop into a serious social problem for the colonial government since Hong Kong’s population expanded with the influx of refugees from China in the 1950s and 1960s.108 In 1951, it was recognised that education was important ‘from a civic as well as from economic point of view’. 109 Grantham was concerned about ‘street children’ who were growing up ‘without any ethical standards, in fact without standards of any kind except the will to survive’.110 In this sense, British policymakers were not unlike colonial administrators in other European colonies, who saw education as a method to enforce social control through propagating ideologies in schools and reinforcing ‘discourse[s] of legitimation’ that were supportive of colonial rule. 111 It was also feared that ‘in the absence of a comprehensive system of education’, political parties, such as the KMT or the CCP, would be

‘willing, and indeed, anxious to establish schools as a means to political indoctrination rather than to education’.112 While no doubt also driven by humanitarian impulses, the uncertain political climate that policymakers found themselves in constituted a key reason behind Hong

Kong government’s determination to enlarge educational structure in the colony during the postwar period.

The massive expansion of the educational sector was especially impressive when one considers that policymakers were determined to preserve budgetary surpluses. In 1948, there were 110,000 pupils in Hong Kong schools; in 1949, 130,000; in 1950, 150,000; in 1951,

169,000; in 1952, 195,000. By 1953, Hong Kong had over 200,000 pupils in its schools.

Grantham proudly noted there were about twice the number of children attending schools in

Hong Kong as there were at the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941. The expansion of school

108 This ‘Problem of People’ will be more closely studied in the next section. 109 N.G. Fisher, A Report on Government Expenditure on , 1950 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1951), p. 13 110 Meeting of 27 February 1957, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1957 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1957), p. 22. 111 Young, The African Colonial State, p. 164 112 Anthony Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 1941 to 2001: Visions and Revisions (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1990), p. 149. 60 placements was a remarkable policy achievement, considering that upon re-occupation, policymakers had to start almost from scratch.113 By 1966, the total number of students in schools was more than 900,000, meaning that roughly one out of four Hong Kong resident was attending an educational course in the colony.114 According to Anthony Sweeting, between

1955 and 1964, the most intense expansion of school placements in Hong Kong occurred at the primary level.115 By 1966, out of the total student population of 925,752, 636,455 were primary school pupils.116

Secondary government schools could not absorb all the students that graduated from the primary level, and from 1955 to 1954, enrolments at private schools tripled.117 Since there were private schools funded by KMT and CCP sympathisers, the danger persisted that institutions within the colony would train students to become opponents of British rule.

Prominent KMT schools included Heung Tao Middle School (香島中學) and Rennie's Mill

Middle School (調景嶺中學), while Hon Hwa (漢華), Sun Kiu (新僑), Chung wah (中華), and Pui

Kiu (培僑) were popular pro-PRC schools.118 It is important to note that enrolments at pro-

KMT and pro-PRC schools were underwhelming. For example, from 1959 to 1960, enrolments at registered primary and secondary schools totalled 370,827, while the nine schools located in the KMT stronghold of Rennie’s Mill enrolled only 4,560 pupils.119 Enrolments at pro-PRC

113 Meeting of 4 March 1953, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1953 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1953), p. 21. 114 Meeting of 24 February 1966, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1966 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1966), p. 44. 115 Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 1941 to 2001, p. 146. 116 Hong Kong Statistics: 1947-1967 (Hong Kong: Census & Statistics Department, 1969), p. 184. 117 Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 1941 to 2001, p. 149. 118 Ting-Hong Wong, ‘State Formation, Hegemony, and Chinese School Curricula in Singapore and Hong Kong, 1945-1965’, in Struggles Over Difference: Curriculum, Texts, and Pedagogy in the Asia-Pacific, eds. by Yoshiko Nozaki, Roger Openshaw, and Allen Luke (New York: State University of New York Press, Albany), pp. 49-59 (pp. 50-51). 119 Wong Ting-Hong, Hegemonies Compared: State Formation and Chinese School Politics in Postwar Singapore and Hong Kong (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002), p. 219. 61 schools was higher than at their KMT counterparts, but schools aligned with Beijing often received insufficient funding and therefore could not significantly expand their student populations.120 In 1960, approximately 11% of the overall high school students enrolled at schools supportive of the CCP. 121 These shortcomings notwithstanding, the colonial government did not ignore the potentially explosive confrontations that could arise out of these political parties’ self-identification as vanguards of Chinese nationalism. Policies therefore were constructed to minimise the potential danger Chinese nationalism posed to the colony.

As late as 1949, Hong Kong schools utilised curricula published by KMT authorities.122

Reliance on KMT curricula was obviously problematic for the Hong Kong government, as its officials would not want students to be exposed to ideologies that were anti-British. Continued utilisation of KMT curricula could also provoke conflicts with local pro-PRC elements.123

There were two conflicting visions of Chinese history that could lead to confrontations among students and political activists that aligned themselves on different sides of the Chinese Civil

War. In 1953, the Chinese Studies Committee within the Education Department recommended that Hong Kong should develop its own curricula that focused on Chinese civilisation rather than on contemporary political issues.124 As argued by Paul Morris and Anthony Sweeting, instead of promoting ‘curriculum neutrality’, these initiatives to standardise local curricula were carried out with the ‘explicitly political motive’ of ensuring ‘the apoliticisation of education’.125 This policy was gradually implemented; in the 1960s, the KMT curricula was

120 Wong, Hegemonies Compared, p. 218. 121 Loh, Underground Front, p. 90. 122 Wong, Hegemonies Compared, p. 206. 123 It is difficult to exaggerate the degree to which Hong Kong was embroiled in KMT-CCP conflicts during the Cold War. From 1949 to 1950, there was a prolonged dispute concerning whether the PRC had ownership over KMT planes that were stationed in Hong Kong. This case was decided in Taiwan’s favour, as its officials were able to transfer ownership of the seventy-one planes to an American company. There were also the 1956 riots that broke out due to escalating tensions between pro-KMT and pro-CCP forces in Hong Kong that will be discussed in the next chapter. Loh, Underground Front, pp. 86-87. 124 Flora L. F. Kan, Hong Kong’s Chinese History Curriculum from 1949: Politics and Identity (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), p. 76. 125 Paul Morris and Anthony Sweeting, ‘Education and Politics: The Case of Hong Kong from an Historical Perspective’, Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1991), pp. 249-267 (p. 249). 62 slowly phased out and replaced with curricula approved by the colonial government and containing interpretations of Chinese history that officials wanted to imprint on Hong Kong pupils.126

Determined to preserve British rule and stability within the colony, the colonial government could be quite ruthless in enforcing adherence to official curricula. Schools that failed to comply with prescribed standards were often shut down. Pro-Beijing schools such as

Tak Tat Institute (達德學院) and Nang Fang Academy (南方學校) were closed in 1949 and 1951, respectively. 127 In addition to repression, the colonial government enforced educational standards by incentivising policy compliance. In 1952, the Hong Kong Chinese School

Certificate Examination (CSCE) was instituted.128 The CSCE strictly adhered to the colonial government’s philosophy that the study of Chinese history was for the purpose of fostering internal stability. Questions in the CSCE went so far as to describe the May Fourth Movement as primarily a literacy movement, despite it widely being recognised as an important cultural and political event that centred on anti-imperialism and Chinese nationalism.129 As the only matriculation exam in Chinese that was officially recognised by the local government, the

CSCE forced schools and students to subscribe to an interpretation of Chinese history deemed appropriate by their coloniser. In 1965, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the first Chinese university in the colony that was the by-product of amalgamation between New

Asia College (新亞書院), Chung Chi College (崇基學院), and United College (聯合書院) two years prior, announced that it would base its entry exam on the 1964 CSCE syllabi. This

126 Kan, Hong Kong’s Chinese History Curriculum from 1949, p. 57. 127 Wong, Hegemonies Compared, p. 225. 128 Mark Bray and Kwok -Chun Tang, ‘Building and Diversifying Education System: Evolving Patterns and Contrasting Trends in Hong Kong and Macau’, in Educational Decentralization: Asian Experiences and Conceptual Contributions, ed. by Christopher Bjork (Berlin: Springer, 2006), pp. 71-91 (p. 88). 129 For an in-depth analysis of the May Fourth Movement, see Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), chapter 1; Wong, Hegemonies Compared, p. 201. 63 decision by the CUHK forced Chinese schools that were previously critical of the CSCE to adhere to official curricula.130

As Hong Kong was transforming from an entrepôt into a manufacturing centre, men who managed factories instrumental to the colony’s economic transformation were rarely highly educated technocrats. Their business acumen was acquired through practical experiences rather than advanced education. Often they were former labourers who climbed the managerial ladders through carefully watching profit margins and promoting labour efficiency.131 It could not be said that the need to preserve or to create a workforce able to sustain Hong Kong’s status as an entrepôt and a global manufacturing centre constituted the primary reason behind the massive expansion of the education sector in the 1950s and 1960s.

The initiatives to enlarge the educational sector was motivated as much by the need to undermine popular support for the KMT and the CCP as by humanitarian concerns. The policies enacted by Grantham and his successors not only provided educational opportunities for numerous Hong Kong Chinese, but also countered the ideological appeals of the KMT and the CCP.

New Asia College, Chinese Nationalism, and Postwar Hong Kong

In addition to the efforts of colonial policymakers to expand the educational sector in postwar Hong Kong, the colony was also fortunate that some of China’s most prominent intellectuals sought refuge in the city following the . These Chinese intellectuals arrived in Hong Kong after Mao’s rise to power in 1949 and emerged as important educators in the colony. The most prominent of these Chinese intellectuals, such as Qian Mu,

Tang Junyi, and Zhang Pijie, were fierce Chinese nationalists imbued with ‘a sense of collective shame about the Opium War and the cession of Hong Kong to Britain’. 132

130 Wong, Hegemonies Compared, p. 229. 131 Tsang, Modern History, p. 169. 132 Bernard Hung-Kay Luk, ‘Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum: Heritage and Colonialism’, Comparative Education Review, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), 650-668 (p. 663). 64

Nevertheless, they felt that they had no choice but to seek refuge in British Hong Kong, as they were even more repulsed by the PRC, which they saw as the antithesis of Chinese civilisation.133 In spite of their ties with the Chiang Kai-shek regime in Taiwan, once they settled in Hong Kong, they had to respect the colony’s neutral stance in the Cold War and refrain from adopting a pro-KMT stance.134 It was for this reason that Qian Mu and his cohort began to cultivate a type of Chinese nationalism that concentrated on China’s civilisational achievements in centuries past. 135 This type of cultural nationalism was by no means exceptional; indeed, it was quite common for Chinese living outside of China to feel attached to Chinese culture but not to the regime in control of the mainland.136 Similar to Qian Mu,

Wang Fuzhi, the great seventeenth century Confucian scholar, argued in favour of a ‘separate

Chinese community of culture’ after the fall of the Ming dynasty and the advent of the Manchu dynasty, which, like the CCP in the twentieth century, was seen by some as an unworthy inheritor of the Chinese civilisation.137 Thus, Qian Mu and his colleagues were tapping into a well-developed tradition among intellectuals of distinguishing between the Chinese nation that was made up of China’s civilisational achievements, and the Chinese state, which was a geopolitical entity that could be occupied by forces that were seen as lacking the sophistication to act as custodians of China’s cultural heritage.138

Exiled Chinese intellectuals stationed in Hong Kong were determined to establish an educational base from which they could continue to evangelise their interpretation of Chinese

133 Luk, ‘Chinese Culture’, p. 663; Edmund S. K. Fung, The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 117. 134 Grace Ai-Ling Chou, ‘Confucian Cultural Education on the Chinese Periphery: Hong Kong’s New Asia College, 1949-1976’ (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2003), p. 154. 135 Gad C. Isay, ‘To Regain Self-Affirmation: Qian Mu and His Exile Scholarship’, East Asian History, Number 39 (December 2014), 103-116 (p. 109). 136 Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (New York: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008), p. 248. 137 Peter Harris, ‘Nation and Nationalism in China’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 39.1 (April 1998), 111-124 (p. 145). 138 Harris, ‘Nation and Nationalism in China’, pp. 115-116; John Fitzgerald, ‘The Nationless State: The Search for a Nation in Modern Chinese Nationalism’, in Chinese Nationalism, ed. by Jonathan Unger (New York: East Gate Book, 1996), pp. 56-71 (p. 66). 65 culture and nationalism. To this end, Qian Mu and his colleagues established an institution of higher learning in 1949 with the express purpose of ensuring that its students would come to

‘truly understand Chinese culture’. 139 Initially called Asia School of Humanities and

Commerce (亞洲文商專科夜校), the institution changed its name to New Asia College (新亞書

院) in 1950 when the school relocated to a better and more convenient location. 140 It is important to note that the founders of New Asia did not intend for their students to become detached scholars uninvolved in world affairs. They were disgusted with the state of Chinese politics in the Cold War and wished to preserve in a British enclave what they thought to be the essence of the Chinese civilisation. The purpose of preserving China’s cultural heritage was to safeguard it for future generations.141 Qian Mu and his colleagues therefore likely viewed the Mao era as a transitory period in Chinese history. If mainland China was in the state of cultural decay and scholars in Hong Kong were preserving the Chinese civilisation, then exiled intellectuals saw their responsibility as preparing for the fall of the Mao regime and reintroducing Chinese culture into the post-communist mainland.142 Underscoring their belief that Chinese culture represented the height of human civilisation, one of the goals of New Asia was that its students would utilise their Chinese cultural heritage not only to revitalise China, but also to reconcile global tensions that were provoked by the seeming irreconcilability of

Asian and western values.143 Indeed, in the school’s twentieth anniversary publication, the

139 Chou, ‘Confucian Cultural Education on the Chinese Periphery’, p. 31. 140 Zhang Pi Jie 張丕介, ‘Xin ya shuyuan dansheng zhi qianhou’ ‘新亞書院誕生之前後’(Before and After: the Birth of New Asia College) Zai xin ya shuyuan ershi zhounian xiaoqing teken 在新亞書院二十週年校慶特刊 (New Asia College Twenty Year Anniversary Special Edition), Ya shu yuan bian (Xianggang: Chubanzhe buming, 1969), pp. 6-14 (p. 8). 141 Wang Dao 王道, ‘Lue shu qian xiansheng zhi zhixue jingshen’ ‘略述錢先生之治學精神’ (A Description of Mr. Qian’s Teaching Method) Zai qian mu ziliao 在錢穆資料集 (Qian Mu Information Collection) Bianzeh buming (Xianggang: Chubanzhe buming, 1974), pp. 4-6 (p. 5); Li Su 李素, ‘Qian mu si laoshi’ ‘錢穆四老師’ (Qian Mu, the Fourth Teracher) Zai qian mu ziliao 在錢穆資料集 (Qian Mu Information Collection) Bianzeh buming (Xianggang: Chubanzhe buming, 1974), pp. 13-21 (p.16-17). 142 Chou, ‘Confucian Cultural Education on the Chinese Periphery’, pp. 24-25. 143 Xia Ren Shan 夏仁山, ‘Xin ya jinshen’ ‘新亞精神’(New Asia Spirit) Zai xin ya shuyuan ershi zhounian xiaoqing teken 在新亞書院二十週年校慶特刊 (New Asia College Twenty Year Anniversary Special Edition), Ya shu yuan bian (Xianggang: Chubanzhe buming, 1969), pp. 216-227 (pp. 219-221). 66 mission statement of New Asia was proclaimed to be using Chinese values to construct a global philosophical system supportive of world peace.144

While initially possessing limited resources and often plagued with financial difficulties, the course options of New Asia that focused on various aspects of Chinese culture and history were seen as far superior to China studies programs offered by the University of Hong Kong

(HKU).145 As stated by Grace Ai-Ling Chou, 'for...students…interested in China studies, the

HKU was not regarded as offering much prestige or quality’.146 According to his most recent biographer, Qian Mu was often approached by the HKU and repeatedly offered a teaching position. Citing his commitment to New Asia, Qian refused these job offers. 147 Thus, the cultural influence of New Asia in Hong Kong should not be underestimated. Indeed, many graduates of New Asia went on to become professional teachers and were responsible for the spread of the ‘New Asia Sprit’, which could be summed up as the determination to utilise

Chinese cultural values to improve China and the world at large.148 New Asia also sponsored the Cultural Open Forum, which was a lecture series consisting of 139 meetings that lasted from November 1, 1950 to January 9, 1955, which had the purpose of introducing Chinese culture to what the faculty of New Asia saw as ‘a colonial, alien territory, a desert landscape devoid of…cultural relics and activities’.149 As the lecture series was hosted by New Asia and prominently featured scholars affiliated with the College, the public profile of the school was further enhanced by the Cultural Open Forum.150 New Asia, however, did not concentrate solely on the training of aspiring intellectuals. In spite of the colonial government’s commitment to education, it was still difficult for local educational institutions to absorb pupils

144 Xia, ‘Xin ya jinshen’, p. 224. 145 Chen Yong 陳勇, Qian Mu chuan 錢穆傳 (The Life of Qian Mu) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2001), p. 231. 146 Grace Ai-Ling Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War: Chinese Cultural Education at Hong Kong’s New Asia College, 1949-63 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 87. 147 Chen, Qian Mu chuan, p. 232. 148 Kan, Hong Kong’s Chinese History Curriculum from 1949, p. 74; Xia, ‘Xin ya jinshen’, p. 221. 149 Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 39; Luk, ‘Chinese Culture’, p. 663. 150 Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 40. 67 who came to Hong Kong as part of the refugee influxes in the 1950s. To meet this need, the leadership of New Asia established a primary level night school in 1952 to try to educate the excess student population.151 Enrolment at the night school was actually quite small, and in

1952, only eighty students attended.152 Teachers at the night school propagated the same brand of Chinese nationalism espoused by other scholars at New Asia. The contributions that New

Asia made to the postwar educational expansion at the primary level was minimum, but the efforts to establish the night school, at a time when the financial status of the College itself was perilous, was indicative of the commitment of its scholars to propagate their version of Chinese identity.153

In spite of its difficult beginning, including the bankruptcy of one of its earliest financial backers in 1950, New Asia, with assistance from American organisations such as Yale-China

Association, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Asia Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, gradually achieved financial stability and became an indispensable actor in Hong Kong’s educational sector.154 The financial contributions that American organisations made to New Asia should not be underestimated; without American backing, New Asia would have most likely collapsed in the early 1950s. At that time, the colonial government was barely able to maintain the living standards of Chinese residing in Hong Kong and could not offer substantial financial help.155

Preoccupied with halting the spread of communism, American philanthropic organisations were willing to merge their desire to improve the living standards of residents in third world countries with a fierce determination to undermine the efforts of the communist bloc to expand

151 Chou, ‘Confucian Cultural Education on the Chinese Periphery’, p. 88. 152 Chou, ‘Confucian Cultural Education on the Chinese Periphery’, p. 89 153 Zhang, ‘Xin ya shuyuan dansheng zhi qianhou’, pp. 10-11. 154 Zhang, ‘Xin ya shuyuan dansheng zhi qianhou’, pp. 10-11; Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 59. 155 Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 51. 68 its global reach.156 One of the purposes of supporting New Asia was to ensure that local students attracted by educational opportunities available in the PRC would instead remain in

Hong Kong.157 American organisations were especially attracted by New Asia’s emphasis on traditional Chinese cultural values and its founders’ goal of eventually returning to China in an attempt to restore the mainland’s cultural heritage, an objective shared by the Yale-China

Association.158 To paraphrase Cold War historian and Kissinger biographer Jeremi Suri, New

Asia should be considered a ‘Cold War institution’ since it was recused from financial ruin by organisations with the raison d'etre to resist communist expansionism.159 Both seeking to preserve what they viewed to be traditional Chinese cultural practices, exiled scholars and

American philanthropists were convinced that New Asia represented the best hope for them to achieve their common objective.

Financial stability begot further academic excellence and, as the 1950s progressed,

New Asia’s library became recognised as possessing one of finest classical Chinese material collections in Asia. The New Asia Research Institute was created in 1955 to be a postgraduate and research centre for China studies, and it quickly drew praise for its scholarly rigor.160 With its powerful academic reputation, it should be of no surprise that New Asia was one of the three institutions to be merged into the CUHK.161 Indeed, its status as a founding member of the

156 For an excellent analysis of how foundations and charitable organizations impacted American foreign policy during the Cold War, see Inderjeet Parmar, Foundation of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, & Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 157 Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 58. 158 Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 178. 159 For more information on how the American government, industrialists, and philanthropists utilised their financial resources to establish institutions such as Harvard and MIT as ‘Cold War Universities’ that could operationalise academic knowledge to combat communism, see Jeremi Suri, and the American Century (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), chapter 3. 160 Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 34, p. 188. 161 Although the merger of the three colleges was highly successful, current observers should not underestimate the difficulties in creating a new university through the amalgamation of three educational institutions. While New Asia saw itself as a propagator of Chinese cultural values in Hong Kong, Chung Chi was heavily influenced by the American educational system, and its administrators thereby valued general education, and not specialisation in Chinese studies. United College, meanwhile, attempted to provide an educational experience that would allow its students to understand Chinese and western cultures. For an analytical account of how these three institutions were ultimately able to cooperate and create the CUHK, see Lao Sze-Kwang, ‘Chinese 69

CUHK can be seen as one of the lasting legacies of New Asia. New Asia Research Institute was retained by the CUHK as the university’s graduate training centre for aspiring China specialists. It preserved its separated identity even when administrators decided to create a centralised graduate school. The central role occupied by New Asia in the CUHK was recognised by historians such as Grace Ai-Ling Chou, who claimed that 'New Asia...became a core of Chinese studies within a broader university framework that valued Chinese studies'.162

The establishment of the CUHK also signalled a more subtle shift in the guiding principles of

New Asia. Being a founding member of the CUHK explicitly acknowledged that Hong Kong, instead of being point of refuge for scholars awaiting their return to China, was now the focus of New Asia scholars, as the purpose of the new university was to establish itself as the Chinese alternative to the English-speaking HKU.163 Despite not renouncing the New Asia objective of spreading Chinese culture to the PRC and the world, as ‘the New Asia leaders’ stay in the colony became indefinite, their educational project could not avoid becoming an increasingly

Hong Kong-specific, Hong Kong-tailored one’.164 The establishment of the CUHK, which contained the New Asia Research Institute, ensured that Hong Kong, instead of being viewed as a cultural desert, was by 1960s acknowledged as an intellectual centre for China studies in its own right.

It is difficult to escape the impression left by Qian Mu, Tang Junyi, and Zhang Pijie that Hong Kong was always too small, too colonial, and too peripheral. Indeed, none of them came to Hong Kong voluntarily; they were refugees who departed China due to the PRC’s rise to power, a state that to them represented the antithesis of their life’s objective to promote and celebrate Chinese culture. Initially, Hong Kong was not seen as anything more than a

Studies and Cultural Integration’, in The Quest for Excellence: A History of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, ed. by Alice N. H. Lun Ng (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1994), pp. 125-164. 162 Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 34, p. 188. 163 Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, p. 159. 164 Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War, p. 216. 70 temporary refuge for the founders of New Asia, who were prepared to return to China upon the fall of the Maoist regime. When the PRC showed no signs of imminent collapse, it became evident that Qian Mu and his cohort had to view Hong Kong not as a temporary refuge, but as their permanent home. The ambitious objective of New Asia founder to use Chinese values to promote global peace was too utopian to realise. A much more tangible legacy of New Asia was the establishment of the CUHK. In addition to scholars who achieved international prominence as the result of their academic training in New Asia, the school changed the lives of many Hong Kong Chinese for the better due to various initiatives, such as the night school to educated underprivileged youths. In the end, an institution of higher learning that began as an attempt to spread Chinese cultural values around the world found its most lasting legacy in the education of men and women of a small British colony during the late colonial era.165

The Emergence of Hong Kong Identity? The Transformation of the Colony from 1949 to 1966 As Hong Kong would always be affected by political chaos within China, the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War brought severe challenges to the stability of British rule

165 Of course, this chapter only provides a small glimpse of the immense intellectual prowess possessed by Chinese intellectuals at New Asia College. The following Chinese monographs constitute an excellent introduction to the historiographical and intellectual frameworks of Qian Mu: Ye Long 葉龍, ed 編錄, Qian mu zhongguo wenxueshi 錢穆講中國文學史 (Qian Mu Discusses the History of Chinese Literature) (Xianggang: Shangwuyinshuguan youxiangongsi, 2015); Ye Long 葉龍, ed 編錄, Qian mu jiang zhongguo shehuijingji shi 錢 穆講社會經濟史 (Qian Mu Discusses Chines Socioeconomic History) (Xianggang: Shangwuyinshuguan youxiangongsi, 2016); Ye Long 葉龍, ed 編錄, Qian mu jiang zhongguo tongshi 錢穆講中國通史 (Xianggang: Shangwuyinshuguan youxiangongsi, 2017). The following volumes constitute some of Tang Junyi’s definitive works: Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Zhongguo wenhua zhi jingshen jiazhi 中國文化之精神價值 (The Spiritual Value of Chinese Civilisation) (Jingsu: Jingsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2006); Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Zhongguo renwen jingshen zhi fazhan 中國人文精神之發展 (The Development of the Spirit of Chinese Humanities) (Guangxi: Guangxi shifandaxue chubanshe, 2006); Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Wenhua yishi yu daode lixing 文化意識與道德理性 (Cultural Knowledge and Moral Rationality) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 1995); Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Renwen jingshen zhi chongjian 人文精神之重建 (The Reestablishment of the Spirit of Humanities) (Taipei: Tai wan xuesheng shuju, 2000); Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Xin wu yu rensheng 心物與人生 (Heart of Life) (Taipei: Tai wan xuesheng shuju, 2000); Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Daode ziwo zhi jianli 道德自我之建立 (The Establishment of Moral Self, 2015). For insight into Zhang Pijie’s academic career, see Song Xu Wu 宋敘五, ed 編錄, Zhang pi jie xiansheng jinian ji 張丕介先生紀念集 (Xianggang: Song Xu Wu, 2008). 71 in the colony. Before 1950, the British colonial state had ‘the policy, indeed almost a tradition, to allow freedom of movement to Chinese across the border with China’. 166 With the impending collapse of the KMT government at the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War,

Chinese from the mainland increasingly took advantage of the open-door policy to enter Hong

Kong, since they saw the colony as an oasis of calm at a time when political conflicts were raging in China. By November 1949, Grantham was already ‘much exercised’ about the influxes of migrants and refugees into the colony.167 By 1950, London agreed that all Chinese nationals attempting to enter Hong Kong should be ‘liable to immigration control wherever they come from’ due to serious overcrowding in the colony.168 In May 1950, a daily quota system was introduced to make the number of Chinese entering the colony roughly equal to the number leaving, only permitting extra fifty legal migrants to stay per day.169 Responding to this new policy, PRC Deputy Foreign Minister Tsang Han-fu sent the British a note of protest, arguing that the imposition of the quota system was in violation of the traditional open-door policy between the mainland and Hong Kong.170 The quota system was therefore ‘not strictly enforced’, as the British believed the Chinese government would ‘resist such an attempt’.171 In this way, even after the imposition of the quota system, the actual number of Chinese arriving in Hong Kong far exceeded those leaving for the mainland. In February 1956, the Hong Kong government decided to suspend the quota system for a trial period of seven months. The result was a further influx of 56,000 Chinese into Hong Kong. The quota system was quickly

166 Hong Kong Annual Report 1956 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1957), p. 3. 167 TNA: PRO: FO 371/75944: ‘Chinese Entering Hong Kong from Formosa. P.S.W.Y. Scarlett. 21/11/1949’, p. 1; To the Secretary of State for the Colonies. From Hong Kong (Sir A. Grantham). D. 24th November, 1949. R. 24th November, 13.30 hrs’, p. 1. As this chapter would go on to demonstrate, not all Chinese who entered Hong Kong at the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War were refugees. Some possessed immense wealth and technical knowhows that transformed postwar Hong Kong. 168 TNA: PRO: FO 371/75944: ‘Outward Saving Telegram from Commonwealth Relations Office. 27/4/1950’, p. 1. 169 Mark Chi-Kwan, ‘The “Problem of People”: British Colonials, Cold War Powers, and the Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong, 1949-62’, Modern Asian Studies, 41 (2007), 1145-1181 (p. 1148). 170 TNA: PRO: FO 371/83515: ‘The Times. Control of Refugees in Hong Kong. 11/5/1950’, p. 1. 171 Cited in Mark, ‘The Problem of People’, p. 1148. 72 reimposed in September of the same year.172 Indictive of how successive population influxes changed Hong Kong, by 1961, out of the total population of 1,607,779, around 733,472

Chinese in Hong Kong were born in Guangdong. 173 Given Hong Kong’s proximity to

Guangdong, it is reasonable to assume that refugees who attempted to enter the city in 1962 during the height of the Great Leap Forward were also mostly of Guangdong origin.174 By then, it was deemed necessary for the colonial government to actually turn back refugees seeking a safe haven in Hong Kong.175 Even so, while 60, 000 refugees were returned to the PRC between

April and May of 1962, roughly the same number were able to enter and remain in Hong Kong illegally.176

Successive waves of refugee and migrant influxes meant that an already crowded city became even more overpopulated. Shelters had to be provided for these new arrivals, as failure to do so could potentially have a devastating impact on the stability of the colony. Squatters became a serious problem in the 1950s, as their presence in Hong Kong could provide a trigger for a PRC intervention. Particularly worrying for the colonial government was the fact that squatters had already participated in the riots of 1948 and 1952.177 According to Alan Smart, public housing and squatter resettlement programs that began after the 1953 Shek Kip Mei fire were designed to alleviate the threat posed by squatters and deprive the PRC government of an excuse for military interventions.178 Smart was not overestimating Grantham’s distrust of the

PRC, as the governor was a young cadet during the 1925-1926 Strike-Boycott, and his

172 Mark, ‘The Problem of People’, p. 1148. 173 Hong Kong Statistics: 1947-1967 (Hong Kong: Census & Statistics Department, 1969), p. 122. 174 The Great Leap Forward was a social, political and economic campaign waged by the CCP leadership to drastically enhance the PRC’s industrial outputs. This campaign ended in disaster as forced labour and collectivisation led to the Great Chinese Famine that caused approximately 45 million deaths. For more on the Great Leap Forward and the resultant Great Chinese Famine, see Frank Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine: The 's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010). 175 Mark, ‘The Problem of People’, p. 1148. 176 Mark, ‘The Problem of People’, p. 1148. 177 Smart, The Shek Kip Mei Myth, p. 61, p. 76. 178 Smart, The Shek Kip Mei Myth, pp. 77-78. 73 formative years in the colony made him ever vigilant of external political organisations’ attempts to destabilise Hong Kong.179 Grantham therefore was determined to minimise threats posed by a discontent population and local sympathisers of the PRC.

Between 1950s and 1960s, the Hong Kong government became involved in public housing and squatter resettlement projects to a degree that was unimaginable for the predecessors of Grantham. In March 1951, Grantham stated that ‘housing for the less well-to- do members of the community is a matter of prime importance calling for early attention’.180

By 1954, about 120,000 former squatters had been rehoused and begun living in resettlement areas due to the efforts of the newly established Resettlement Department.181 In the same year, the Housing Authority was created with the responsibility to provide accommodations for people living in overcrowded or unsanitary conditions.182 The Housing Authority’s first project was to build over 1,700 flats at , the purpose of which was to provide accommodation for about 15,000 people.183 While non-governmental organisations such as the

Housing Society and the Model Housing Society still played important roles, by 1954, low- cost public housing and resettlement represented policy domains over which the colonial government was primarily responsible.184 In the annual review for the year 1966, the Hong

Kong government labelled the preceding ten years a ‘decade of progress’, especially regarding the construction of cheap housing for the underprivileged.185 By then, 67,275 Hong Kong

Chinese were residing in low-cost housing units.186 From 1954 to 1966, the government of

179 Grantham, Via Ports, pp. 14-15. 180 Meeting of 5 March 1952, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1952 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1952), p. 40. 181 Meeting of 2 Mar 1955, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1955 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1955), p. 38; Kwok Yu Lau, 'Hong Kong', in Housing Policy Systems in South and East Asia, eds. by Mohammed Razali Agus, John Doling and Dong-Sung Lee (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 60-77 (p. 64). 182 Meeting of 2 Mar 1955, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 42. In 1972, the Resettlement Department and the old Housing Authority were merged to form the new and Housing Authority. Smart, The Shek Kip Mei Myth, p. 96. 183 Meeting of 2 Mar 1955, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 42. 184 Smart, The Shek Kip Mei Myth, p. 96. 185 Hong Kong Annual Report 1966 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1967), p. 6. 186 Hong Kong Annual Report 1966, p. 8. 74

Hong Kong resettled approximately 900,000 persons.187 While a desire to stabilise Hong Kong was certainly the primary imperative, by providing affordable housing to those in need, the colonial government improved the living standards of those residing in the colony.

In addition to public housing, Hong Kong was also fortunate that its economy was able to adapt quickly to external challenges and to provide sufficient employment opportunities for its mushrooming population. In 1949, Hong Kong’s trade mostly involved re-export; in contrast, by 1966, the local manufacturing sector had grown to such a degree that overseas markets were now destinations for goods produced in the colony.188 The impetus to transform

Hong Kong’s economic structure was triggered by embargoes placed on the PRC by the United

Nations and the United States.189 The economic relationship between China and Hong Kong was not severed, as goods were often smuggled into the PRC from the colony, and the territory continued to be a destination for imports originated from China.190 Nonetheless, in order to survive economically, Hong Kong had to develop a new alternative role besides being primarily a gateway for products going into China. It was in this challenging environment that

Hong Kong emerged as a manufacturing powerhouse in East Asia. Once primarily an entrepôt for products going to China, by 1966 Hong Kong had become one of Asia’s most important manufacturing centres.

The successful emergence of Hong Kong as a manufacturing centre has been attributed to the arrival of industrialists from Shanghai who possessed the technical knowhows as well as the financial resources needed to build prosperous factories.191 According to Siu-lun Wong, arguably the top expert on the Shanghainese elites in Hong Kong, Shanghai industrialists fled

187 Hong Kong Annual Report 1966, p. 6. 188 Report on Hong Kong for the Year 1949, p. 32; Hong Kong Annual Report 1966, pp. 47. 189 Meeting of 7 Mar 1951, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1951 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1951), p. 34; Catherine R. Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre (New York: Routledge Press, 2001), pp. 35-43. 190 Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre, p. 41. 191 Siu-lun Wong, Emigrant Entrepreneurs: Shanghai Industrialists in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 21-23, pp. 40-41. 75 the city as the CCP emerged as the victor in the Chinese Civil War. Choosing Hong Kong as their point of refuge due to lax immigration rules and favourable business climate, these

‘emigrant entrepreneurs’ brought immense wealth and, in some cases, sophisticated machineries that were not available in the British territory to jumpstart local industrial development.192 In spite of the fact that they only represented about 4% of the local population

(by the end of the colonial era, Shanghainese made up of 0.5% of the population), their economic prowess enabled these Shanghainese industrialists to become a distinguished group of elites in Hong Kong. Their status rose, according to Leo F. Goodstadt, to at least the equal of expatriate businessmen in the colony.193 According to Wong, the Shanghainese industrialists, who often never learnt how to speak Cantonese and relied upon the utilisation of their regional dialect in their private as well as professional lives, were able to form a formidable industrial and economic bloc in which members conducted financial transactions with each other.194

Relentlessly ambitious, these industrialists consistently used their profits to further expand their businesses, and essentially transform the cotton industry into a Shanghainese enclave.195 Given the importance of the textile industry in Hong Kong’s manufacturing sector, the dominance of

Shanghainese industrialists in this domain made them the key players in the city’s industrial rise.

The argument that Shanghainese businessmen were almost singlehandedly responsible for the industrial take-off of Hong Kong had been challenged by scholars, such as Steve Tsang, who pointed out that there were many industries in Hong Kong before the arrival of industrialists from Shanghai.196 The Chinese Manufacturing Union was established in 1948, demonstrating that there existed significant industrial production that was ‘Chinese-owned and

192 Wong, Emigrant Entrepreneurs, p. 16, pp. 20-21, p. 45, p. 77. 193 Wong, Emigrant Entrepreneurs, p. 14; Goodstadt, Profits, Politics and Panics, pp. 199-200. 194 Wong, Emigrant Entrepreneurs, p. 70, p. 117. 195 Wong, Emigrant Entrepreneurs, p. 13. 196 Tsang, Modern History, p. 163. 76 managed’ prior to the arrival of the Shanghainese industrialists.197 David Faure and Lee Pui- tak went as far as to claim that the postwar emergence of the Hong Kong manufacturing sector should be classified as a ‘revival’, since there was a well-established foundation of industrial production in the colony prior to the 1940s and 1950s.198 In addition to the Shanghainese industrialists who brought with them technical knowledge, capitals, and machineries to Hong

Kong, there were also entrepreneurs of Guangdong origin who contributed to Hong Kong’s industrialisation.199 Although Shanghainese textile firms accounted for perhaps 36% of total domestic exports in 1953, by 1960, their share was down to 22%. In the same period, Cantonese textile companies produced around 39% of total domestic exports.200 Hong Kong’s industrial take-off would not be possible without the Shanghainese industrialists and their Cantonese counterparts (who either came from Guangdong after the war or were Chinese businessmen in

Hong Kong who already had factories in the colony in the late 1940s). The existence of indigenous talent and capital, as well as the infusion of additional financial resources brought by the Shanghainese industrialists, enabled Hong Kong to become a manufacturing powerhouse by 1966.

The production of electronics and plastic goods and companies that provided repair facilities for aircrafts and ships represented important components of Hong Kong’s industrial sector. The textile industry, however, was the engine that drove the colony’s economic growth.201 By December 1966, 424,000 workers were employed in industrial undertakings, an increase of 14% over the previous year. Almost half of the increase was in Hong Kong’s textile industry.202 In the same year, the textile industry accounted for about 41% of Hong Kong’s

197 Report on Hong Kong for the Year 1948 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1949), p. 62. 198 Faure and Lee, A Documentary of Hong Kong: Economy, p.135. 199 Tsang, Modern History, p. 163 200 Goodstadt, Profits, Politics and Panics, p. 104. 201 Hong Kong Annual Report 1966, pp. 50-52. 202 Meeting of 1 Mar 1967, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1967 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1967), p. 70. 77 industrial workforce.203 As a significant percentage of the colony’s industrial workforce was employed by the textile sector, the prosperity of Hong Kong depended considerably on the ability of locally manufactured products to penetrate overseas markets. In fact, Hong Kong textile industry was so successful in its penetration of overseas markets that the colonial government in the 1960s was compelled to place voluntary quotas on Hong Kong exports to countries such as Britain and the United States. The imposition of voluntary quotas prevented foreign authorities from implementing even harsher measures to shield their companies from competition.204 In 1966, Hong Kong’s external trade continued to be robust, with domestic exports increased by 14% and re-exports by 22% over the previous year.205 Expansion of the textile sector was made possible by the colony’s ties with the mainland market, which was responsible for 23% of the colony’s imports in 1966 and supplied much needed raw materials for local manufacturers. 206 International embargoes notwithstanding, Sino-Hong Kong relations were never entirely severed, especially since ‘legitimate local trade of non-strategic materials’ between the colony and China flourished.207 Just as important to Hong

Kong’s economic growth was the fact that Chinese banks, especially those in South China, often provided loans to Cantonese entrepreneurs who wanted to expand or open factories.208

Shanghai bankers, such as K. P. Chen, were reluctant to sever financial ties with the PRC due a sense of loyalty.209 Cantonese businessmen, in contrast, had to cultivate relations with their compatriots due to financial necessity. Cantonese businessmen simply lacked the linguistic competence and political connections necessary to acquire financing from British banks.210

203 Hong Kong Annual Report 1966, p. 50. 204 Faure and Lee, A Documentary of Hong Kong: Economy, pp. 149-150. 205 Meeting of 1 Mar. 1967, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1967, p. 69. 206 Hong Kong Annual Report 1966, p. 54. 207 Tsang, Modern History, p. 164. 208 Tsang, Modern History, pp. 166-167. 209 Pui-Tak Lee, ‘Avoiding Isolation by the Revolution: K. P. Chen’s Dealings from Hong Kong with Shanghai and Taipei, 1948-1956’, in The Capitalist Dilemma In China's Communist Revolution, ed. By Sherman Cochran (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014), pp. 45-65 (pp. 53-58). 210 Tsang, Modern History, p. 167. 78

Alongside contributions from Chinese businessmen, be they from Shanghai, Hong Kong, or

Guangdong, external factors were instrumental in Hong Kong’s economic take-off, such as the availability of foreign markets and the willingness of banks to provide loans to aspiring entrepreneurs.

In spite of its undemocratic nature, British colonialism did provide Hong Kong residents with a degree of stability and an adequate standard of living. Taking inflation into consideration, real daily wages for skilled workers in 1949 were between HK$5.7 and HK$7.9, while those of skilled workers in 1966 ranged from HK$6.4 to HK$21.2.211 Hong Kong’s transformation from an entrepôt into an Asian manufacturing powerhouse did lead to substantive improvement in wages for many workers in Hong Kong. At the same time,

‘considerable improvement in living conditions’ only ‘inspired the desire for still further improvement.’212 Just as important was the fact that for unskilled workers with the lowest earning potential, their real daily wages stagnated at around HK$3 from 1949 to 1966.213

According to prominent Hong Kong anti-poverty activist , for many households,

‘father had to work at another job, and the children had to earn their coopers if the family was to eat at all’. The hardship of ordinary residents was compounded by corruption that permeated almost all levels of government. Policemen knew that ‘there was a lot of money to be earned in corruption’, and people from lower social classes often had to pay protection money to members and policemen.214 There was a growing impression that British colonialism, while able to protect Hong Kong from instability emanating from China, was not necessarily the best system of governance. In 1965, there were rumblings among journalists and intellectuals that

211 The figures utilised in this paragraph were calculated and arrived at using statistics provided by the following sources: Hong Kong Annual Report 1966, p. 30; Report on Hong Kong for the Year 1949, p. 21; Hong Kong Statistics: 1947-1967 (Hong Kong: Census & Statistics Department, 1969), p. 144. 212 TNA: PRO: FC0 40/103: ‘Hong Kong: A Review of Principal Developments: to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Government House, Hong Kong, 15 December, 1966,’ p. 1. 213 Hong Kong Annual Report 1966, p. 30; Report on Hong Kong for the Year 1949, p. 21; Hong Kong Statistics, p. 144. 214 Elsie Tu, Colonial Hong Kong in the Eyes of Elsie Tu (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), p. 36. 79 local men and women, instead of colonial officials, should be in charge of the territory’s governance.215 British Hong Kong would soon face a sterner test than a group of genteel journalists and academics clamouring for self-rule; 1966 witnessed an upheaval highlighting that beneath its veneer of stability, an undercurrent of discontent existed in the colony.

The events of 1966 have justifiably been overshadowed by the disturbances a year later that would shock British colonial rule to its core. Although the 1966 riots did not fundamentally challenge the foundation of British rule, policymakers were alarmed by the level of contempt

Chinese in Hong Kong had for those who occupied positions of power in the colony. The riots were sparked by the increasing its fare by 10 cents. Although the fare increase would be restricted to first class seats, many in Hong Kong were angered by the management’s announcement of the price increase without public consultation. There was also a longstanding fear that other companies would follow the Star Ferry’s lead and hike up prices.216 A young man’s hunger strike to protest the proposed price hike, his subsequent detention by local authorities, and the refusal of demonstrators to disperse led to confrontations between protestors and the police that resulted in 1,465 arrests.217 Neither the KMT nor the CCP was involved in the riots, and according to Governor David Trench, ‘by the standards of other countries’, the disturbances were ‘a minor affair’.218 Trench might have underestimated the level of discontent that existed in Hong Kong. During the protests leading up to the riots, a young man by the name of Lo Kei provocatively and loudly asked: ‘[Should] Colonialism

215 Xia Tai 夏濤, ‘Yingguoren rongxu women zizhi ma?’ ‘英國人容許我們自治嗎?’ (Will the British Grant Us Self Rule?) Xinshe hui 新社會, 一九六五年十一月一日(New Society, 1 November 1965), pp. 3-4; Wen Wang 文王, ‘Xianggang ren zhengfu caineng baozhang xianggang de liyi’ ‘香港人政府才能保障香港的利益’ (Only A Government by Hong Kong People Can Protect the Interests of Hong Kong) Xinshe hui 新社會, 一九六五年十一 月一日, (New Society, 1 November 1965), p. 4. 216 Gong Ren 公任, ‘Buxu rong gonggongshiye jiajia’ ‘不許容公共事業加價’ (Will Not Permit the Increase in Public Services) Xinshe hui 新社會, 一九六五年十一月一日, (New Society, 1 November 1965), p. 6; Tu, Colonial Hong Kong, p. 104. 217 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, pp. 10-11; TNA: PRO: FCO 40/39: ‘Kowloon Disturbances 1966 Report of Commission of Inquiry’, p. 51 218 TNA: PRO: FCO 40/103: ‘Hong Kong: A Review of Principal Development. Governor of Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, February, 1967 ’, pp. 1-2. 80 continue to exist’?219 So Sau-chung, the hungry striker who sparked the riots, claimed that he was disgusted by the oppressive nature of colonial rule in Hong Kong.220 ‘Mundane frustration which develop in an urban industrial community where many people live in terribly over- crowded and sub-standard conditions’; ‘the fact that young people could only hope to obtain dulling and low paid job which offer little challenge and no hope for advancement’; in combination with anger against a colonial government that was not seen as responsive to the needs of the local population all contributed to the eruption of the 1966 riots.221

The fact that young people of the colony would take an active role in a protest against an unpopular policy meant that the residents of Hong Kong could no longer be seen as apathetic colonial subjects. The colonial government certainly did little to foster a sense of cohesiveness among Chinese in the colony during the postwar era, because officials believed that such an attempt would have been futile due to the population’s transient character and that many would return to their home provinces after saving enough money.222 This was already changing in the 1950s. International observers, such as Dr. Edward Hambro, a United Nations official responsible for studying the socioeconomic problems that confronted Chinese refugees in Hong Kong, acknowledged that those who came to the colony had no intention of returning to China.223 The creation of affordable public housing was an acknowledgment that the Chinese who escaped from the PRC intended to stay, and public policies had to be formulated to integrate these new arrivals into Hong Kong society.224 By 1966, out of a total population of

219 TNA: PRO: FCO 40/39: ‘Kowloon Disturbances 1966 Report of Commission of Inquiry’, p. 23. 220 Su Shou Zhong 蘇守忠, ‘Liuliu qianhou’ ‘六六前後’ (66: Before and After) Zai su shou zhong wenji 在蘇守忠 文集 (Essay Collection of Su Shou Zhong), Bianji you su shou zhong (Xianggang: xianggang yishu fazhan ju, 1999), pp. 14-32 (p. 14). 221 A-726. Confidential. To: Department of State Washington. From: AmConGen Hong Kong. Subject: Hong Kong Riots. April 27, 1966. Box 4. Preliminary Inventory to the United States. Dept. of State Records, 1942-1990, p. 9; Tu, Colonial Hong Kong, pp. 104-105 222 TNA: PRC: FC0 40/103: ‘Hong Kong: A Review of Principal Developments. Governor of Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, February, 1967 ’, p. 1. 223 TNA: PRO: FO 371/121010: ‘The Times. Hongkong’s One-Way Traffic. 5/9/1956’, p. 1. 224 TNA: PRO: FO 371/121010: ‘The Times. Hongkong’s One-Way Traffic. 5/9/1956’, p. 1. 81

3,708,920, about 1,996,640 inhabitants of Hong Kong were born in the colony. 225

Approximately 1,487,990 Hong Kong inhabitants were in the age range of 15 to 39.226 It is important to note that in stark contrast to Singapore, a comparable city-state where the government decided to forge a strong identity among members of its multicultural population,

Hong Kong did not initiate policies that would create a sense of commonality.227 Despite the absence of active identity formation policy by the colonial government, a Hong Kong identity did emerge, a fact recognised by Governor Trench. The generation who grew up in Hong Kong during the 1950s or 1960s ‘never known and have no foreseeable hope of knowing another home’.228 Many Chinese in Hong Kong simply had no choice but to identify the colony as their permanent home. By the 1960s, it was apparent that Hong Kong was indeed different from

China. The colony possessed political, social, and economic systems that were seen as superior to those in China.229 In this way, British colonialism ensured that a Hong Kong identity was burgeoning even without efforts by local officials. The 1960s therefore witnessed the emergence of a sense of belonging in Hong Kong, and from this period onward, the majority of the population could credibly be called ‘Hong Kong Chinese’, ‘the people of Hong Kong’ or any other labels that connote a high degree of cohesiveness.

It may be useful to take a detour from Hong Kong history and begin a brief discussion on the arguments presented by Michael Billig regarding ‘banal nationalism’. The reproduction of nationalist discourse in western nation-states constituted the central aspect of Billig’s argument: Nationalism was not only reproduced in areas of the world such as Bosnia, where racial tensions threatened to overwhelm local political systems, but also in the more ‘banal’

225 Hong Kong Statistics: 1947-1967, p. 22. 226 Hong Kong Statistics: 1947-1967, p. 17. 227 Colony of Singapore Annual Report, 1959 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1959), p. 27; Stephen Ortmann, ‘Singapore: The Politics of Inventing National Identity’, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 4/2009: 23-46 (p. 28). 228 TNA: PRC: FC0 40/103: ‘Hong Kong: A Review of Principal Developments’, p. 1. 229 Ma Li Feng 馬立峰, ‘Zhanwang xianggang de fanrong’ ‘展望香港的繁榮’ (Hoping for the Prosperity of Hong Kong) 新社會, 一九六五年十一月一日 (New Society, 1 November 1965), p. 5 82 settings of western societies. The various insignificant aspects of daily living constantly reminded citizens within established nation-states that they resided in a geopolitical entity possessing unique social, economic, and political characteristics that set it apart from other nation-states.230 Nationalist symbols could be found within a bank, such as on currency that prominently displayed various historical figures and events commonly associated with the founding of the nation-state. Politicians played an equally important role in the reproduction of nationalist discourse, given the coverage accorded to them by the media and their willingness to play the ‘patriotic card’.231 Every time a politician invoked ‘the motherland’ in his or her speech, citizens were once again reminded of their nation-state.232 As politicians reduced the invocation of the motherland by sheer repetition to the level of cliché, their audiences came to see their nationalism as something uncontroversial.233 The prevalence of nationalist discourse and the constant reminder of the nation-state’s existence in the daily life of average citizens made it possible for nationalism to be seen as something natural and uncontroversial.

Similar to the social, economic, and political conditions depicted by Billig, colonial officials in Hong Kong and the specific geopolitical environment of Hong Kong underlined the colony’s distinctiveness. Unlike Singapore, Hong Kong government did not engage in efforts to promote a local identity; but, according to Billig, an overt ideological campaign was not necessary for a sense of belonging to develop. As early as 1950, Grantham talked about ensuring that benefits of colonial social policies would only go to ‘bona fide Hong Kong residents’, thereby underlining that Chinese of the colony represented a class of Chinese distinct from their compatriots in the PRC.234 Every time Grantham or Trench addressed ‘Hong

Kong residents’, they were reinforcing the impression that inhabitants of Hong Kong

230 Billig, Banal Nationalism, pp. 93-94. 231 Billig, Banal Nationalism, p. 103. 232 Billig, Banal Nationalism, p. 71, p. 86. 233 Billig, Banal Nationalism, p. 109. 234 Meeting of 8 March 1950, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1950 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1950), p. 38. 83 represented a population distinct from Chinese residing in the mainland. Every time a Chinese in Hong Kong utilised a service that was only available to them and not to mainland Chinese, they were reminded that their political environment was different from the PRC.

Concluding Remarks

The colonial provided credible stewardship over the colony during a period of upheavals. The embargoes against the PRC could have crippled Hong

Kong’s economy, but the colony successfully transformed itself into a manufacturing powerhouse that provided employment opportunities for Hong Kong’s expanding population.

Even without idealising the ability of British colonisers to ensure stability, one must admit that compared to the PRC and many other areas of Asia, Hong Kong was relatively well-governed during the Cold War. Regardless of its original intent, the Hong Kong government’s resettlement and housing programs also helped to alleviate the problem of housing shortage.

Stability within Hong Kong borders and an acceptable level of living standards meant that even in the absence of concerted efforts by the colonial government to promote industrialisation, the colony provided an ideal environment for businessmen to enhance their profit margins. Hong

Kong was well on its way to becoming a capitalistic paradise in the 1960s. The lives of those who were not part of the economic elites often remained difficult. By the 1960s, cracks began to appear in colonial rule. Hong Kong residents often had to interact with corrupt officials who cared more about enhancing their personal wealth than improving the lives of average men and women. The viciously competitive nature of the Hong Kong economy also meant that a person could work hard and still not be able to support his or her family. The 1966 riots reveal that a level of anger existed among the youth of the colony, as they became convinced that colonialism could not provide them with the lives they wanted. In the coming years, British

Hong Kong would face further challenges, and it was incumbent upon British policymakers to 84 win support from those who were convinced that their well-being was ignored by their colonisers.

For all its flaws, the colonial government deserved credit for ensuring the survival of

Hong Kong from 1949 to 1966, a period that saw the colony overcame monumental challenges as East Asia became embroiled in various crises. Neighbouring the PRC, a communist power with internal instability issues, the colony not only weathered this disconcerting political situation, but thrived as its manufacturing sector developed into one of the most productive hubs in the world. Colonial rule, of course, was not perfect. Corruption was a major problem, and, as argued by John Carroll, British rule could be repressive and racist.235 The absence of constitutional reform at a time when other parts of the British Empire were either granted independence or self-rule represented a missed opportunity. With the benefit of hindsight, historians can now see that the Young Plan was not only the most radical reform proposal in the history of Hong Kong, but arguably the best opportunity for the territory to take a giant leap forward towards self-governance. Fear of PRC retaliation and infiltration by KMT or CCP agents made policymakers reluctant to implement the Young Plan. The action of Grantham and his allies ensured that the constitutional structure of Hong Kong would remain unchanged for most of the postwar period.

If the Young Plan’s original purpose was to create a sense of Hong Kong identity,

Grantham, in contrast, was convinced that people in the territory would never become loyal

British subjects or develop a distinct sense of belonging.236 If Chinese in Hong Kong were loyal to the KMT or the CCP, then it would indeed have been foolhardy to grant these potentially disloyal subjects self-governance.237 There was consequently no attempt to promote a sense of cohesion among Chinese who resided in Hong Kong. The absence of identity promotion

235 Carroll, Concise History, p. 5. 236 Louis, ‘Hong Kong: The Critical Phase’, p. 1058 237 Louis, ‘Hong Kong: The Critical Phase’, p. 1058. 85 notwithstanding, most Hong Kong residents by the 1960s began to see the colony as their permanent home. As a new generation of Hong Kong Chinese had only lived in Hong Kong, they had no alternative but to see the colony as their permanent place of residence. As demonstrated by the 1966 riots, many Hong Kong Chinese were not content with colonial rule.

At the same time, supporting the British administration when its very existence was threatened by pro-PRC partisans during the 1967 riots remained the only sensible course of action for

Hong Kong Chinese, who intensely distrusted the CCP. In the end, it was fear of China, not admiration for colonial rule, that ensured the survival of the British administration when it was confronted by an existential crisis in 1967. 86

Chapter Two – The 1967 Riots: Pro-PRC Chinese Nationalism, Colonialism, and Everyday Resistance in Hong Kong Introduction

They still rage against history. Hong Kong had been a part of China once against since

1997, but those who felt they fought against the British in the name of Chinese nationalism still felt they were unfairly perceived as criminals, rioters, or terrorists by the general public. The events described in the previous chapter, such as the 1966 riots, were entirely overshadowed by the disturbances of 1967, a pivotal year in the history of Hong Kong during which the colonial system came precariously close to collapse, as supporters of the PRC waged a ferocious campaign that almost crippled the British administration. The tactics adopted by sympathisers of the PRC were seen as so extreme that even the most sophisticated of historians focused on the planting of bombs, the ‘pineapples’, and the assassination of Lam Bum, the popular radio talk show host, when discussing the 1967 riots.1 Supporters of the PRC and enemies of the British administration in Hong Kong had only been very recently portrayed in a more sympathetic light.2 Of course, public contempt towards those who supported the PRC in Hong Kong was in many ways justified, as many pro-PRC partisans did indeed have blood on their hands. Then again, as this chapter would demonstrate, there were no angels in a struggle for survival between a colonial administration and a group of fervent revolutionaries determined to eradicate foreign rule. Violence occurred within a climate of escalation that made acts of atrocity understandable, if not in any way justifiable. More importantly, there were many supporters of the PRC who were arrested, charged, and had their lives altered forever not due to their participation in acts of political violence, but as the result of their refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of the British court or political ties that were seen to be suspicious.

The events of 1967 still reverberate in the politics and society of current Hong Kong, almost

1 Tsang, Modern History, pp. 188-187. 2 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, pp. 184-187. 87 as if to vindicate the famous statement made by the great American writer William Faulkner that ‘the past is…never dead. It is not even past’.3

As demonstrated by the previous chapter, Hong Kong survived successive crises from

1949 to 1966 that severely strained the durability of British rule. 1967, however, witnessed a political confrontation that, for the first time in the postwar history of British Hong Kong, challenged the very existence of the colonial government, as its collapse seemed eminently possible due to attacks and riots orchestrated by local supporters of the PRC thirty years before the end of the lease on the New Territories.4 Influenced by the that was raging in the PRC, its supporters in Hing Kong staged a campaign of riots, demonstrations, and explosive attacks.5 Sparked by a labour dispute in a plastic flower factory in San Po Kong,

3 Quoted in Emron Esplin, ‘Faulkner and Latin; Latin America in Faulkner’, in William Faulkner in Context, ed. by John T. Matthews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 270-279 (p. 272), 4 Carroll, Concise History, p. 155; Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, pp. 186. 5 Hong Kong Annual Report 1967 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1968), p. 1, p. 20; Tsang, Modern History, pp. 183-185. The seeds of the Cultural Revolution were sowed when Mao Zedong was side-lined after the immense failure of the Great Leap Forward. Increasingly worried that his political exile would become permanent, and highly agitated by the Soviet Union’s de-stalinisation campaign, as he worried that, just as the Russians were repudiating the legacy of Stalin, the CCP would destroy his reputation even while he was stay alive, Mao became convinced that he had to manoeuvre himself back to the frontline of Chinese politics. There is no consensus on the precise date that witnessed the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, but an important turning occurred in 1966, when the May 16 Directive that originated from the CCP’s Central Committee was circulated among county party committees, party committees in the cultural organisation, and regiments in the army. In this famous memo, it was stated that party members had to 'expose the reactionary bourgeois stand of those so- called academic authorities who oppose the party and socialism, to thoroughly criticise and repudiate reactionary bourgeois ideas in the spheres of academic work, education, journalism, literature, art, and publishing, and to seize the leadership in the cultural sphere'. The memo was seen as outlining Mao’s stance on the ‘bourgeois’ elements within the party, and those who were supportive of the Chairman were encouraged by the backing given to them by the highest level of state to engage in radical and violent acts. For almost an entire decade, China descended into total chaos. The end of the Cultural Revolution occurred in 1976, the year that witnessed the death of Mao and the subsequent arrest of the Gang of Four, the political faction led by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, that was seen to be routinely encouraging the excesses and violence that pervaded China from the early 1960s to 1970s. Julia Kwong, Cultural Revolution in China's School: May 1966-April 1969 (California: Hoover Institution Press, 1988), p. 8-7. p. 332; Ross Terrill, Mao: A Biography (California: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 276; for more information on the fall of the Gang of Four and the subsequent trials of its leader, see Alexander Cook, The Cultural Revolution on Trial Justice in the Post-Mao Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Austin Ramzy, ‘China’s Cultural Revolution, Explained’, New York Times, 22 October 1989, in ‘http://www.nytimes.com’, , [accessed 4 July 2017]. It would be beyond the scope of this study to give a detailed description of the Cultural Revolution’s various facets. It would, nevertheless, be illuminating to compare the relative unity of pro-PRC activists in Hong Kong with the murderous rivalries that engulfed the Cultural Revolution For analyses on how Red Guards from different regions of China conducted political warfare against their rivals, see Andrew G. Walder, Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009), and Fei Yan, ‘Rival rebels: the political origins of 's 88 the crisis gradually escalated into a struggle involving local police and supporters of PRC in

Hong Kong the height of which even witnessed clashes between British troops stationed in

Hong Kong and PRC militiaman who crossed into the border village of that resulted in the deaths of five Hong Kong policemen.6 The crisis would not deescalate until

December 1967, when the Cultural Revolution entered a less violent phase and Chinese Prime

Minister , acting with the blessing of Mao Zedong, conveyed to the supporter of the

CCP in Hong Kong to end hostility toward the colonial administration.7 The 1967 riots inflicted substantial damages on Hong Kong society. Fifty-one people were killed, including ten police officers, twenty-three rioters, four bombers and twelve civilians. There were 1,172 injured, 340 of which were victims of the bombing campaign.8

Rather than being a descriptive account of the 1967 riots, this chapter offers an analysis of how the disturbances of that year altered the trajectory of Hong Kong through the utilisation of various social science theories. This chapter investigates factors that propelled average men and women to risk their livelihoods in order to support the PRC and how their isolation from the rest of Hong Kong society impacted the British colony after the riots. Indeed, one of the legacies of the 1967 riots was the consolidation of Chinese nationalism in Hong Kong among pro-PRC partisans. Focus will then be turned to the actions of British policymakers in 1967 and the methods they utilised to preserve the British status of Hong Kong. The final section of this chapter asserts that the common people of Hong Kong, by refusing to let the city come to a standstill, was demonstrating their grudging support of colonial rule and contempt towards the pro-PRC faction. The emergence of a highly strident form of pro-PRC Chinese nationalism in Hong Kong among the self-perceived victims of British oppression, the growing awareness

mass factions in 1967’, Modern China, 2015, Vol.41(2), pp.168-196. For the best one-volume account of the Cultural Revolution, see Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 6 Tsang, Modern History, p. 187. 7 Tsang, Modern History, p. 188. 8 Tsang, Modern History, p. 188 89 among colonial officials that their hold on power was contingent upon the level of public support they received from the local population, and the grudging backing given to their colonisers by the Hong Kong Chinese all demonstrate that even after the British emerged victorious in the 1967 disturbances, the colony remained deeply divided, as the method with which policymakers utilised to ensure their survival was dependent upon the marginalisation of a signification subsection of the city’s population.

Theoretical Framework

In spite of repeated assertions that postwar Hong Kong was an apolitical society the inhabitants of which were more interested in moneymaking than in politics, a critical examination of the city’s past would reveal that it was often beset by political crises during the

Cold War era. The political conflicts that took place in the city during the postwar era reveal to current analysts that John Hutchinson’s analytical framework of ‘Nation as Zones of Conflict’ could be a useful tool to understand postwar Hong Kong. Persistent ideological conflicts within the same ethnic community, such as disputes within 19th century between republicans and monarchists over political ownership of the Joan of Arc legend, to what degree should

Hinduism be the foundational religious principle of post-independent India, or, within the context of Hong Kong, the political battles between the KMT and the CCP regarding which party’s version of Chinese history should take precedent over the other, could actually legitimise nation-states within which these struggles took place.9 The fact that there were different political factions fighting over which version of the past was worthy of a nation-state meant that there that was a nation-state that was worth fighting over. In this way, the level of contentiousness that characterised ideological struggles between different factions was proportional to the degree of attachment partisans of different political affiliations felt towards their nation-states. If a political faction’s raison-d'etre was to be the self-appointed defender of

9 John Hutchinson, Nations as Zones of Conflict, p. 104, p. 168; Tsang, Documentary History, p. 289. 90 the national community against internal or external enemies, then its members’ esprit de corps would evaporate in the absence of conflicts. As demonstrated by the history of postwar Hong

Kong and the careers of several pro-PRC partisans, this type of ‘hot’ nationalism, one that was based upon conflicts and confrontations to reaffirm its existence, needed constant political struggles to reinforce its legitimacy.10

As it became obvious that the majority of the Chinese in Hong Kong had no interest in engaging in political actions the purpose of which was the destruction of British rule, those who were loyal to the PRC and the CCP were increasingly ostracised in the city due to their political affiliation. It would therefore be highly useful to study the radicalisation of pro-PRC partisans in Hong Kong by taking into consideration the theories of Pierre Bourdieu concerning his concept of ‘habitus’. Habitus represented a system of social, political, and economic values the reproduction of which was dependent upon their operationalisation by men and women who had accepted their legitimacy.11 Through consistent repetition, values that once seemed outlandish became ‘objectively “regulated’ and ‘regular’”’12 This chapter demonstrates that among partisans of the PRC in Hong Kong, the fierce battles against the British in 1967, the perception that they were oppressed by their colonisers, and an acute sense of isolation that many of them experienced after the riots led to the emergence of a pro-PRC habitus in Hong

Kong. Any habitus had to be a product of history, an artefact that was made up of values and ideologies of a particular epoch in time. The prominent values of this pro-PRC habitus were anti-colonialism and strident nationalism, both of which were reinforced by the 1967 riots and the perceived injustices suffered by pro-PRC partisans in the aftermath of the disturbances.

Sympathisers of the PRC in Hong Kong were therefore ‘agents’ of this pro-PRC habitus, as they operationalised its values and prepositions, and they were unaware that their ‘common

10 Hutchinson, Nations as Zones of Conflict, p. 129. 11 Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, p. 17, p. 19. 12 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 21. 91 sense’ view of the PRC, Hong Kong, and British colonialism were products of history and of their personal experiences.13

The survival of British Hong Kong was not only the by-product of its leaders’ refusal to submit to their opponents, but also the result of the support the local administration received from its colonial subjects in the context of everyday life. To study the 1967 riots, this chapter utilises the concept of ‘everyday resistance’ that was popularised by James C. Scott. While recognising that revolutionary, full-scaled peasant revolts were more attractive to scholars interested in the study of resistance participated by the lower classes, Scott chose to concentrate on acts of resistance that ‘were close to the ground, rooted firmly in the homely but meaningful realities of daily experience.14 While not as attention-grabbing for scholars due their absence from historical records, as it was often difficult to chronicle acts of defiance the effectiveness of which was based upon their perpetuators’ ability to deny responsibilities, these ‘everyday forms of resistance’ were the most reliable weapons for those who lacked formal economic or political power.15 Refusing to romanticise everyday resistance, Scott acknowledge that those who were at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum often remained powerless when confronted by the economic exploitations of the politically powerful.16 Nevertheless, there were occasions whereby ‘weapons of the weak’ achieved the objective of thwarting the commands of those in control of the political apparatuses. The dissolution of the Confederate

Army as the result of poor, rural whites’ mass desertion and the failure of the Napoleonic

Empire to force French citizens in rural areas to comply with conscription orders issued by

Paris were cited by Scott as examples of how those without formal power undermined those who occupied positions of authority.17 While the people of Hong Kong did not engage in direct

13 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 79 14 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 32, p. 36, p. 348. 15 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 36, p. 38. 16 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 29. 17 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 30, p. 293 92 confrontations with the PRC and its partisans, residents of the colony did operationalise everyday resistance and rely on this method to defuse the threat posed by those who seek to eradicate colonial rule.

British Hong Kong as a ‘Zone of Conflict’ The conclusion of the Chinese Civil War witnessed the establishment of the PRC in the

Chinese mainland while the KMT regime fled to Taiwan. This CCP-KMT standoff would become a permanent feature of the Cold War in Asia, especially after Washington declared its intention to neutralise the Taiwan Straits in 1950, thereby further hardening the stalemate between Beijing and Taiwan.18 Hong Kong would become ‘a base’ for both the KMT and the

CCP to ‘launch operations against the other side’.19 In addition to propaganda campaigns and the establishment of rival labour unions, there were acts of violence perpetuated by political operatives.20 In 1955, the plane that originally intended to carry the Chinese delegation to the

Bandung Conference in Indonesia and had previously stopped in Hong Kong for refuel exploded in mid-air, killing all passengers. Zhou Enlai was aware of the plot and purposely stayed behind by blaming an emergency illness. By not alerting the British authorities of this assassination attempt and instead allowing it to go ahead while sparing himself, the PRC prime minister was able to subsequently exert maximum pressure on the colonial government to crackdown on pro-KMT partisans in the colony who were responsible for this plot.21 Of course, there were also the 1956 riots, which were generally regarded by historians as a KMT- instigated incident that mostly targeted CCP-affiliated workers and organisations.22 There were ample (and understandable) reasons for PRC sympathisers to feel a profound sense of grievance

18 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 241. 19 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 241. 20 Tsang, Documentary History, p. 241; David A. Levin and Stephen Wing Kai Chiu, 'Bureaucratic Insurgency: The Public Sector Labour Movement', in The Dynamics sof Social Movement in Hong Kong, ed. by Stephen Wing Kai Chiu and Tai Lok Lui, pp. 91-139 (p. 108). 21 Steve Tsang, ‘Target Zhou Enlai: The “Kashmir Princess” Incident of 1955’, The China Quarterly 139 (1994): 766–82 (p. 782). 22 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 88; Tsang, Documentary History, p. 289. 93 against colonial Hong Kong, as its rulers were seen as unwilling or unable to protect supporters of Beijing. The CCP authorities were not above further inflaming this sense of anger against colonial authorities. In the immediate aftermath of the 1956 riots, People’s Daily (人民日报), the official newspaper of the CCP, stated that the PRC government was ‘profoundly concerned for the safety of…Chinese in Hong Kong and Kowloon and extend to them our deepest sympathy’, and that leaders in Beijing ‘feel the greatest indignation at the damage done in the disturbances to our fellow Chinese.23 The British charge d’affaires in Peking even wrote to his superiors in London accusing Zhou Enlai of exaggerating the damages inflicted upon CCP- affiliated organisation in order to further inflame public opinions against the British and the

KMT.24 Even before the 1967 riots, the PRC leadership was always ready to exploit the anger felt by its supporters in the city against the colonial administration and the KMT.

Whereas pro-PRC partisans in Hong Kong expressed their Chinese nationalism through struggles against the colonial state, and its alleged ally, the KMT, ordinary Hong Kong Chinese with no particular political affiliation, similar to their counterparts in other overseas territories, expressed their Chineseness through adherence to what they viewed as Chinese cultural values, not loyalty to a particular Chinese political organisation.25 In addition to political opponents, another potential enemy of hot nationalists could be their ‘banal’ counterparts, men and women who saw themselves as part of the national community but, instead of demonstrating their national identity through confrontations with those who possessed contrary political views, simply took their national identity for granted, as proofs of them being part of a nation-state was so ingrained in everyday life that overt demonstration of loyalty was not seen as

23 Quoted in TNA: PRO: FCO 371/120922: ‘C.D.W. O'Neill. From Peking to Foreign Office. Addressed to Foreign Office. D. 7.44 a.m. October 12, 1956. R. 10.47 a.m. October 12, 1956’, p. 1. 24 TNA: PRO: FCO 371/120923: ‘Guidance. News Department Only. Chinese Government and the Kowloon Riots. Date Unknown’, p. 1. 25 Kuhn, Chinese Among Others, p. 248. For more information on how Hong Kong Chinese and overseas Chinese interpreted their Chinese identity, see Tu Wei-ming, ‘Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center’, Daedalus, Vol. 134, No. 4, 50 Years (Fall, 2005), pp. 145-167; Elena Barabantseva, Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism: De-Centering China (London: Routledge, 2011). 94 necessary.26 Indeed, in spite of prolonged separation from China, the city and its inhabitants retained many Chinese cultural practices in the 1960s, thereby demonstrating Hong Kong

Chinese’ adherence to what they perceived to be their cultural heritage. Cantonese remained the lingua-franca of the majority of Hong Kong Chinese.27 In the 1963-1964 report of the

Department of Chinese Affairs, it was stated that the colonial government had delegated the administration of Chinese temples to Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, various Kaifong

Association, and the Chinese Temples Committee established for the administration of places of worship in Hong Kong. The need to establish a new arrangement to manage Chinese temples demonstrates that traditional religious practices retained its popularity in Hong Kong, as their proliferation necessitated an additional administrative layer that was only possible with the cooperation of prominent local Chinese organisations.28 In this way, John Carroll is certainly correct when he stated that colonialism in no way diminished the Chineseness of the city, especially since ‘British law, Christianity, and modern western medicine coexist happily with…a plethora of religious festivals and ceremonies’ and ‘[s]mall Chinese shops sit comfortably on street named after British royalty’.29

If the previous chapter reveals that a Hong Kong identity was emerging due to the fact that men and women of the colony were residing in a polity separated from China, it has to be emphasised that, similar to other overseas Chinese, the people of Hong Kong saw China as their cultural heritage’s point of origin.30 As stated by Rogers Brubaker and his colleagues, while ethnic politics might have represented an all-consuming obsession for professional politicians, ordinary men and women were, more often than not, simply uninterested in being consumed by a confrontational brand of nationalism that required constant vigilance against

26 Hutchinson, Nations as Zones of Conflict, p. 147. 27 Hong Kong Annual Report 1958 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1959), p. 25 28 Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Annual Departmental Reports, 1963-64 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press), p. 14. 29 Carroll, Concise History, p. 6. 30 Kuhn, Chinese Among Others, p. 28. 95 real or potential enemies.31 If how the people of Hong Kong interpreted their ethnicity seemed muddled and confusing, that was likely due to the fact that they, like most average folks, never felt compelled to clearly articulate the various nuances of how they viewed Hong Kong and

China to observers or to themselves.32 Nevertheless, there were clear distinctions between how ordinary Hong Kong Chinese and pro-PRC partisans interpreted their Chinese identity. While almost all residents of Hong Kong saw themselves as culturally Chinese, their motivation for popular mobilisation was not a sense of allegiance to the PRC, a point of departure from partisans sympathetic to the CCP that will be explored in future chapters. The majority of Hong

Kong Chinese simply did not believe that their Chineseness was dependent upon continuous political confrontations against the KMT or the colonial administration.

The 1967 riots were an anti-colonial conflict, as pro-PRC partisans in the city not only had to confront their colonisers, but also the entire colonial Hong Kong society, as almost every segment of the population was against the eradication of British colonialism. The unwillingness of the local population to adhere to the political demands of the pro-PRC faction in 1967 further fuelled the anger of its members, as the apparent apathy of Hong Kong Chinese most likely was viewed by Beijing loyalists as an indication of British colonisers’ success in undermining patriotic sentiments in the city. In order to prove their worth as Chinese patriots, partisans of the PRC had to engage in political combat with the British, a course of action that alienated them from the majority of Hong Kong Chinese, thereby condemning them to the margins of

Hong Kong society.

External Factors Impacting Hong Kong, 1966-1967

It was unfortunate for the colonial administration of Hong Kong that a nearby neighbour, and another relic of European imperialism in Asia, was humbled by local sympathisers of the

31 Brubaker et al, Nationalist Politics, pp. 207-208. 32 Brubaker et al, Nationalist Politics, pp. 207-208. 96

CCP. From 2nd to 3rd of December, 1966, protestors in Macau who were angered by the local government’s refusal to allow schools to be built on land that had already been allocated to organisations sympathetic to the PRC stormed the Government House, the nerve centre of the colonial administration. In the ensuring chaos, symbols of Portuguese colonial power, such as the status of Coronel Mesquita, were destroyed. 33 The crisis had been escalating since

November, and while newspapers in Hong Kong such as the Wenweipo (文匯報), a prominent pro-PRC publication, repeatedly broadcasted alleged Portuguese atrocities committed against pro-PRC partisans, thereby suggesting that the local government did make an effort to resist attempts to cripple its authority, in the end there were nothing that could be done by the

Portuguese governor other than to submit to the will of operatives sympathetic to Beijing.34

On the January 29th, 1967, the Portuguese Governor Nobre de Carvalho issued an official apology.35

The events in Macau did not escape the notice of PRC sympathisers in Hong Kong, whose political imagination were already set ablaze by the Cultural Revolution that was raging in the PRC. Even before the apology issued by the colonial administration, Wenweipo was already publishing vivid accounts of pro-PRC partisans in Macau being inspired by the words of Mao and being excited over visits to the Portuguese colony by groups of Red Guards.36

Young students, workers, and activists angered by what they saw as injustices inflicted on the

33 Bickers, ‘On not being Macao(ed)’, p. 56. 34 ‘Jing ri fengkuang sharen. Li mou hu shi mie ji. Ao cheng xuexing kongbu cheng’ ‘竟日瘋狂殺人. 力謀毀屍滅 跡. 澳成血腥恐怖城’ (There were atrocities committed the entire day. There were attempts to destroy evidence, Macau became a city of blood and terror), Wenweipo 文匯報, 一九六六十二月五日 (5 December 1996), p. 1; ‘Shu gao guan ao tongxue zui qianglie kanggyi faxisi datusha’ ‘書告全澳同學最強烈抗議法西斯大 屠殺’(Students from all of Macau submitted a petition to protest fascistic atrocities), Wenweipo 文匯報, 一 九六六年十二月六日(5 December 1966), p. 1 35 Bickers, ‘On not being Macao(ed)’, p. 56. 36 ‘Gangao tongbao xi wu hongweibing’ ‘港澳同胞喜晤紅衛兵’ (Compatriots from Hong Kong and Macau met Red Guards), Wenweipo 文匯報, 一九六六九月三十日 (30 December 1996), p. 1; ‘xi huo baoshu wubi xingfen. Gangao tongbao shengen xingfu’ ‘喜獲寶書無比興奮. 港澳同胞深感幸福’(They felt immense joy because they got the magically book. Compatriots from Hong Kong and Macau felt truly fortunate), Wenweipo 文匯報, 一九六六十一月二十八日 (28 December 1966), p. 1. 97 local population by their colonisers, and believing that the revolutionary fervour provoked by the Cultural Revolution could similarly inspire popular uprisings in the city, were willing to travel to Macau to learn from partisans there lessons concerning how the ideology of Mao could successfully humble a colonial administration. Prominent pro-PRC publisher Zhai Nuan Hui

(翟暖暉) even claimed that those who were sent to Macau for training obtained the colourful codename of ‘Eight Thousand Brotherhood (八千子弟)’. It is impossible for analysts to ignore the degree to which the political energy unleashed by the Cultural Revolution served as a source of motivation for pro-PRC partisans in Macau, the actions of which then inspired their counterparts in Hong Kong.37

In this way, as much as Hong Kong supporters of the PRC were angered by socio- economic conditions in the colony, they were just as influenced by the partisan fervour provoked by the Cultural Revolution. Some former participants of the riots have been relucent to link what transpired in Hong Kong in 1967 with the Cultural Revolution, especially given how negatively political chaos in the PRC during the 1960s is perceived in Hong Kong.38

Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to ignore the extent to which the Cultural Revolution influenced those who were involved in the 1967 riots. Albert Ko, a former Young Prisoner (YP) who was imprisoned during the 1967 riots and a devout reader of People’s Daily, went as far as to claim that he and his comrades were not at all engaging in critical thinking. Instead, they were eagerly following the instructions given to them by People’s Daily and were invigorated when they thought that the PRC government was encouraging them to declare war on the

British.39 Jasper Tsang, the President of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong from 2008 to

2016, someone who was quite opened about political enthusiasm provoked by the Cultural

37 Zhai Nuanhui 翟暖暉, Chi zhu qiu tu: zhai nuan hui yi 'liu qi bao dong'赤 柱 囚 徒: 翟 暖 暉 憶 ‘六 七 暴 動 ’(Zhai Nuanhui Reflects on ‘the 1967 Riots’) (Xianggang: Tian de tu shu, 2014), p. 283 38 Oral Interview with Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Cheng, 28/5/2017, p. 10. 39 Oral Interview with Albert Ko (A), 22/5/2017, p. 3. 98

Revolution, stated that while he certainly recognised the human cost of revolutionary fervour, he saw causalities as an acceptable outcome for epochal changes in China and Hong Kong.40

What transpired in Hong Kong in 1967 therefore could not be separated from revolutionary chaos that had descended upon the PRC during the Mao era.

Nevertheless, the 1967 riots should be seen as the by-product of the Cultural Revolution, and not its exact replica, as they were related but ultimately distinct political events. The

Cultural Revolution was fundamentally an intra-party struggle that came perilously close to provoking a Chinese civil war as different segments of the CCP, especially members of the

Red Guards, struggled viciously for supremacy. There were certainly intense political rivalries that existed within pro-PRC elements in Hong Kong, especially among the younger partisans.41

Nevertheless, one is struck by the sense of unity that is still prevalent among former participants of the 1967 riots, especially among those who went to prisons as the result of their involvement in the disturbances.42 Going back to the analytical framework of John Hutchinson, the need to confront a powerful opponent in the form of the colonial state and the majority of a population made up of men and women who, in the eyes of the pro-PRC camp, had betrayed their native nation-state by refusing to support its partisans, certainly provided the supporters of Beijing with a powerful stimulus to stay united. The ‘divisions with collective memories’ among

40 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, 20/5/2017, p. 1-2 41 Years later, former pro-PRC partisans in Hong Kong Liang Muxian was still furious at Paul Yip Kwok Wah, the PRC operative who would become Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa’s special advisor in 1997, for his perceived willingness to sacrifice the physical safety and future career prospects of lower-ranking partisans for his personal gain. Liang Muxian 梁慕嫻, Wo yu xianggang dixia dang 我與香港地下黨 (My Time with the Underground Party of Hong Kong)( Xianggang : Kai fang chu ban she, 2012), p. 29; Susan Berfield and Law Siu Lan, ‘One Man for All Seasons: Bridging the Territory's Ideological Divides’, Time Magazine, 30 November 2000, in , [accessed 27 February 2017]. While are still confusion regarding Yip’s political affiliation, he was almost certainly a member of the CCP during the 1967 riots. See Paul Yip, ‘The “Mystery Man” at Tung’s Shoulder’, , 6 April 1997, in ‘http://www.scmp.com’, http://www.scmp.com/article/191137/ mystery-man-tungs- shoulder, [accessed 27 February 2017]. 42 A group of pro-PRC partisans form a non-governmental organisation called the 67 Synergy Group (67 重力研 究社) to promote what they saw as historical truths concerning the 1967 riots. For more information on the the 67 Synergy Group, see 67 重力研究社 , (進接：二零一七年三月十 一日) [67 Synergy Group (Accessed 11 March 2017)]. 99

Chinese in Hong Kong, with those in the pro-PRC camp believing that colonialism in Hong

Kong represented a strain on national honour that must be eliminated, and the rest of the population a significant segment of which came to Hong Kong believing that colonialism was preferable to PRC rule, represented the line of demarcation in the city.43 In its core, the Cultural

Revolution was a series of internal PRC conflicts; in contrast, the 1967 riots represented an anti-colonial struggle between partisans supportive of the PRC, the colonial authorities, and

Hong Kong Chinese who grudgingly supported colonial rule.

The Further Radicalisation of PRC Sympathisers in Hong Kong

Colonial Hong Kong could be seen as an ideal site at which Bourdieu’s theories could be applied and tested, as a pro-PRC habitus emerged during and after the disturbances. Indeed, the profound anger felt by men and women who rebelled against the British in the 1967 riots could be seen as epitomising Bourdieu’s assertion that ‘each member of the same class is more likely than any member of another class to have been confronted with the situations most frequent for the members of that class’, as pro-PRC partisans were almost universally viewed with suspicion by the majority of Hong Kong society at the conclusion of the disturbance.44

Even after their crushing defeat in 1967 and physical defiance became unrealistic, sympathisers of the PRC in Hong Kong were more than willing to continue to play the roles of adversaries of colonial Britain, even if their acts of defiance were confined to continued loyalty to Beijing or expression of contempt for colonial rule. 45 As stated by Bourdieu, ‘only escalation, challenge answering challenge, can signify the option of playing the game’.46 Therefore, by continuing to be highly antagonistic to the colonial administration, PRC supporters were accepting the societal roles given to them after the 1967 riots. Their intense antagonism against

43 Hutchinson, Nations as Zones of Conflict, pp. 88, 98-99; Oral Interview with Albert Ko (B), 22/5/2017, p. 8. 44 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 85. 45 Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Chengp. 1, p. 16. 46 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 13. 100

British Hong Kong and its society indicated the emergence of a habitus inhabited by the PRC supporters that saw anti-colonial sentiment as the defining principle of their subsociety.

At this point of the inquiry, it will be useful to shift focus to men and women who actually participated in the 1967 riots, and how their life experiences before and during the disturbances consolidated the pro-PRC habitus even after the survival of colonial rule became certain. Albert Ko, a former YP who was imprisoned for the distribution of inflammatory materials at the age of seventeen in 1967, claimed that he would have willingly risked his life, and the wellbeing of everyone in his family, to advance the objectives of the PRC due to his

‘total obedience’ to the CCP.47 Not surprisingly, he was the product of a prominent pro-PRC school, Chung Wah Middle School.48 Even before the 1967 riots, Ko was a devoted PRC sympathiser, as in addition to his educational affiliation, he was a delivery boy for the prominent pro-PRC newspaper, Wenweipo.49 He was therefore exposed to the anger felt by those sympathetic to Beijing against the colonial administration at a relatively young age. His living conditions also made him an ideal recruit for those who were determined to destabilise

British rule. The apartment in which he lived had twelve families in it, and when he was merely a student, he had to wake up at 5am to deliver newspapers.50 As it was stated repeatedly by

Bourdieu, educational institutes were powerful sites at which habitus could be reproduced and reinforced.51 Given his educational background, as well as his miserable living and working conditions, it was almost a given that he would be supportive of those who seek to eradicate colonialism, a system of government that Albert Ko saw as inherently unjust.

47 Oral Interview with Albert Ko (B), p. 1. 48 Oral Interview with Albert Ko (B), p. 2. 49 Lin Chao Rong 林超榮, 67 Nian na yi sha:Yingxiang liuqi 67 年那一剎：印象六七 (The Instant in 67: Impressions in 67) (Xianggang: Huoshi wenhua chubanshe, 2014), p. 26. 50 Oral Interview with Albert Ko (A), p. 1. 51 Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, p. 21 101

During the 1967 riots, Hong Kong’s political climate was one in which violence steadily intensified, with law enforcement agents and pro-PRC partisans becoming increasingly determined to gain the upper hand in the struggle for the city’s future. In this context, those who were supportive of the PRC but did not participate in the violent campaign to eradicate British rule often became victims of police actions. Xu Yun Cheng (許雲程), a journalist who worked for the pro-PRC publication, Jingji Daobao (經濟導報) and someone who was left-leaning but claimed not to have committed any acts of violence against the government, stated that he was viciously beaten by Hong Kong police officers when he was sent to report the protest that was gathering on Garden Road on May 22nd.52 Many other protestors also stated that they were assaulted by the police during this ‘Garden Road Incident’, an episode that became infamous within the pro-PRC circle due to the violent acts allegedly committed against peaceful protesters by the Hong Kong police on that day.53 If a habitus had to be established upon values and belief that were unquestioned, then certainly the establishment and consolidation of it required a foundational myth that could be served as a bedrock of unquestioned assumptions. For many pro-PRC partisans, the Garden Road Incident represented an event that not only forever changed their lives, but also transformed them into diehard members of the pro-PRC camp in the colony. The British claimed that what transpired on May 22nd demonstrates not the ‘brutality’ of the police, but their ‘very considerable restraint’, as there were only a limited number of protestors who were harmed. In the confidential report on the 1967 disturbances, it was mentioned that ‘communists’ were intending to use what had transpired on Garden Road to defame the police and achieve publicity for their cause. 54

Notwithstanding repeated denials by British officials, there were definitely protestors who were seriously harmed by the police.55 As stated by Elsie Tu, policemen in the colony were infamous

52 Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan /Huang Liangying / Xu Yun Cheng, p. 1. 53 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, pp. 47-48; Loh, Underground Front, p. 120. 54 Hong Kong Disturbances, 1967 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1968), p. 14 55 Hong Kong Disturbances, 1967, p. 14. 102 for their high-handed manner with which they interacted with local residents.56 As admitted by former police officer James Elm, policemen in 1967 became very aggressive against those whom they perceived as threats as the riots intensified.57 Given the past actions of the police and their increased willingness to react violently against any perceived threats in 1967, one could safely assume that there were protestors who were seriously harmed during the Garden

Road Incident, especially as pro-PRC partisans were not above shouting provocative slogans to agitate policemen who already felt threatened.58 Gary Cheung went as far as to claim that 'it was undisputable that some demonstrators were beaten and injured by the police with batons’.59

While British officials were undoubtedly correct in stating that there were those who used artificial bloodstain to feign injuries during the Garden Road Incident, one should not discount the fact that there were protestors who were seriously injured by the police on May

22nd. 60 Xu stated that his skull was cracked opened by police batons and that he lost consciousness for a day due to police beating.61 Upon waking up in a hospital, he was arrested on the charges of assaulting a police officer and participating in an unlawful assembly.62 As there was a significant number of men and women who were arrested or injured due to what were perceived as incidents of police brutality, the anger of pro-PRC activists began to harden against British authorities in Hong Kong. The establishment and consolidation of a habitus was dependent upon the acceptance of certain value as well as viewpoints that could be seen as unusual by neutral observers. Indeed, while the practices of tribesmen in Kabylia could indeed be seen by observers possessing western sensibilities as highly unusual, the unquestioning acceptance and even embrace of practices such as adherence to a code of honour that

56 Tu, Colonial Hong Kong, p. 87. 57 Lin, 67 nian na yi sha: Yinxiang liuqi, pp. 88-89. 58 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, p. 46. 59 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, p. 48. 60 Hong Kong Disturbances, 1967, p. 14; Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, p. 48. 61 Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Cheng, p. 1. 62 Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Cheng, p. 1. 103 encompassed physical duels was essential to the preservation of the local habitus.63 For those whose lives were forever altered by the Garden Road Incident, what transpired on May 22nd represented a turning point at which they began to acquire viewpoints that were contrary to those held by many in the colony, namely, the British colonisers were representatives of a system of unjust governance that had to be opposed at every turn.

It was often in prisons that pro-PRC partisans’ views concerning Chinese nationalism and colonialism further hardened, as political novices were given the opportunities to bond with hardened veterans of past struggles. As stated by Albert Ko, those who were imprisoned due to their involvement in the riots all had an identical rite of passage: Prisoners either witnessed assaults or were victims of vicious attacks by prison guards while in custody, so much so that some former inmates to this day are ‘scared to think about’ their past experiences. 64 As attested by partisans of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya who were imprisoned by the British, it was through common suffering that a sense of cohesion was formed among those who had similar anti-British political views. Unity and lasting bonds were then further developed in opposition against the colonial power and its collaborators.65 A sense of comradery similarly emerged among those who were imprisoned due to their participation in the 1967 riots. Being imprisoned by the British could be seen as an ‘act of constitution – the cementing of differences’, as the stigma of being branded as criminals would haunt the lives of those who were convicted by the Hong Kong court.66 The recognition that they would be outcasts in Hong Kong society, not surprisingly, had a bonding effect on the prisoners. Ko was looked after by older prisoners, who provided him with medications as well as (some truly

63 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 13; Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Rites of Institution’, in Language & Symbolic Power, ed. by John B. Thompson, trans. By Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 117-127 (pp. 119-120). 64 Oral Interview with Albert Ko (A), 22/5/2017, pp. 5-6. 65 Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, ‘Mau Mau’ Detainee: The Account by a Kenta African of His Experiences in Detention Camps, 1953-1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 14, p. 56, p. 145. 66 Bourdieu, ‘Rites of Institution’, p. 119. 104 dubious) advices on how to maintain his health while in custody.67 Friendships that were formed in prisons could last a life time, as it was the case with Zhai and other inmates in Stanley

Prison, as they continued to socialise after their release.68 In this context, prisons became venues where inmates reaffirmed their common political conviction. As recounted by Xu, there were several hunger strikes in Stanley Prison, organised by the YPs and other prisoners, to obtain better provisions and the right to celebrate the National Day of the PRC.69 The prison environment, where behaviours of inmates were closely observed by their peers, no doubt encouraged acts of confrontation against prison officials, as doing so would garner praises from fellow prisoners. Indeed, strengthening of ties within members of the pro-PRC circle in prisons arguably was the only sensible choice for the prisoners, as they probably recognised that upon their release from prison, they would be ostracised by mainstream Hong Kong society. In this way, peer pressure in prison, the awareness of impending social isolation, and the stigmatisation of being branded as criminals created an environment that [discouraged]

‘permanently any attempt to cross the line, to transgress, desert, or quit’ the pro-PRC camp.70

Persistent refusal of the YPs to admit guilt, even if such a course of action would have ensured the reduction of sentences, was most likely a by-product of unusual circumstances within colonial prisons that encouraged perpetual resistance against the British.71

The radicalisation of former moderate pro-PRC Chinese nationalists in Hong Kong fully manifested itself when men and women who saw themselves as unjustly imprisoned were given the opportunities to confront the colonial government in public. Zhai, when he had to

67 Some prisoners encouraged Ko to drink his own urine to preserve his health. Lin, 67 nian na yi sha, pp. 88- 89. 68 Zhai, Chi zhu qiu tu, p. 31 pp. 250-251. 69Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan /Huang Liangying / Xu Yun Cheng, p. 1, p. 3; Xianggang feng bao 香 港 風 暴 (Hong Kong Storm) (Xianggang: Gang jiu gejie tongbao fandui gang yingzhuihai dou weiyuanhui, chuban riqi buxiang), pp. 120-121. 70 Bourdieu, ‘Rites of Institution’, p. 122 71 Qu Ying Yan 屈穎妍, Huo shu fei hua: 67 naxie ren 火樹飛花: 67 那些人 (Fiery Lives: Those Who Were Involved in the 1967 Riots) (Xianggang: huoshi wenhua chuban, 2012), p. 48. 105 make trial appearances after his incarnation, began to quote the sayings of Mao Zedong over the course of his trial, a course of action he had almost certainly never undertook before and that he would likely have thought to be ridiculous prior to his imprisonment.72 Indeed, the alteration in the personality of Zhai when he first encountered law enforcement officials and when he was brought in front of a judge, an occasion which saw him stating that ‘whenever there was repression, there would be resistance’, a famous quote from Mao, is striking.73 When police came to his house for the first time, he even tried his best to be polite to officers who were searching his residence.74 Imprisonment represented ‘an act of communication’, since ‘it signifies to someone what his identity is…in a way that both expresses it to him and imposes it on him by expressing it in front of everyone…and thus informing him in an authoritative manner of what he is and what he must be’.75 In this way, if the purpose of a public trial was to cemented the notion that PRC sympathisers in Hong Kong were criminals and outcasts that deserved social isolation, it appears that men such as Zhai were embracing their newfound status as outlaws, a choice based on the fact that since there already existed a pro-PRC subsociety, or habitus, their membership within which would at least afford a degree of emotional satisfaction after their effective ostracisation from the rest of Hong Kong society. It should be noted that while the utterances of a post-imprisonment Zhai still lacked the ideological fervent of younger partisans such as Tsang Tak-sing, Hong Kong's Secretary for

Home Affairs from 2007 to 2015 and a supporter of the PRC in Hong Kong during the 1967 riots, who apparently asked his sister to hit him repeatedly so to prepare him for prison assaults by the jail guards after his inevitable arrest, the proclamations of the young radical and the recently radicalised middle-aged man did begin to converge.76 Both focused on how grateful

72 Zhai, Chi zhu qiu tu, p. 359 73 Zhai, Chi zhu qiu tu, p. 49, p. 359 74 Zhai, Chi zhu qiu tu, p. 49. 75 Bourdieu, ‘Rites of Institution’, p. 121. 76 Hong Kong Storm, p. 92. 106 they were that being imprisoned allowed them to suffer for their country; both were stating the

Maoist view that western powers were fundamentally weak and could not survive against repeated assaults by the nationalistic Chinese masses; and both were angered by the suffering inflicted on their compatriots at the hands of British law enforcement officials.77 Physical pain endured by activists was seen as a , a sentiment consistent with Bourdieu’s assertion that ‘physical suffering, in all the negative rites which are destined’, were seen as able to produce people ‘who are out of the ordinary’ and ‘distinguished’.78 The immense physical suffering pro-PRC partisans endured served as a baptism of fire for their entry into the pro-PRC habitus in Hong Kong.79 Had the 1967 riots never occurred, Zhai would probably have ended his life as someone who was supportive of the PRC in a moderate and temperate manner. The disturbances that came close to eradicating the British status of Hong Kong, however, transformed him into a fervent pro-PRC Chinese nationalist.

The 1967 riots ended with the total victory of the British administration, as the colony not only withstood attacks orchestrated by sympathisers of the PRC, but also acquired a new legitimacy as a credible defender of local residents’ interests. As stated by Steve Tsang, while it was not easy for Hong Kong Chinese to admire their colonisers, given the choice between the Chinese government and the British, it was almost inevitable for local men and women to side with the devil they knew.80 With the benefit of highlight, Jasper Tsang recognised that it was difficult for local residents to support partisans of the PRC, as many Chinese in Hong Kong came to the colony precisely because they wanted to escape from the CCP.81 The pro-PRC habitus became marginalised, as the general public associated supporters of the CCP with the bombing campaign and the murder of .82 As stated by Jasper Tsang, he was abandoned

77 Hong Kong Storm, pp. 90-94; Zhai, Chi zhu qiu tu, pp. 362-365. 78 Bourdieu, ‘Rites of Institution’, p. 123. 79 Bourdieu, ‘Rites of Institution’, p. 123. 80 Tsang, Modern History, p. 189. 81 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 3. 82 Loh, Underground Front, p. 114; Tsang, Modern History, pp. 188-187. 107 by his university friends, as he was openly supportive of the PRC during the crisis. 83

Employment opportunities in mainstream Hong Kong society, especially for those who had criminal records, became scarce.84 It often became necessary for pro-PRC activists to secure employment in institutions affiliated with the PRC. Jasper Tsang became a teacher in a prominent pro-PRC school, (培僑中學).85 If their criminal records were regarded by the rest of Hong Kong society with great suspicions, the suffering they endured at the hands of the British often served as ‘symbolic capitals’, meaning what they had gone through during the events of 1967 would be rewarded materially within the pro-PRC habitus.86

The subsequent political career of Tsang Tak-sing was no doubt aided by the fact that he was seen as being unjustly imprisoned by the British, a rite of passage that granted him the trust of the government in Beijing.87 Nonetheless, pro-PRC organisations were largely ostracised from mainstream society, a state of affair that would not end until Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms that partially rehabilitated the image of the PRC, as the mainland became a lucrative market for Hong Kong businessmen. Pro-PRC circle in Hong Kong was self-sustaining and detached from the rest of society, with its own schools, employment opportunities, and social events.88 Whereas sympathisers of the PRC prior to 1967 were united solely by their shared loyalty to Beijing, a chief legacy of the 1967 riots was the further consolidation of a pro-PRC habitus, one consisting of its own values, beliefs, and even employment opportunities that were vastly different from the rest of society.89

83 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 8. 84 Qu, Huo shu fei hua, p. 67. 85 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 8. 86 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 181. 87 Sonny Shiu-hing Lo, The Dynamics of Beijing-Hong Kong Relations: A Model for Taiwan? (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), p. 19. 88 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 8. 89 Of course, one has to qualify this statement by saying that there were underground members of the CCP in Hong Kong whose personal relations with one another went much further than a mere sense of loyalty to the PRC. Liang, Wo yu xianggang dixia dang, pp. 5-15. 108

Perceived mistreatment at the hands of British officials and subsequent ostracisation by the rest of Hong Kong society embittered supporters of the PRC in the colony, a development that still have far-reaching effects on politics in the city. For men such as Chen Shi Yuan (陳仕

源), their loyalty to the PRC only strengthened after 1967. Being a member of the Hong Kong

Seamen's Union, an organisation that played important roles in some of modern China’s most prominent labour movements, Chen’s contempt for the British was only reinforced by what he viewed as his unjust arrest in 1967, after which he was trialled and convicted of disorderly conducts and resisting arrest.90 His wife, Huang Liangying (黃良英), was herself a partisan who claimed that her spine was fractured due to the actions of the police. Not surprisingly, Chen stated that he would never forgive the suffering inflicted upon him and his wife by the ‘barbaric’

British.91 In fact, their pro-PRC Chinese nationalism was strengthened to such a degree that

Chen and Huang, upon getting married in 1970, travelled to China to personally experience the

Cultural Revolution.92 This willingness to endure hardship not only validates Bourdieu’s assertion regarding the inclination of those within a certain habitus to utilise physical suffering to distinguish oneself, but is also indicative of partisans’ internalisation and acceptance of values associated with a habitus that valued unquestioning loyalty to the PRC.93 For those who were imprisoned by the British, marginalisation from the rest of Hong Kong society reinforced the perception that they were martyrs for a just cause, especially as other residents of the colony were seemingly ignoring how the 1967 riots were sparked by alleged British oppression of

Hong Kong’s Chinese working class.94 In Hong Kong, there was an emergence of a new set of

90 Chen claimed that while attending a trial for co-workers who had been arrested, he and his colleagues in the Seamen’s Union refused to stand up when the judge appeared in court. After exchanging heated words with the police, they were chased out of the courtroom and beaten. He was then arrested and charged. Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Cheng, p. 8. 91 Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Cheng, p. 14. 92 Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Cheng, pp. 19-20. 93 Bourdieu, ‘Rites of Institution’, p. 123; Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Genesis of Groups’, p. 728. 94 Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Cheng, p. 40. The riots were sparked by a labour dispute in a plastic flower factory in San Po Kong. Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed, p. 23. 109 common sense values among the pro-PRC activists that centred on fervent loyalty towards

Beijing, a mindset not conductive to enlarging their level of support among the general public, but one that was remarkably able to foster internal cohesion. Of course, the consolidation of a pro-PRC habitus in Hong Kong was not enough to defeat the British, and it is to the mindset of the colonisers we now turn.

British Determination to Resist the PRC and Its Sympathisers

The colonial government had been preparing for a confrontation with the PRC for more than a decade. In the aftermath of the 1956 riots, officials in the Colonial Office stated that ‘[a] desire to join the winning [side], or at least to avoid the losing side, is likely to form a prime motive in time of emergency’. 95 Indeed, it was calculated that ‘if there seemed to be a possibility of the Chinese Government shortly taking control of the Colony many would, if not actively assist, at least passively do nothing to oppose them’.96 It was therefore imperative that the colonial government and local law enforcement officials ‘made clear from the outset that they were determined to put down disorders and to defend the Colony, and that they had the means to do so’ in order to prevent the city from being crippled by pro-PRC partisans.97 The

1956 riots taught the local administration the importance of remaining absolutely vigilance against potential threats, especially when the colony was situated in an area of the globe where numerous external dangers existed that could fatally destabilise colonial rule.

The local police force began to implement new anti-riot tactics almost as soon as the

1956 riots were concluded, as it was believed that the previous arrangements would be insufficient if and when the colony was once against confronted with a serious political crisis.

Indeed, as the 1956 riots had to be suppressed with the assistance of the military, it was obvious

95 TNA: PRO: CO 1035/78: ‘L. I. C. (H. K.). The Vulnerability of Hong Kong to Non-Military Aggression, December 1956’, p. 1. 96 TNA: PRC: CO 1035/78: ‘L. I. C. (H. K.). The Vulnerability of Hong Kong to Non-Military Aggression, December 1956’, p. 1. 97 TNA: PRC: CO 1035/78: ‘L. I. C. (H. K.). The Vulnerability of Hong Kong to Non-Military Aggression, December 1956’, p. 1. 110 that lacked the requisite training to contain urban disturbances.98 As it was ably described by Georgina Sinclair, almost immediately after the 1956 riots, it became clear that ‘the police had to become more efficient in terms of their crowd and riot control capabilities’.99 The sixty-four-man, eight-section platoon was seen as the large and unwieldly, and the Police Training Contingent (PTC) was established to modernise the Hong Kong police force’s anti-riot tactics so that in the future, disturbances would be met by squads that would be ‘fast, compact, well-armed, very flexible, and sensibly structure’.100 By the 1960s, the Hong

Kong police was well-trained in anti-riot tactics, and its members even got an opportunity to practice how to contain urban disturbances in the 1966 Star Ferry Riots.101 The reliability of the police to restore public order enabled the colonial administration to use its military as the trump card when extraordinary measures were deemed necessary to complement the efforts of police officers.

Notwithstanding the successful containment of the 1966 riots, at the outset of the 1967 crisis, the British government was not at all confident about its capacity to successfully confront the threat that was presented by pro-PRC partisans. Consequently, beneath the veneer of poise under pressure, one could sense that there were moments during which British officials were beginning to panic. An indication of this sense of panic could be seen from the somewhat outlandish suggestion that the ‘stationing in Hong Kong of a small nuclear strike force similar to that stationed in Singapore at the time of confrontation with Indonesia might be studied’.102

To even suggest the stationing of nuclear warheads in Hong Kong reveals the desperation of

98Annie Hau-Nung Chan and Lawrence Ka-Ki Ho, Women in the Hong Kong Police Force: Organizational Culture, Gender and Colonial Policing (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 160. 99 Georgina Sinclair, ‘”Hong Kong Headaches”: Policing the 1967 Disturbances’, in in May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, eds. by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp. 89-103 (p. 93). 100 Quoted in Sinclair ‘”Hong Kong Headaches”, pp. 93-94. 101 Tsang, Modern History, p. 186. 102 TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945: ‘Cabinet Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong. Minutes of a Meeting of the Committee held in Conference “A”, Cabinet Office, S.W.L., on Monday, 24th July 1967 at 4.00 p.m’, p. 1 111 the British, as it became increasingly evident to policymakers that an orderly withdrawal without Beijing’s consent was an impossibility. It was not even clear that the British could devise a credible evacuation strategy, as any such plan ‘could not be drawn up without the co- operation of a significant number of officials in Hong Kong’.103 Indeed, if ‘any hint emerged that evacuation was being contemplated’, such a disclosure ‘would have the most grave effects on the confidence of the Hong Kong population’. Public morale would collapse, and, what policymakers feared the most, paralysis and the resulting ungovernability of the colony, would ensue.104 At the same time, it was determined that ‘with a very large majority of the local

Chinese in Hong Kong on our side, we could hold out in the Colony’.105 It was therefore essential to ensure that local residents would continue to support the British, as survival of

Hong Kong was dependent upon the public having confidence in the colonial administration.

Recognising that any demonstration of weakness could be fatal, and gradually coming to the conclusion that even the contemplation of British withdrawal would endanger the survival of the colony, local policymakers became determined to use any means necessary to neutralise the threat posed by supporters of the PRC. In this way, the British was certainly willing to be ruthless in order to contain the threat posed by activists supportive of Beijing. As stated by Jasper Tsang, there were incidents during which police would enter into premises that housed pro-PRC activists and began to shoot indiscriminately.106 From former policemen to former prisoners, we now have a fairly comprehensive picture of the length to which the colonial authorities would go to maintain the British status of Hong Kong.107 The ruthlessness, not to say the brutality, of the colonial authorities notwithstanding, British policymakers were

103 TNA: PRO: T 317/1226: ‘From S. H. Wright. To Roger Lavelle. 7th December, 1967’, p. 1. 104 TNA: PRO: T 317/1226: ‘From S. H. Wright. To Roger Lavelle. 7th December, 1967’, p. 1 105 TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945: ‘Cabinet Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong. Minutes of a Meeting of the Committee held in Conference “A”, Cabinet Office, S.W.L., on Monday, 24th July 1967 at 4.00 p.m’, p. 1 106 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, pp. 3-4. 107 For a full descriptive account of the confrontation between PRC supporters and British Hong Kong, see Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed, chapters 3-5. 112 convinced that they were acting with the full support of the public. During a deliberation within the Cabinet Office, it was stated that ‘a small proportion of the Chinese in Hong Kong can be described as pro-communist’ and, ‘unless the communists can create conditions which will give general grounds for dissatisfaction or the impression that they are winning’, it was highly unlikely that they would be able to obtain wider public support.108 Acting with the assumption that it had the support of the general public, and gambling that Beijing would not retaliate, the

Hong Kong authorities launched a ferocious counterattack against pro-PRC activists. On

August 4th, a sensational raid was launched against three strongholds of the pro-PRC camp.

One thousand policemen and soldiers were supported by three helicopters in this raid that arguably crippled the pro-PRC camp and demonstrated the Hong Kong government’s will to resist.109

Of course, the British were never entirely passive in its efforts to cultivate public support during this period of acute crisis. Schools and newspapers with ties to Beijing were routinely shut down by British authorities as part of the efforts to undermine the campaign of pro-PRC partisans to publish damaging propaganda materials against the local government.110

There were also extensive propaganda operations established by the British. According to Gary

Cheung, a publicity committee, the government’s de facto ‘war room’, was established on May

16th to coordinate the colonial state’s propaganda efforts. The raison-etre of the committee was to ‘refute rumours and discredit the leftist camp’.111 According to , who was Hong

Kong’s defence secretary in 1967, the committee was not above planting articles in the popular press. He further claimed that Jimmy McGregor, a former legislative and executive councillor as well as a member of the publicity committee, often submitted articles supportive of the

108 TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945: ‘Cabinet Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong. 14th July 1967’, p. 2. 109 Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed, p. 84; Tsang, Modern History, p. 186. 110 Ray Yep, ‘The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong: The Domestic and Diplomatic Front of the Governor’, in May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, eds. by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp. 21-37 (pp. 29-31, p. 32). 111 Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed, p. 67. 113 colonial government to popular newspapers.112 Purportedly non-partisan newspapers such as the Ming Pao were staunchly pro-government during the crisis. At one point, the newspaper even argued that 'although it is unavoidable to see isolated extreme measure, or imprudent decision made by individual police officers', overall, the police were acting in a responsible and prudent manner.113 While it is still difficult to establish that the colonial government was directly communicating with reporters at Ming Pao, its journalists were adopting a position that essentially excused the police of its worst excesses.

Everyday Resistance in Hong Kong

The survival of British Hong Kong, and the success of colonial officials’ propaganda efforts, could be contributed to the fact that Hong Kong Chinese, after years of residing in a colonial jurisdiction, came to see British rule as an acceptable political system. Whatever its flaws, living under British rule was preferable to residing in the PRC. According to David

Faure, the belief that they had no choice but to reside within a British jurisdiction engendered a ‘colonial mentality’ among the people of Hong Kong, one that prevented them from seriously challenging the profoundly undemocratic nature of colonialism.114 This refusal to challenge the colonial regime gradually hardened into a ‘sense of dependence’, meaning that political leadership could only be exercised by British colonials.115 There was a perception that ‘history has imposed a divide between colonial subjects and the colonial master, such that the subjects at some point in time are devoid of a leadership that might allow them to govern themselves’.116

This sense of inferiority was pronounced among the local Chinese elites, as in the absence of electoral politics, their positions within the colonial political hierarchy was almost entirely dependent upon their ability to move up the greasy pole of ‘appointment politics’ that was

112 Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed, p. 67. 113 Yep, ‘The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong’, p. 29. 114 David Faure, Colonialism and the Hong Kong Mentality (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 203), pp. 17-18. 115 Faure, Colonialism and the Hong Kong Mentality, p. 21 116 Faure, Colonialism and the Hong Kong Mentality, p. 21 114 controlled by the British. 117 Their dependence on their colonial masters for political advancement and the belief that disruption of the colonial state would create instability, which would then be exploited by the external enemies of the British, prevented Chinese elites from challenging their colonisers.

There had been works by prominent sociologists who characterised Hong Kong as a fundamentally apolitical society, especially during the 1960s. The view that Hong Kong during the 1960s was an apolitical society was most forcefully expressed by Siu-kai Lau, whose work asserted that Hong Kong Chinese ‘have a strong need for an authority to serve as the bulwark for a stable society, yet they fear relationships with that authority with which they have unavoidably to maintain in one way or another’.118 According to Lau, living in a colonial society with almost no electoral process, Hong Kong Chinese gradually became more and more aloof from politics.119 This sense of political powerlessness was further accentuated by the fact that Hong Kong was situated just outside of the PRC, which possessed almost unlimited power to dispute lives in the colony.120 This sense of political powerlessness, in combination with the pragmatism of Hong Kong Chinese, who only became involved with the political process to advance their immediate individual or familial interests, ensured that Hong Kong remained an apolitical society well into the postwar period.121

It is difficult to argue against David Faure’s assertion that members of the Chinese elites who held appointive positions in the Executive or Legislative Council were not strong figures who were able to rally public opinions for the local administrations. In this sense, British Hong

Kong was able to achieve its victory over its rivals in the absence of reliable collaborators that could have acted as ‘intermediaries of hegemony’ or as credible spokesmen for the cause of

117 Faure, Colonialism and the Hong Kong Mentality, pp. 2-3. 118 Siu-kai Lau, Society and Politics in Hong Kong, p. 102 119 Lau, Society and Politics in Hong Kong, p. 9. 120 Lau, Society and Politics in Hong Kong, p. 10. 121 Lau, Society and Politics in Hong Kong, pp. 87-88. 115

British colonialism.122 Studying the testimonies deposited in Hong Kong University Library’s

Special Collections, it is indeed striking that none of the witnesses of the 1967 riots mentioned speeches made by legislative or executive councillors that reinforced the public’s faith in the colonial government. It is similarly difficult to refute Lau’s argument concerning the refusal of Hong Kong Chinese to engage in partisan politics, as with the noticeable exception of the

1966 riots over the Star Ferry’s fare increase, the colony was rarely a site of political confrontations. Essentially, both Lau and Faure were arguing that confrontational politics very rarely occured among Hong Kong Chinese with no affiliation with the KMT or the CCP.

The concluding section of this chapter argues that while the majority of the city’s population was often unwilling to engage in partisan affairs, had its members been as apolitical as Faure or Lau claimed they were, British Hong Kong would have collapsed in 1967. As it was convincingly argued by Wai-man Lam, even in the absence of partisan politics and the existence of genuine fear concerning being involved in the KMT-CCP rivalry, men and women residing in Hong Kong, even during the 1950s, were able to rely upon actions such as signature collection campaigns and the submission of petitions to defend their welfare.123 In this sense, lack of faith in appointed members of the Legislative and Executive Councils as well as aloofness from the political process did not mean incapacitation, especially when collective interests were being undermined. Had the Hong Kong population been totally paralysed, then the colony would have come to a standstill, a development that would have been difficult for the colonial regime to stage its counter measures against pro-PRC partisans. Accordingly, while there were almost no public demonstrations against the PRC, Hong Kong Chinese did participate in ‘everyday resistance’, uncoordinated acts of defiance expressed through character

122 Crawford, Comparative Colonialism, p. 107 123 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 67. 116 assassination, non-compliance, sabotage and other forms of deception the purpose of which was to undermine the legitimacy of political partisans who were seen as harming the colony.124

This section highlights how Hong Kong Chinese expressed their disapproval of those who seek to undermine British rule by engaging in everyday resistance against the PRC’s sympathisers in the city.125 The majority of Hong Kong Chinese did not support the PRC and its sympathisers and essentially did their best to ignore the chaos that were engulfing the colony, thereby enabling the colony to function during the 1967 riots. More importantly, by refusing to heed the commands of the pro-PRC faction, Hong Kong Chinese were depriving supporters of the CCP the political support necessary to be the credible alternative to the British. The failure of the pro-PRC camp to paralyse the colony, the British’s capacity to secure the acquiescence of the local population, and Hong Kong Chinese’s willingness to ensure the continued functioning of the colony all demonstrate that everyday resistance against pro-PRC partisans was instrumental in the survival of colonial Hong Kong. Lack of public demonstrations notwithstanding, Hong Kong Chinese did prefer the colonial administration over the CCP, and this section proves that it in spite of their reputation as members an apolitical population, residents of the city played an instrumental role in thwarting attempts by the supporters of Beijing to cripple the British administration.

It was not that the British expected Hong Kong Chinese to rise up against the PRC and its supporters, especially since such a course of action would most likely have further escalated the downward spiral towards violence in the colony. Instead, what British Hong Kong most needed from the local people was to act as if the political disturbances in the city was having minimum effect on their lives. In order words, if British Hong Kong was to survive, Hong

Kong Chinese had to support the colonial administration in a manner that was ‘informal, even

124 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 29. 125 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 294. 117 convert’ as public demonstrations of loyalty would have attracted retaliations.126 There had to be a campaign of support for the British administration that would avoid ‘direct symbolic confrontation’ against Beijing, whereby a series of seemingly insignificant gestures of support by the average people would culminated in policymakers concluding that they had the public backing needed to use all means necessary to confront the PRC and its sympathisers.127 In many ways, it is surprising that the majority of Hong Kong Chinese did not rebel against the colonial government, as although the living conditions in the colony was bearable, life in the city was still a struggle for many residents. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the 1966 riots reveal the Hong Kong population’s discontent towards its colonisers. The fate of British

Hong Kong was dependent upon colonial subjects who had been highly dissatisfied with their lives in Hong Kong during the 1960s.

Dissatisfaction with British rule notwithstanding, distrust towards the CCP was likely exacerbated by the actions of its supporters in Hong Kong. In addition to the planting of bombs, confrontations against the PRC and pro-CCP partisans also led to restriction of water usage, making the flushing of toilets almost a luxury in Hong Kong.128 The lives of Hong Kong

Chinese were rendered even more difficult by the actions of PRC sympathisers in 1967. It should be noted that not all Hong Kong Chinese personally encountered bombs on the streets, and many did try to live as normally as possible during this confrontation between pro-PRC partisans and British colonialism. Huang Miao Ping (黃妙萍), a young parent at the time, actually never saw a bomb.129 Nevertheless, it is easy to imagine the resentment and anger that were provoked by pro-PRC partisans. Freedom of movement was severely restricted not only due to the imposition of curfew, but also the realisation that there were locations in Hong Kong

126 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 33. 127 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 29. 128 Hong Kong Disturbances 1967 (Hong Kong: Colonial Secretariat, 1968), p. 47. 129 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 004/Interviewee -黃妙萍, Tape 2/p. 26. 118 into which one should not venture, especially as there were always the fear of bombs and violent conflicts.130 Su Yong Chang (蘇永昌), then a clerk at the University of Hong Kong, stated that he avoided going out in order to avoid troubles.131 Moreover, the lives of Hong Kong

Chinese were often disrupted by the bomb threats. As stated by Mai Shuo Cheng (麥碩成), a train station attendant in 1967, there were at least two to three incidents at Tai Po Market Station during which bombs, real or fake, were placed on the rails.132 Liang Qian (梁謙), a working class Hong Kong Chinese, complained about the inconvenience caused by the riots, and he was stranded on the streets at one point due to the unavailability of pubic transits during the height of the riots.133 The chaos caused by the 1967 riots even undermined the profits of small businesses. Yin Mei (尹妹), at the time a food stall owner, claimed that she had to close her business early as she was afraid of attracting unwanted attention if she left her store opened at its usual hours.134

The inconvenience created by the riots notwithstanding, the colony, contrary to the wishes of the pro-PRC camp, did not come to a standstill, and the inhabitants of the city attempted to establish a sense of normalcy in their daily life during this period of chaos.

Graphic designer Feng Yuan Chi (馮元熾)was so angered by the constant rock throwing and protests outside his office that he wanted to retaliate. Thankfully, his co-workers intervened and stopped him from shouting insults or throwing projectile at protestors just outside of his office. In the end, he just ignored the protests and continued his works, thereby nullifying the efforts to undermine his productivity.135 Had Feng succeeded in his attempt at reiteration, his office would most likely have been sacked by angry protestors, thereby putting his life, and the

130 Hong Kong Oral History Archive -黃妙萍, Tape 2/p. 28. 131 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 041/Interviewee -蘇永昌, Tape 2/p. 3. 132 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 115/Interviewee -麥碩成, Tape 3/p. 51. 133 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 114/Interviewee -梁謙, Tape 2/p. 24. 134 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 215/Interviewee -尹妹, Tape 2/p. 21. 135 Lin, 67na yi sha: Yinxiang liuqi, p. 53. 119 lives of his co-workers, at risk. While Huang Miao Ping was worried about the constant bomb threats, she nevertheless continued to send her child to school in 1967.136 Housewife Chen

Qiong Xian (陳瓊賢) claimed that her everyday life was not greatly affected by the events of

1967, as she could still purchase daily necessities for herself and her family. 137 The proclamations of the Hong Kong Chinese listed above regarding their insistence on continuing their daily life in spite of the chaos that was raging around them lacked a clear political consciousness. Hong Kong Chinese like Chen Qiong Xian and Huang Miao Ping were merely trying to live their lives.138 As stated by Scott, direct confrontations with those in positions of power were ‘nearly always crushed unceremoniously’.139 In contrast, ‘minimal compliance’ with the demands of pro-PRC sympathisers effectively crippled the campaigns to destroy

British Hong Kong while at the same time deprived them a target against which to retaliate.140

The everyday resistance participated by Hong Kong Chinese, essentially a political campaign

‘with no formal organisation, no formal leaders, no manifestoes, no dues, no name, and no banner’, kept the colony functioning during a period of severe crisis.141

If the purpose of the pro-PRC camp was to paralyse the colony, then, judging from the industrial production of the city, their plan was a failure. The productivity of industrial employees was seemingly unaffected by the 1967 riots, repeated calls by the pro-PRC camp for strikes notwithstanding. 142 Indeed, David Trench in 1968 even boasted that industrial production in the previous year actually increased as Hong Kong’s ‘remarkable growth’ continued.143 In addition to the net increase of 819 registered and recorded factories, there was

136 Hong Kong Oral History Archive -黃妙萍, Tape 2/p. 26. 137 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 218/Interviewee -陳瓊賢, Tape 3/p. 17. 138 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 074/Interviewee -林文忠, Tape 3/p. 32 139 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 29. 140 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 26. 141 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 35. 142 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 205/Interviewee -王家國, Tape 5/pp. 26- 27. 143 Meeting of 28 February, 1968, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1968 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1968), p. 42 . 120 a net increase of 19, 800 persons employed in various Hong Kong industries.144 Workers could have intimidated by the demonstrations staged by supporters of Beijing and refused to show up for work. They could also have been so disturbed by the city’s political chaos that they became less productive. The fact that they continued to work meant that they played an instrumental role in defeating pro-PRC activists’ plan to disrupt Hong Kong to such a degree that the city would grind to a halt. The collective capacity of Hong Kong Chinese to live their lives as if the riots did not exist should be seen as a form of resistance against sympathisers of the PRC and a sign of support for the British administration.

Given the profound inconvenience caused by the ongoing political crisis and the already negative attitude adopted by members of Hong Kong society towards the CCP and its supporters, it should surprise no one that most residents of the city were against attempts by pro-PRC partisans to destabilise the colony. As stated by Jasper Tsang, those who escaped to

Hong Kong from China were attracted by the colony’s reputation as a safe haven during a time when Asia was highly unstable. Racial abuses and economic exploitations perpetrated by colonial authorities and their allies were almost seen as the prices to pay for being members of a society that was relatively peaceful.145 In this way, active participation in political campaigns to destroy colonial rule was seen as detrimental to the collective welfare of Hong Kong Chinese.

University students were quite vocal in their denunciations of pro-PRC activists in Hong Kong; but even then, they were careful to appear to be apolitical. Criticising the actions of the pro-

PRC camp, HKU’s Student Union was at pain to point out that they were not taking side in the struggle, but was merely hoping for ‘stability’ in Hong Kong.146 Even when he was putting out an advisement stating that he was supporting the government to preserve societal peace (協助

144 Meeting of 28 February, 1968, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 42. 145 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 3. 146 ‘The Hong Kong University Students’ Union Council on the Recent Riot’, Undergrad, Special Issue, 17th May 1967, p. 1 121

助政府,維謢和平), Zheng Xue Xian (鄭學賢), a community leader in Causeway Bay in 1967, also stressed that he was not taking side in the conflict.147 By maintaining that they merely wanted to preserve societal peace, men such as Zheng and student leaders at HKU were undermining the pro-PRC camp’s effort to destabilise Hong Kong without criticising its partisans and doing so in such a way that allowed them to avoid being labelled as pro-British; in this way, they escaped being targeted by supporters of Beijing.

Supporters of Beijing were not seen in a positive light by most members of society, and by almost all accounts, the tough actions of the police to undercut PRC sympathisers were widely supported. Huang Miao Ping claimed that most people found the actions of the police acceptable, and she continued to support British efforts to maintain law and order even after seeing a young pro-PRC activists suffering serious injuries, presumably at the hands of law enforcement officials.148 Similarly, Chen Qiong Xian even claimed that the government was being too lenient on partisans who supported the PRC.149 Further demonstrating the level of support enjoyed by law enforcement officials, former policeman James Elm claimed that a woman offered to help him escape if and when the colonial regime collapsed.150 A Police

Education Fund was set up for the postsecondary education of policemen’s children, which raised a total of HK$3 million in a fortnight.151 If observance to social norms ‘confer reputation, status, and prestige on those who observe them’, then ‘those who systematically violate them

[become] the object of character assassination’.152 Pro-PRC partisans portrayed themselves as patriots who were resisting the oppressive British, and yet Hong Kong Chinese were supporting their so-called oppressors. The general public was rejecting the characterisations PRC

147 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/2001-2004/Accession Number 114/Interviewee - 鄭學賢, Tape 3/p.2. 148 Hong Kong Oral History Archive -黃妙萍, Tape 2/p. 26, p. 28. 149 Hong Kong Oral History Archive - 陳瓊賢, Tape 3/p. 22 150 Lin, 67na yi sha: Yinxiang liuqi, p. 92. 151 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, p. 70 152 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 234. 122 sympathisers had given to themselves and to their opponents. By showing support for the police, the majority of Hong Kong Chinese was denying PRC sympathisers moral legitimacy they sought as the defenders of their compatriots in the city.

The danger presented by the PRC and its supporters were effectively contained by the colonial government’s tough countermeasures that were arguably supported by the majority of

Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong residents supported the colonial government by refusing to endorse the actions of the pro-PRC camp. Everyone possessed the ‘desire to be thought well of, or at least not despised’.153 Acts of violence, such as the murder of Lam Bum, destroyed whatever goodwill those who were supportive of the PRC might have been able to acquire.154

Widespread negative opinions of the CCP and their supporters ‘chips away at the reputations’ of' pro-PRC partisans in Hong Kong, and at the same time, encouraged positive views of the police and of the colonial government.155 Hong Kong Chinese, by consistently refusing to support those who were partial to the PRC, by demonstrating their appreciation of law enforcement officials, and by continuing to live their lives with as much normalcy as possible in 1967, were defying pro-CCP partisans who seek to eradicate British rule. In Hong Kong, 'a social avalanche of petty acts of insubordination’ against the PRC and its supporters ‘carried out by...a coalition with no name, no organisation, no leadership, and certainly...no conspiracy behind it' effectively doomed the campaign to destroy British colonialism. 156 Whereas prominent and vocal critics of the pro-PRC camp such as Lam Bum invited violent retaliations, the actions of the majority of Hong Kong Chinese were too ephemeral to attract counterreactions. After all, if the majority of Hong Kong Chinese were voicing their criticisms of the CCP, it would have been unrealistic for its supporters to retaliate against almost everyone in the city. It was harder still for pro-PRC partisans to pick a specific target if support for the

153 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 235. 154 Cheung, Hong Kong's Watershed, p. 119. 155 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 282. 156 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 31. 123 police was expressed in an anonymous manner, such as private donations to the Police

Education Fund. As stated by Scott, ‘[w]hen (petty) acts are rare and isolated, they are of little interest; but when they become a consistent pattern (even though uncoordinated, let alone organized) we are dealing with resistance’.157 In Hong Kong, a counterrevolutionary result, whereby the colonial status of the city was preserved, was created through repeated acts of insubordination against supporters of Beijing.

For the pro-PRC camp, the defeat they suffered at the end of the 1967 riot was total.

The fate of pro-PRC activists could be interpreted as a demonstration of the power of everyday resistance. There were almost no dramatic demonstrations of public anger against pro-PRC partisans, but support for them slowly dwindled until they were seen as pariahs by other Hong

Kong Chinese. In this way, everyday resistance represented a highly potent form of protest, for its targets in Hong Kong are still to this day distrusted by many in the city. While

(楊光), a prominent supporter of Beijing and the director of the Anti-British Struggle Committee in 1967, was awarded the by Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa in 2001, there had been no wholesale efforts to re-examine cases of pro-PRC sympathisers who claimed that they were unjustly imprisoned by the British.158 There are now concerns that new history curricula would not even mention the 1967 riots, leading to accusations that the government is trying to erase a difficult chapter in Hong Kong’s past. 159 Nevertheless, as more information concerning the motivations of the CCP and its supporters in 1967 are being discovered by dedicated writers such as Ching Cheong (程翔), it appears that more than fifty years after the

157 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 296. 158 Joseph Wong Wing-ping, ‘My memories and views of the 1967 riots as a bystander’, EJ insight, 18 May 2017, in < http://www.ejinsight.com/20170518-my-memories-and-views-of-the-1967-riots-as-a-bystander/>, [accessed 21 June 2018]. Gary Cheung, ‘1967 ringleader Yeung Kwong “just followed orders”’, South China Morning Post, 11 July 2001, in < http://www.scmp.com/article/352073/1967-ringleader-yeung-kwong-just- followed-orders> , [accessed 21 June 2018]. 159 Peace Chiu, ‘No separate sections on Hong Kong for new history curriculum, education authority says’, South China Morning Post, 25 May 2018, in < http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-king/education/article/ /2147685/no-separate-sections-hong-kong-new-history-curriculum> , [accessed 21 June 2018]. 124 riots and twenty years after retrocession, the actions of pro-PRC supporters have not been forgotten by neither the general public nor academics who are interested in the city’s past.160

Concluding Remarks

After the crushing defeat suffered by supporters of the PRC in the colony, a significant minority of the Hong Kong population was forced to create a parallel society that was self- sustaining and viewed with suspicion by other Hong Kong Chinese. The public image of the

PRC suffered a severe blow, as the CCP became associated with the excesses of the Cultural

Revolution and damages inflicted on Hong Kong by its supporters. Paradoxically, the more the

PRC was reviled by Hong Kong Chinese, the more loyal and united its supporter became. The pro-PRC subsociety in Hong Kong had by the late 1960s became an echo-chamber in which criticisms from the outside world only intensified the solidarity of its members. The existence of a community that was strongly nationalistic also enabled the emergence of a segment of population that saw itself as vanguard of pro-PRC Chinese patriotism in Hong Kong. The assertion that Hong Kong somehow became more united during and after the 1967 riots undersold the complex society that the colony was on track of becoming at the time. Instead of emerging as a unified society, Hong Kong in 1967 was becoming a deeply divided one, with

PRC sympathisers essentially becoming pariahs distrusted by many in the colony.

Support given to the British by ordinary Hong Kong Chinese during the 1967 riots was especially striking, given that anti-colonialism was becoming a preeminent ideology in many parts of the world in the 1960s. Common men and women of the colony were convinced that in spite of its many flaws, colonial governance was preferable to PRC rule. In the end, it was

160 As Ching Cheong’s volume was published right before the submission of this dissertation, there is simply not enough time to incorporate Cheong’s viewpoints into this project. Cheong’s work will be given more attention if and when this dissertation is published as a monograph. Ching Cheong 程翔, Xianggang liu qi baodong shimo - jiedu wu di zhou 香港六七暴動始末 - 解讀吳荻舟 (Understanding the 1967 Riots: Reading the Diaries of Wu Di Zhou) (Xianggang: niujindasue chubanshe, 2018)

125 this belief that saved British Hong Kong from destruction. While universally accepted as imperfect, British colonialism had by 1967 achieved a level of grudging acceptance that allowed the agents of the colonial state to triumph over their adversities. Even today, the heavy- handed techniques utilising by the police in 1967 were mostly seen as legitimate. Instead of allowing the city to become paralysed, Hong Kong Chinese did their best to ensure that the colony would continue to function in 1967. During a confrontation between British colonialism and pro-PRC Chinese nationalism, the everyday resistance utilised by Hong Kong Chinese ensured the survival of colonial rule. 126

Chapter Three – Protests, Student Activism, and the Consolidation of a Local Identity in Hong Kong, 1967-1979 Introduction He was looking for trouble. He had to know that publishing a series of articles in HKU’s flagship student publication, the Undergrad (學苑), concerning his alienation from China constituted an opened invitation for scorns, especially since merely two years prior, pro-PRC

Chinese nationalism was the cause of an existential crisis for British Hong Kong; and yet, he did it anyway. In November 1969, an unnamed young undergraduate, under the pen name of

Geng Yun (耕耘) published four articles, the collective thesis of which was that he was first and foremost, a ‘Hong Konger’.1 Written in traditional Chinese and English, and sometime mixing these two languages within the same sentence, claiming that this kind of patois represented the true language of Hong Kong (香港文), Geng Yun proclaimed himself to be unable to feel a sense of emotional attachment to mainland China, as Hong Kong represented his permanent home.2 Rejecting the emotional pleas of exiled Chinese scholars such as Qian Mu (錢穆), who always extolled youths in Hong Kong to serve China’s greater interests, Geng Yun retorted that talks concerning serving China were illusionary if one could be even help his or her ‘Hong

Kong compatriots’ (香港的同胞).3

Not surprisingly, Geng Yun’s articles were extremely controversial, and he was accused of being delusional and treasonous. Responding to Geng Yun, Lin Xiafeng (林下風) angrily asserted that Hong Kong was merely a colony, and therefore would eventually be returning to

1 Geng Yun 耕耘 ‘Diyibu: wo shi ge [xianggangren]’'第一部: 我是個「香港人」’(Part One: I am a ‘Hong Konger’), xue yuan 學苑，一九六九十一月一日 (Undergrads， 1 November 1969), p. 6; Geng Yun 耕耘, ‘Di erbu: Qu yaoyou zheyang de yitian’ ’第二部： 祇要有這樣的一天’ (Part Two: I wanted a Day Like This), xue yuan 學苑，一九六九十一月一日 (Undergrads, 11 November 1969)，p. 6; Geng Yun 耕耘， ‘ Disan bu: Qishi you tan shenme aiguo’ '第三部：其實又談甚麼愛國' (Part Three: Why Speak of Patriotism), xue yuan 學苑，一九六九十一月一日 (Undergrads, 11 November 1969)，p. 6; Geng Yun 耕耘， 'Part IV： Someone Who Cares'，xue yuan 學苑，一九六九十一月一日 (Undergrads, 11 November 1969)，p. 6. 2 Geng, ‘Diyibu: Wo shi ge [xianggangren]’, p. 6. 3 Geng， ‘Disan bu: Qishi you tan shenme aiguo’，p. 6. 127

China. Thus, all talks concerning ‘Hong Kongers’ and ‘Hong Kong language’ represented the mumblings of a patient suffering from mental illness.4 Another writer stated that all talks encouraging would be attacked by Chinese around the world.5 These ferocious counterreactions should not be a surprise to anyone, as the campus of HKU, like other university campuses in the colony, would come to be dominated by student activists sympathetic to Beijing.

Controversies surrounding Geng Yun’s articles could be seen as the opening salvo in the conflicts between the pro-PRC faction and other groups within the postsecondary student movement in Hong Kong for most of the 1970s. While one could be tempted to utilise Henry

Kissinger’s famous observation that ‘university politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small’ to dismiss the Hong Kong student movement, such curt dismal would be a mistake, as student leaders in that era played important roles in various protests that took place in the colony.6 In spite of the fact that the student movement was deeply divided between those who saw Beijing as the principal focus of political allegiance and activists who were convinced that reforms of Hong Kong society constituted their prime focus, its impact was citywide. The pro-

PRC faction in Hong Kong was able to quickly rebuild its strength after the debacle of the 1967 riots, and many of its sympathisers gained entry into the colony’s elite educational institutions.

At the same time, the colony witnessed the emergence of a new generation of residents who were locally born, meaning that the colony was the only home they ever knew, and political loyalty to mainland China was antithetical to their emerging local identity. While both sides

4 Lin Xiafeng 林下風，‘Gei wo she ge shi ge “xianggangren” kan being : “Jian ruzi jiang ru yu jing, neng bu ce yin yu xin hu?”’ '給我是個是個「香港人」看病'：「見孺子將入於井，能不側隱於心乎？」(Diagnosing the ‘Hong Kongers’: ‘When You See Someone Sinking, How Can You Not Feel Bad)，xue yuan 學苑，一九六九十一月一日 (Undergrads, 1 November 1969), pp. 3-4. 5 Xiangjing Yan 向京言, ‘"Wo shi ge xiangganren" yiwen shangque’ ‘「 我是個香港人」一文商榷' (Discussions Concerning the ‘I am a Hong Kongers’ Article), xue yuan 學苑，一九六九十一月一日 (Undergrads, 1 November 1969), p. 4 6 Quoted in Charles E. McClelland, Berlin, the Mother of All Research Universities: 1860-1918 (New York: Lexington Books), p. 50. 128 were able to cooperate for a brief period, they eventually became estranged, with one side becoming increasingly strident in its pro-PRC Chinese nationalism, while its opponents were heightening their focus on social reforms in Hong Kong. The dominance of the pro-PRC faction did not end until 1976, when the fall of the Gang of Four fatally undermined its esprit de corps.

The existence of a pro-PRC faction that advocated a strident form of Chinese nationalism, repeated campaigns to improve local welfare in Hong Kong, and local activists’ conviction that

Hong Kong represented a distinct polity ensured that the student movement of the 1970s further consolidated a local identity in Hong Kong, as endless debates concerning the colony’s status further emphasised how unique it was, especially when compared to other cities in the PRC.

The Underground Front in Hong Kong It would be worthwhile to provide in this section a brief summary of Michel Foucault’s theories, as they will be the analytical lenses through which PRC sympathisers’ activities will be investigated. According to Foucault, as European societies modernised, it became increasingly rare for governments to stage theatrical forms of punishment against those who had committed serious crimes. Physical punishment for those who had committed treasons or crimes against the crown became more infrequent, and criminals were detained in more

‘humane’ prisons.7 Indeed, ‘torture as a public spectacle’ for the most part disappeared by the

19th century, and in its place, ‘detention became the essential form of punishment’.8 While historians often attributed this humanisation of the mode of punishment to the emergence of a more liberal, and tolerant age, Foucault argued that reforms of the penal code represented another means by which those in positions of power enforced their authority. Punishment that became spectacles could, instead of inspiring fear, provoke anger and resentment against royal powers, especially when the criminals assumed the mantle of martyrdom.9 A new way of

7 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, chapters 1-3. 8 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, p. 7, p. 115. 9 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, p. 65. 129 punishment, one that was more effective in exerting control over criminals, was therefore devised under the guise of tolerance and humanitarianism.10 A form of punishment that would not provoke outrage from the lower classes and would assert greater control over criminals by putting them into institutions in which their every moves would be monitored, was implemented. ‘Coercive, corporal, solidary, secret model of the power to punish replace the representative, scenic, signifying, public collective model’.11 Instead of inflicting gruesome punishment in public, the state assumed total control over criminals by putting them in prisons where their every move was under supervision. Like European elites from the dawn of the 19th century, the lesson was quickly learnt among members of the pro-PRC faction that naked demonstration of power could backfire, especially as ‘the [local population], drawn to the spectacle intended to terrorise it, could express its rejection of the punitive power and sometimes revolt’.12 For the pro-PRC faction in Hong Kong, power had to be exercised in a discreet manner that enabled more effective methods to enforce internal cohesion and maintain a more positive relationship with the Hong Kong public.

Even after men and women sympathetic to the CCP were marginalised by the rest of

Hong Kong society after 1967, it was essential for the pro-PRC faction that schools sympathetic to Beijing would continue to function, as educators would be given the task to train a new generation of pro-PRC activists, and educational institutions were best equipped to enhance the party-state’s influence in a discreet manner. Pro-PRC institutions were able to attract talented teachers, and someone with the status of Jasper Tsang, the future President of Hong

Kong’s Legislative Council, became a teacher at Piu Kiu Middle School after graduating from

10 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, pp. 89-91. 11 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, p. 131. 12 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, p. 131. 130

the HKU.13 It became obvious that adherence to official curricula notwithstanding, schools and teachers sympathetic to the PRC were nonetheless able to propagate loyalty to the PRC. It was institutions like Piu Kiu that enable analysts to truly appreciate the fact that the pro-PRC faction in Hong Kong retained its support base even after 1967, as demonstrated by partisans’ willingness to send their sons and daughters to educational institutions associated with Beijing.

According to Tsang, the guiding principle of Piu Kiu was that Hong Kong would eventually be returned to China, and therefore it would be essential for those in the city to prepare for this eventuality by learning how to serve the interests of the PRC.14 While many in Hong Kong were proud of their Chinese heritage, those who were loyal to Beijing constituted, at most, a strong minority, especially as the PRC was associated with the excesses of the Cultural

Revolution and the 1967 riots. Attendees of pro-PRC institutions were marking themselves, as, at minimum, students of highly unusual schools, the teachers of which preached values that were alien to many in the city. While there were students from pro-PRC institutions who were able to attend universities, upon graduation, many of them had to either stay in pro-PRC schools as teachers, or work in companies with ties to Beijing. All these career options require adherence to pro-PRC ideology, meaning that loyalty to the Beijing was absolutely essential.

In the pro-PRC ecosystem, where everyone knew everyone, where institutes such as Piu Kiu

‘assume responsibility of all aspects of the individuals, his physical training, his aptitude to work, his everyday conduct, his moral attitude, his state of mind’, it would be impossible for young members of the pro-PRC faction to rebel against the ideologies that were taught at their school, even if they wanted to.15 In this way, ideological dominance became the prime method by which the pro-PRC faction retain its internal discipline after the 1967 riots.

13 Huang Shao Lun 黃紹倫, Zhu Pei Qing 朱培慶, Li Ming 李明, ‘Cong shengbaoluo dao pei qiao - fangwen ceng yu cheng' '從聖保羅到培僑--訪問曾鈺成' (From St. Paul to Piu Kiu – the Jasper Tsang Interview)，xue yuan 學苑，一九七零年三月一日(Undergrads, 3 March 1970)，pp. 1-2 14 Huang, Zhu, Li, ' Cong shengbaoluo dao pei qiao’, p. 1. 15 Huang, Zhu, Li, ' Cong shengbaoluo dao pei qiao’, p. 1. 131

Of course, the pro-PRC faction did not rely solely on educational institutions sympathetic to Beijing to replenish its rank after the debacle of the 1967 riots, as there were more subtle methods with which CCP supporters maintained their influence in the colony.

According to the memoirs of , organisations such as Hok Yau Dancing Club (學友

中西舞蹈研究社) were used to attract promising youngsters in the colony to become party members or sympathisers.16 As an organisation that, on the outside, appeared to be a dancing club for fashionable youngsters, Hok Yau was the perfect recruitment site for CCP members in Hong Kong who operated within the ‘greyline’ (灰線), as they were determined to find young men and women who could, in the future, obtain the power to influence events in British Hong

Kong without having to publicly declare their ties with Beijing.17 As stated by Florence Mo (梁

慕嫻), Paul Yip Kwok-wah (葉國華), the man who would emerge as Chief Executive Tung

Chee-hwa’s special advisor, was particularly adept at installing pro-PRC youngsters at institutions of higher learning in Hong Kong. According to Mo, after the 1967 riots, Yip found some of his most talented recruits in Hok Yau, who, upon accepting Yip’s invitation to join the grey line, promptly terminated their association with the dancing club, as the organisation was by then seen as being too overtly pro-PRC. These talented students gained entry into some of the most prominent postsecondary institutions in Hong Kong, who would advocate stridently pro-PRC position while maintaining the façade of neutrality, as they were not openly linked with any organisations associated with Beijing. Yip’s recruits would form the backbone of the pro-PRC faction within the postsecondary student movement in the 1970s.18

Given the immense societal problem that confronted Hong Kong during the 1960s and

1970s, it should surprise no one that the PRC and its ideology was attractive to idealistic youths

p. 1. 16 Situ Hua 司徒華，Da jiang dong qu : Situ Hua hui yi lu 大江東去：司徒華回憶 （Hong Kong : Oxford University Press, 2011），p. 81 17 Situ， Da jiang dong qu，pp. 81-82. 18 Liang, Wo yu xianggang dixia dang, pp. 11-13. 132 who were alienated by colonial rule. Jasper Tsang, then and now a level-headed political figure, admitted that he would have been happy to see the British status of Hong Kong eradicated during the 1967 riots. 19 Besides genuine idealism, it is not hard to see that there were performative aspects to these demonstrations of loyalty, as each member of the pro-PRC faction was aware that he was she was in competition with his or her peers in the quest for advancement within the party hierarchy or the greyline.20 Besides formal evaluations, a process

Mo accused Yip of being obsessed over, it is also important to note that these young men and women were attempting to impress their peers with their actions. The pro-PRC faction, especially within the greyline, was very closely knitted, and men and women within it often socialise, and on occasion, even marrying, one another.21 There were occasions whereby even entire families were made up of members of the greyline or party sympathisers.22 In addition to members within the faction reinforcing the loyalty of their peers during period of acute crisis such as the 1967, allegiance to the CCP was also strengthened within the context of daily life due to familial ties. Betraying the CCP could mean the abandonment of a party sympathiser’s friends and family. Alternatively, actions that demonstrated one’s loyalty to Beijing would be perceived positively. Familial and social ties within the pro-PRC faction functioned like

‘complete and austere institutions’ that ‘[assumed] responsibility for all aspects of the individual, his physical training, his aptitude to work, his everyday conduct, his moral attitude, his state of mind’. In this way, perceived betrayal of the PRC would gravely undermine a partisan’s standing in within his or her social circles and family.23 All these developments ensured that it would be proper to classify the pro-PRC faction after the 1967 riots as a

Bordieuan habitus within Hong Kong society, as its members possessed their own values,

19 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 2. 20 Liang, Wo yu xianggang dixia dang, p. 11. 21 Liang, Wo yu xianggang dixia dang,, p. 11, p. 48. 22 Liang, Wo yu xianggang dixia dang,, p. 47. 23 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, p. 235. 133 employment opportunities, and social as well as familial ties that were quite separated from the rest of Hong Kong society.

‘Homelandisation’ and the Emergence of an ‘Unwritten Moral Code’ in Colonial Hong Kong As the pro-PRC faction continued to harden into a habitus in the 1970s, the rest of Hong

Kong society was developing its distinctive moral code. It would therefore be useful to take a slight detour and examine the theories of Michel De Certeau to see how they could be applied within the context of 1970s Hong Kong. According to De Certeau, in any society, there existed is ‘a tacit collective convention, unwritten, but legible to all dwellers through the codes of language and of behaviour; any submission to these codes, just as any transgression, is immediately the object of commentary’.24 As Hong Kong emerged as a society with a largely settled population, an unwritten moral code emerged among its residents, one that men and women of the colony needed to abide if they wished to be seen as respected members of society.

Members of a settled population had to establish a pattern of daily living whereby rules of engagement would be agreed upon so that coexistence within an occasionally difficult urban context would be made predictable and tolerable.25 The willingness to obey the unwritten societal rules would lead to one being seen as a decent and proper member of society, and if

‘propriety is the royal road to…symbolic benefit[s]’, then impropriety would result in a person being seen as a pariah.26 Within an urban environment, everyone was interdependent of one another, which meant that any action that grossly violated the unwritten societal code threatened to undermine the fragile equilibrium on which the prosperity of the society was dependent upon would be frowned upon by men and women who valued peace and stability.27

24 Michel De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life – Volume 2: Living and Cooking, trans by Timothy J. Tomasik (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), p. 22. 25 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, p. 15. 26 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, p. 22. 27 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, p. 15. 134

The emergence of an unwritten moral code in Hong Kong was inextricably tied with the homelandisation process that continued to transform local society after the 1967 riots. By

1970, about 57% of the local population was born in Hong Kong.28 in the same year, out of the total population of 4,127,800, around 2,352,846 local residents were born in Hong Kong.29

As argued by Geng Yun in his infamous series of articles, he was ‘born in Hong Kong’, but

‘have done so little for it and its people’. He planned to rectify his past failures by abandoning the option of emigrating to another country and instead choosing to remain in his home ‘to cultivate a sense of belonging – not as a nation – but as a community – a Hong Kong community, and a desire to work for a better society’ among local residents.30 In a not so subtle criticism of those whom he saw as too obsessed with China while ignoring local societal ills, Geng Yun argued that it was unrealistic to believe that ‘anyone who refuses to fight the injustice and inequality right before their eyes, anyone who refuses to sacrifice for his own community will somehow sacrifice and fight for the 700 million Chinese in China’.31 Geng Yun was by no means alone; in the January 1st, 1970 edition of the Undergrad, a student writer writing under the penname of Lin Fu (林斧) proudly stated that it had been the local population of Hong Kong that acted as the engine for the colony’s growth since its inception in 1841, and the people of the city would work tirelessly to ensure their home’s continued prosperity.32 The implication, of course, was that if it was the men and women of Hong Kong whose hard work had enabled the economic success of the colony, then they deserved better than being exploited by the economic elites, who had henceforth done little to improve the wellbeing of the working class.

The belief that Hong Kong was merely ‘a borrowed place’ was no longer true by the 1970s, as

28 Hong Kong Annual Report 1970 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1971), p. 218; Hong Kong Statistics: 1947-1967, p. 22. 29 Hong Kong Annual Report 1970, p. 217. 30 Geng, ‘ Disan bu: Qishi you tan shenme aiguo’, p. 6 31 Geng, ‘ Disan bu: Qishi you tan shenme aiguo’, p. 6 32 Lin Fu 林斧, ‘Gei xianggang jie da wenhao’ '給香港節打問號' (A Question Mark on Hong Kong Festival), xue yuan 學苑， 一九七零年一月一日 (Undergrads, 1 January 1970), p. 1 135 an entire generation of activists would be mobilised to wage campaigns to enhance the welfare of the city’s residents.33 By the 1970s, more than any other period in the history of the colony, homelandisation had taken hold in the city, as Hong Kong became the permanent home of the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong Chinese. For politically-minded young men and women, if Hong Kong, a colony that was plagued with corruption and inequality, represented their home, then it was their responsibility to reform the city.

The life of and career of Albert Ho encapsulated how an unwritten moral code was developing in 1970s Hong Kong and came to dominate those who would emerge as prominent figures of the city. As we shall see later, Ho would emerge as a prominent member of the

Liberal Democratic faction within the student movement that was pro-social reforms, but anti- colonial and antagonistic to the PRC.34 Before entering university in 1971, he was a regular attendee of free lectures given to local youths by historian Xu Guansan (許冠三), who taught him how to analyse issues critically and examine recent political development in China.35 It was within this relatively loose structure, one that lacked the institutional support of a major university but took place within the context of daily life that Ho developed his views on China and his responsibilities to it. Before encountering Xu, Ho’s daily life during his youth already prominently featured Chinese literature that espoused the heroism of those who defended China against external aggressors or internal enemies.36 Attending Xu’s lectures would give him the chance to discuss how he could best serve China not only with his teachers, but also outside the classroom with men such as Mak Hoi Wah (麥海華), his future partner within the student movement.37 Thus, there was a consensus, one that was reinforced among teachers and students

33 ‘Borrowed Place – Borrowed Time’ was the title of journalist Richard Hughes’ short monograph on Hong Kong. Richard Hughes, Borrowed Place Borrowed Time: Hong Kong and Its Many Faces (London: Andre Deutsch, 1976). 34 He Junren 何俊仁，Qianbei de fendou 謙卑的奮鬥 （Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press，2010), p. 17, p. 19. 35 He，Qianbei de fendou, pp. 8-9. 36 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, 19/7/17, p. 1. 37 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 2. 136 as well as among friends, that China and its past civilizational achievements should be admired and respect, while the Chinese government could be questioned or even opposed. Of course, this critical attitude towards the PRC was reinforced by the fact that Ho constantly interacted men and women of the previous generation who came to Hong Kong to escape the rule of the party-state. 38 The chaos caused by pro-PRC partisans during the 1967 no doubt further cemented the perception that Beijing represented a disruptive influence in the colony, thereby making it acceptable to admire Chinese culture while refusing to support the regime currently in power. His respect towards the Chinese civilisation enabled Ho to present himself as a patriotic Chinese, a posture that was accepted by his peers in spite of his repeated criticism of the PRC.

While Ho certainly admired Chinese culture, he was by no means immune to the process of homelandisaton, as his father was born in Hong Kong, and like many of his peers who were born and raised in Hong Kong, he likely viewed the colony as his permanent home.39

He described his youth as a purer time, one that was filled with happy memories of playing with his companions on mountains or the streets.40 Ho certainly saw the colony’s flaws, as he often encountered the underprivileged during his youth.41 He was more than willing to use his pocket money to buy meals for those in need, a habit that won him accolade among his friends, thereby demonstrating a belief among Ho’s social circle that Hong Kong, instead of being a society made up of individuals with little or no shared interests, actually constituted a community in which the poor deserved sympathy and assistance, especially as the city was evolving into a permanent home for many of its inhabitants, thus making it possible for a common identity to emerge. 42 The respect that he won from his friends through acts of

38 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 1. 39 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 1. 40 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 7. 41 He，Qianbei de fendou,, p. 1. 42 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 7. 137 selflessness no doubt motivated Ho to pursue actions that could further help the lower classes of Hong Kong, something that could be accomplished through a career in public life. A healthy ego that enjoyed positive attention, a genuine desire to help to underprivileged, and a belief that Hong Kong represented his permanent home all motivated Ho to become a student activist and a budding politician by the 1970s.

In the absence of everyday resistance participated by Hong Kong Chinese that saved the British status of the city in 1967, Hong Kong Chinese would not have developed among themselves an unwritten moral code in the 1970s. If the motivation behind the majority of Hong

Kong Chinese’s everyday resistance was to preserve the status-quo in 1967, then by the 1970s, a significant segment of the local population had acquired an unwritten moral mode that put the welfare of local residents as well as the maintenance of local peace and stability above all other political considerations. The survival of British Hong Kong in the 1967 riots facilitated the emergence of a local society in which a significant number of local men and women came to see the welfare of Hong Kong Chinese as their primary motivation for political mobilisation.

Everyday resistance not only represented a defensive campaign, but it also supplied the foundational values for future mobilisations. It was over the course of their participation in everyday resistance that Chinese in the colony came to the conclusion that Hong Kong society and its inhabitants possessed interests that had to be uphold. By the 1970s, there was also a higher level of prosperity that made it possible for local young men and women to engage in political actions rather than to focus single-mindedly on survival in a highly competitive society.43 In realpolitik terms, while the British could certainly be ruthless when confronted with existential threats, they were less likely to use lethal means to suppress young protestors whose aim was to improve local welfare. This awareness of their colonisers’ relative restraint likely contributed to young activists’ willingness to engage in political actions.

43 Tsang, Modern History, p. 192. 138

Of course, as this chapter would demonstrate, love and affection for China, especially if its territorial integrity was under threat, could still be a motivation for political actions. As the 1970s progressed, however, it became increasingly evident that the Chinese nationalism of the pro-PRC faction was specifically focused on the CCP party-state, and all those who failed to be similarly loyal to Beijing were seen as naïve as best, treasonous at worst. As we shall see later, the pro-PRC faction was able to achieve a degree of unity that was simply absent among its opponents. As it was argued by John Hutchinson, a sense of being besieged, and of being surrounded by enemies, could enhance internal cohesion among members of a nationalist movement, especially if they saw themselves as playing an important role in the revival of the national community.44 In the coming conflicts within the student movement, this sense of unity would allow the pro-PRC faction to dominate the 1970s postsecondary student movement.

The Dawn of the Student Movement: Campaign to Make Chinese an Official Language (1967-1974)

The division within the postsecondary student movement between those who were steadfastly loyal to the PRC and those who saw Hong Kong as the focal point of their political mobilisation was temporary papered over during the Campaign to Make Chinese an Official

Language. Public interest in making Chinese the official language began in September 1967, when a meeting of the (essentially the assembly of village elders in Hong

Kong’s New Territories) ended with a motion calling for the government to grant official status to the majority’s mother tongue.45 The Campaign truly became citywide when the Society to

Promote Chinese Education was formed in October 1969 among educators in the colony.46 The

All Hong Kong Working Party to Promote Chinese as an Official Language was formed by

Urban Councillor in June 1970, and the Joint Committee to Strive for Chinese

44 Hutchinson, Nations as zones of conflict, p. 46, p. 77. 45 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 127. 46 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p.128. 139 to be an Official Language was formed in 1970 by a coalition of youth magazines.47The activists involved were angered by colonial officials’ perceived arrogance and condescending manner. Paul Tsai, one of the few Chinese serving as a senior official in the colonial government, claimed that miscommunication between the government and the public was few and far between, the inability of the majority to understand English notwithstanding. He also stated that it was not necessary for the government to ensure public understanding of the colonial administration’s policy options, one of the anticipated benefits of making Chinese an official language, as in doing so would enable residents to express their viewpoints to officials.48 As stated by Lam Wai-Man, the actions of postsecondary students were relatively tame, especially when compared to other student-led political mobilisations in the decade; nevertheless, the Hong Kong Federation of Students did form the Committee to Study the

Deserved Status of Chinese in Hong Kong, an organisation that put addition pressure on the

Hong Kong government. 49 There was also the production of T-shirts containing slogans supportive of the Campaign.50 The highlights of the Campaign were protests and signature collection campaigns, the purpose of which was to force the government to recognise widespread public support behind the efforts to grant official status to the .51

The Campaign arguably peaked in 1971, when the Chinese Language Committee, an organ

47 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p.129. 48 ‘Yu hua min zhengwu si xijia xiang xiansheng tan zhongyingwen bing liewei fading yuyan wenti’ ‘與華民政務 司徐家祥先生談中英文並列為法定語言問題’ (Discussion with, Deputy Secretary for Chinese Affairs Paul Tsai on Establishing Chinese as an Official Language Alongside English), xue yuan 學苑, 一九六七年一二月十六日 (Undergrads, 16 December 1967), p. 1. It is somewhat surprising that Tsui was so dismissive of local demands to make Chinese an official language. In his autobiographical account, Tsui was actually supportive of liberal reforms, and he was disappointed that the Young Plan did not come to fruition. Tsui, Paul Tsui Ka Cheung’s Memoirs, chapter 18. 49 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p.129. 50 Xiangjiang Xiaosheng 香江小生, ‘Cong “zhongwen chengwei guanfang yuwen de quantou xiangdao “zhongwen chengwei guanfang yuwen” de zhijia’ ‘ 從「中文成為官方語文」的拳頭想到「中文成為官方語文」的指甲’ (From the Fist of ‘the Movement to Make Chinese an Official Language’ to the Fingernails of ‘the Movement to Make Chinese an Official Language’) Zhongguo xuesheng zhoubao 中國學生周報, 中華民國五十九年九月四日 (The Chinese Student Weekly, 4 September 1970), p. 8 51Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p.129 140 established by the government, recommended the granting of official status to Chinese, thereby laying the foundation for the colonial government’s decision to recognise Chinese as an official language in 1974.52

During the Campaign to Make Chinese an Official Language, the student movement in

Hong Kong enjoyed a high degree of unity that would soon disappear as the 1970s progressed.

By all accounts, university students, regardless of their political orientation or views towards the PRC, worked together for a common goal, a surprising development given that during the

1967 riots, many university attendees were highly contemptuous of the CCP. Indeed, most of the views expressed on the pages of the Undergrad at the time were almost universally critical of the CCP and supportive of the government.53 This sense of unity that was achieved during the Campaign could be attributed to the fact it was relatively apolitical, as hardly anyone of

Chinese descent in the colony would object making Chinese an official language (Paul Tsui, was a prominent exception).54 In this particular instance, the two ideological poles of the student movement, homelandisation, a sentiment that was manifested in the belief that having the mother tongue of the majority population recognised as an official language would make daily life of those living in Hong Kong easier, and a Chinese nationalism that was conveyed through genuine respect and admiration for Chinese culture as represented by repeated attempts to win official status for the Chinese language, became the foundation a cooperative and productive relationship among student activists with divergent political viewpoints. Although

52 It was expected that in oral communication, Cantonese, the Chinese dialect spoken by the majority, would be prominently used after the granting of legal status to the Chinese language. See more information, please see ‘Hong Kong Adopts a Language Lain’, New York Times, 24 March 1974, in ‘http://www.nytimes.com’, , [accessed 5 September 2017]. 53 ‘Editorial: The Big Question Mark’, Undergrad, 13th June 1967, p. 2; Yu Zi Xian 余子賢, ‘Saodong zhi wo jian’ ‘騷動之我見’ (My Opinion on the Riots), xue yuan 學苑, 一九六七年六月十三日 (Undergrads, 13 June 1967), p. 2; Shan Mei 山美, ‘Cong bao luan zhong shuo xianggangren’ ’ 從暴亂中說香港人’ (What Did the Riots Tell Us About Hong Kongers), xue yuan 學苑, 一九六七年十月二日 (Undergrads, 2 October, 1967), p. 1; TNA: PRO: FCO 40/39: ‘Kowloon Disturbances 1966 Report of Commission of Inquiry’, p. 20. 54 ‘‘Yu hua min zhengwu si xijia xiang xiansheng tan zhongyingwen bing liewei fading yuyan wenti’, p. 1; 141 the Campaign to Make Chinese an Official Language was not overtly partial to the PRC, its strong nationalistic undertone was sufficient to win over the support of student partisans sympathetic to Beijing.

The Intensification of the Student Movement: The Defend Diaoyutai Islands Campaign (1970-1971)

At the 1960s came to an end and the 1970s commenced, one should not underestimate the powerful force exerted by Chinese nationalism over those who participated in the student movement. Indicative of postsecondary students’ fierce Chinese nationalism, on May Fourth,

1969, the student newspapers at New Asia College, Chung Chi College, University of Hong

Kong, and United College published a joint issue celebrating the 50th anniversary of the iconic

May Fourth Movement, the driving forces of which were Chinese nationalism and anti- colonialism.55 It should be noted that anti-CCP sentiments were expressed in this joint issue, and there was a sense that mainland China had yet to have a regime that was capable of ruling it effectively. One writer even claimed that while China had defeated old idols such as

Confucius, new ones had been erected, implying that the cult of Mao was detrimental to the intellectual and political development of China.56 One could reasonably assume that there were pro-PRC students who were angered by these negative characterisations of Beijing. Observers could now come to the conclusion that there existed at least two varieties of Chinese nationalism in the student movement, as pro-PRC partisans were convinced that loyalty to the

CCP ought to be the foundational political value of any Chinese, while most other Hong Kong

Chinese were convinced that affection and admiration for Chinese culture, as well as a willingness to defend China when it was under threat, were sufficient to safeguard their self-

55 ‘Kunan de zhonguo, you mingtian’ ‘苦難的中國，有明天！’ (China Will Have !), Wusiyundong jinian tekan 五四運動紀念特刊, 一九六九午五月四曰 (Special Issue on the May Fourth Movement, 4 May 1969), p. 1. 56 Ping Zi 平子, ‘Wushi niangian, wishinian hou: Wushi nian’ ‘五十年前， 五十年後: 五十年’ (Fifty Years Before, Fifty Years After: Fifty Years’, Wusiyundong jinian tekan 五四運動紀念特刊, 一九六九午五月四曰 (Special Issue on the May Fourth Movement, 4 May 1969) , p. 12 142 perception as patriotic Chinese. These divergent views notwithstanding, as subsequent events would demonstrate, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism were values embraced by all factions within the student movement and served as linchpins uniting different strands of

Chinese nationalism, thereby enabling all self-proclaimed Chinese nationalists in the colony to temporarily present a united front.

Events outside of Hong Kong’s borders greatly impacted the development of the local student movement. In 1969, the United States and the Japanese governments issued a joint communique formally acknowledging Japanese sovereignty over Okinawa and Diaoyutai

Islands (Senkaku Islands to the Japanese), the latter of which were territories claimed by both the CCP government in the mainland and the KMT government in Taiwan as parts of China.57

It is important to note that even before protests began among Chinese students in the United

States, within Hong Kong, concerns regarding the sovereignty of the Islands emerged as early as July 1970. A rising number of wen she (literary clubs), columnists, and university students’ magazines had by then expressed their concerns, demonstrating that Hong Kong was the

Defend Diaoyutai Islands Campaign (henceforth the Baodiao Campaign)’s point of commencement.58 Towards the end of 1970, Chinese students at Princeton University began to protest Japanese claims over the Island.59 Similar protest broke out in Washington, D.C.,

California, and Michigan (Ann Arbor) in the fall and summer of 1971.60 By then, Hong Kong was fully involved in this trans-border campaign against perceived Japanese encroachment of

57 H. Mark Lai, Chinese American Transnational Politics, ed. by Madeline Y. Hsu (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), p. 37. 58 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p.148. Baodiao is the romanisation of 保釣, which is the shorthand for 保衛釣魚台 (Defend Diaoyu Islands). 59 Lai, Chinese American Transnational Politics, p. 37. 60 ‘Bao wei diayu tai yundong tekan: liu meizhong guoxue sheng • huayi qingnian • fadong "baowei diaoyu tai yundong"’ ‘保衞釣魚台運動特刊：留美中國學生•華裔青年•發動「保衛釣魚台運動」’(Special Issue on the Defend Diaoyutai Islands Campaign: Chinese Students in the United States • American Chinese Youths • Launch the ‘Defend Diaoyutai Islands Campaign’) Zhongguo xuesheng zhoubao 中國學生周報, 中華民國六十 年二月十二日 (The Chinese Student Weekly, 12 February 1971), p. 3 143

Chinese territories. Protests in Hong Kong concerning the Diaoyutai Islands were participated predominately by youths. On April 10th, 1971, a protest march the final destination of which was the Japanese consulate was stopped by the police, a confrontation that resulted in twenty- one arrests, including seven postsecondary students.61

When the Baodiao Campaign was becoming intensely nationalistic, postsecondary students took on a leading role in this political mobilisation against perceived Japanese aggression. After the protest on April 10th, 1971, the Hong Kong Federation of Students and the College Students Association of Hong Kong almost immediately called for mass protests on different campuses across the city.62 Student newspapers were certainly supportive of the

Baodiao Campaign and highly critical of police responses on April 10th, as a day later, a joint issue was published by the CU Students, (中大學生報), Undergrad, Federation of Students

Newspaper (學聯報), Catholic Post-Secondary (曙暉), and three other student publications to severely criticise the actions of the police.63 At this point, the themes of anti-colonialism, anti- imperialism, and Chinese nationalism were made even more explicit, as a postsecondary student was recorded to have pointedly asked a policeman if he was Chinese during the April

10th protest, the implication being that a patriotic Chinese would not have arrested other

61 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 149; ‘Shiwei zao jingfang baoli zhizhi’ ‘示威遭警 方暴力制止’(Police Violently Stopped Protest), Zhongguo xuesheng zhoubao 中國學生周報, 中華民國六十 年四月十六日 (The Chinese Student Weekly, 16 April 1971), p. 1 62 ‘Baowei diao yutai yundong: (yi) bao diao yundong chansheng de beijing ji jingguo’ '保衛釣魚台運動：（一 ）保釣運動產生的背景及經過' (The Defend the Diaoyutai Islands Campaign: Part One – Background and Proceeding), zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, Xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp. 33-35 (p. 33). 63 ‘Baowei diao yutai yundong’ ‘保衛釣魚台’(Defend Diaoyutai Islands), zhongda suesheng bao/xue yuan/xue feng/shu hui/xue lian bao/hao kan: Lianhe haowai 中大學生報/學苑/學風/曙暉/學聯報/號刊: 聯合號外, 一九七一年四月十一日 (11 April 1971), pp.1-4. 144

Chinese for defending Chinese territorial sovereignty.64 On April 17th, there was a protest on the HKU campus with 700 attendees, while 500 persons attended the one that took place on

Chung Chi College.65 Again explicitly using Chinese nationalism as a means for mobilisation, on May 4th, another protest occurred in Place, which resulted in twelve persons being arrested.66 A parallel protest was organised in Kowloon; during and after the protest, the

‘May Fourth Spirit’ was referenced as the driving principle of the protestors, many of whom not only protested on the streets, but also marched inside convenience stores owned by

Japanese multinational companies. 67 It is not difficult to sense the intensification of nationalistic sentiment in Hong Kong, especially as the Federation of Students submitted a request for the right to stage a protest on July 7th, the date prominently associated with the commencement of the Sino-Japanese war.68 When the request to use Victoria Park as the site of protest was denied, student protestors and their supporters went there anyway, and not surprisingly, there was a clash with the police that led to seventy-one persons being arrested.69

While there would be more protests centring on the defence of the Diaoyutai Islands in

Hong Kong, the events of July 1971 were arguably the highpoint of the entire Baodiao

Campaign. Indeed, the July 7th protest was attended by around 3000 persons, making it the gathering with the highest number of attendees over the course of the entire Baodiao

Campaign. 70 Although the march to the Japanese consulate on May 13th, 1972 that were

64 ‘Baowei diao yutai yundong’ ‘保衛釣魚台’(Defend Diaoyutai Islands), zhongda suesheng bao/xue yuan/xue feng/shu hui/xue lian bao/hao kan: Lianhe haowai 中大學生報/學苑/學風/曙暉/學聯報/號刊: 聯合號外, 一九七一年四月十一日 (11 April 1971), pp.1-4. (p. 1). 65‘ Baowei diao yutai yundong: (yi) bao diao yundong chansheng de beijing ji jingguo’, p. 33. 66 ‘Baowei diao yutai yundong: (yi) bao diao yundong chansheng de beijing ji jingguo’, p. 34. 67 ‘Baowei diao yutai yundong: (yi) bao diao yundong chansheng de beijing ji jingguo’, p. 34. 68 ‘Baowei diao yutai yundong: (yi) bao diao yundong chansheng de beijing ji jingguo’, p. 34. 69 ‘Qi qi da shiwei: Xuesheng xue ran gongyuan’ ‘七七大示威：學生血染公園’ (July 7th Protest: The Blood of Students Were Spilled in Park), zhongda xuesheng bao/xue yuan/xue feng/shu hui/xue lian bao/hao kan/qin wen xue xun/lu da mang feng/jin hui xuesheng bao, lianhe haowai 中大學生報/學苑/學風/曙暉/學聯報/號刊 /螓文學訊/路大芒鋒/ 浸會學生報, 聯合號外, 一九七一年七月八日 (8 July 1971), pp 1-2 (pp. 1-2). 70 ‘Baowei diao dao tai yundong: (yi) bao diao yundong chansheng de beijing ji jingguo’, p. 34. 145 participated by 2000 persons was certainly impressive, it did not have the emotional resonance of the July 7th, 1971 march. Very tellingly, in his retrospective article covering the Campaign,

Zhang Jing Kun (張靖堃), a student activist during this period, did not mention any protests after

July 7th.71 Indeed, while the May 1973 protest was held without prior authorisation by the government, no arrest was made. 72 In the absence of confrontations against the British administration, the Baodiao Campaign lost an opponent against which to mobilise. Without the

British as the powerful opponent to galvanise public opinions and in the absence of physical confrontations against colonial law enforcement agents, marches after 1971 simply lacked the dramatic flairs of their predecessors.

Another reason that the July 7th, 1971 protest was seen as the highpoint of the Baodiao

Campaign was that cracks began to appear within the student movement almost immediately thereafter. It is important to note that for many participants of the Campaign, ‘China’ was presented as a relatively apolitical concept that transcended the KMT-CCP divide, one that nonetheless had to be defended against perceived Japanese aggression. In fact, an article on the

Undergrad even at one point contemptuously asserted that the CCP party-state was sitting on the sideline during the Baodiao Campaign.73 This article, which appeared in June 1971, stated that both the KMT and the CCP needed encouragement from the masses so that the two respective parties would have the spines to stand up against imperialist bullies.74 Given the

CCP’s lack of wide public support in Hong Kong, when pro-PRC student activists began to

71 Zhang Jing Kun 張靖堃, ‘Baowei diao dao tai yungdong: (si) ganyan he pinglun: Cong 'bao diao' dao 'zhongguo tongyi' (yuan zai yu 'xue lian bao' tekan 1978 nian 5 yue 13 ri)’ ‘保衛釣魚台運動：(四）感言和評 論：從「保釣」到 「中國統一」（原載於《學聯報》特刊 1978 年 5 月 13 日）’(Diaoyutai Islands: (Four) Comments and Critiques: From ‘Defend Diaoyutai Islands’ to ‘Unification of China’ , zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp. 48-50 (p. 49). 72 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 154. 73Guan Pin Fang 關品方,‘Weihu diaoyu tai: Lingtu zhuquan zai xianggang' '維護釣魚台：領土主權在香港' (Defen Diaoyutai Islands: Sovereignty in Hong Kong), xue yuan 學苑, 一九七一年六月一日 (Undergrads, 1 June 1971), pp. 1-2 (p. 1). 74 Guan，' Weihu diaoyu tai: Lingtu zhuquan zai xianggang ', p. 2. 146 advocate for the unification of Taiwan with the mainland under the leadership of the CCP in

August 1971 by asserting that such an arrangement was best suited for the defence of national sovereignty, many student activists were dismayed by this sudden change in direction of the

Baodiao Campaign without prior public consultations. Similarly, when members of the pro-

PRC faction began to praise the CCP and articulate the notion that student activists, instead of focusing on international affairs, should concentrate on the propagation of social, political, and economic achievements of the CCP to the general public, unity within the student movement further broke down. 75 In absence of continuous confrontations against the British and provocation supplied by the Japanese and American governments, contradictions that existed between different strands of Chinese nationalism began to overwhelm the fragile unity that held together the student movement.

The Anti-Corruption Campaign and the Beginning of China Week While the Baodiao Campaign arguably did little to alter the international climate that played such an instrumental role in creating the global controversy in the first place, as the decade progressed, student activists would become more involved in local issues that impacted the daily life of those who resided in Hong Kong. It is difficult to overemphasise the degree to which corruption contaminated almost all levels of Hong Kong society in the postwar era.76 As stated by Elsie Tu, the famous social welfare activists, there were British policemen who came to Hong Kong with the expressed purpose of trying to get wealthy, as it was common knowledge that ‘there was a lot of money to be earned in corruption’.77 Those who suffered the most were of course the average residents of the colony, as they had to pay protection money

75 Zhang, ‘Baowei diao dao tai yungdong: (si) ganyan he pinglun: Cong 'bao diao' dao 'zhongguo tongyi' , pp. 49-50. 76 Taiwan, China, and Japan still claim sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands, and the controversy is still a source of tensions that undermines regional stability. For more details, see Judy Lin, ‘Taiwan restates sovereignty over Diaoyutai Islands: Taiwan’s MOFA refutes Washington’s support of Japan’s sovereignty over Diaoyutai Islands’, Taiwan News, 6 February 2017, in ‘https://www.taiwannews.com’, , [accessed 9 September 2017]. 77 Tu, Colonial Hong Kong, p. 36. 147 to both policemen and gangsters. 78 Imagine how idealistic youngsters like Ho, whose educational upbringing was full of tales of Chinese men and women who struggled for the welfare of the underprivileged, had to have felt when confronted by the vastly unjust social conditions in Hong Kong. 79 This type of young and idealistic men and women entered universities at a period when a sense of homelandisation was becoming prominent, and the conviction that Hong Kong represented their permanent home was leading to calls for social reforms. In 1968, an unsigned editorial on the pages of the Undergrad contemplated that maybe riots were necessary to compel the government for further social reforms.80 Within university campuses, there came to be a conviction that acts of rebellion against the colonial government possessed ‘high symbolic value’, especially since its functionaries were acting in a manner contrary to the interests of Hong Kong residents, thereby justifying popular confrontations against the British for the betterment of Hong Kong residents’ lives.81

It should therefore surprise no one that the Godber controversy was fully participated by student activists, many of whom were at the frontline of a Campaign that took on a confrontationally anti-colonial tone as it intensified. Peter Godber was a seasoned police officer whose performance during the 1967 riots earned praises. In April 1973, however, it was discovered that he was sending large sum of money outside of Hong Kong, and subsequent investigations revealed that his net worth was about six times larger than his salary that he had accumulated over the past twenty years.82 As it became increasingly clear that Godber most likely had committed, at minimum, some sort of professional misconducts, he was somehow able to escape from Hong Kong.83 The general public was furious, and most observers were

78 Tu, Colonial Hong Kong, p. 115. 79 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 1. 80 'Xianggang shifou xuyao baodong’ ‘香港是否需要暴動?’ (Does Hong Kong Need a Riot?), xue yuan 學苑, 一 九六八年七月十一六日 (Undergard, 16 July 1968), p. 5. 81 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, p. 82. 82 Carroll, Concise History, p. 174. 83 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 156. 148 angered by the fact that there appeared to have been no attempts at forcing Godber to surrender his travel documents or any efforts to place him under surveillance.84 Reactions on universities campuses were especially ferocious, with an editorial on the Undergrad labelling him ‘a person who is good enough to be a dustman in England’ who had come ‘to Hong Kong to be a duke’, and a fraudster who promptly escaped to Britain to ‘lives happily ever after’ after it was discovered that ‘he grabs millions of dollars from the little man in Hong Kong’ by illegal means’.85

Just as the people of Hong Kong were developing a sense of belonging, one that motivated them to develop a moral code that was based on the ‘common history’ of Hong Kong

Chinese and the purpose of which was to uphold the 'collective well-being' of the local society, the Godber case exposed to all that colonial officials had no hesitation at enriching themselves at the expense of the city’s population.86 Ho was certainly aware of the fact that there was a collaborative relationship between policemen and gangster in the postwar era, as he once stated that police essentially left criminal organisations alone as long as there were no major incidents and policemen got a share of the profit.87 When corruption was that obvious, and could not even ‘hide itself in the darkness’, then its practitioners not surprisingly were subjected to severe criticisms. 88 If adherence to existing societal norms allowed one to ‘continue collecting expected symbolic benefits’, then ‘propriety imposes its own coercion’ also, as those who failed to live up to the agreed upon moral code would be targets of ridicule.89 What most likely inflamed the political passion of student activists was the fact that they most likely had experienced official corruption or knew people who were victims of it. Indeed, in postwar Hong

84 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 156. 85 ‘Godber – the Queen’s Protectorate’, Undergrad, 16nd July 1973, pp. 1-2 (p. 1). 86 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, pp. 109-110. 87 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 9. 88 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, p. 18. 89 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, p. 19. 149

Kong, bribes had to be paid in domains as diverse as education, construction, and education.90

The Anti-Corruption Campaign that broke out was a protest against colonial Hong Kong, the functionaries of which, instead of doing their foremost to ‘to make everyday life possible’, were conducting themselves in such a manner that was repulsive to the Hong Kong public.91

Once again, postsecondary student activists in Hong Kong played a leading role in the

Anti-Corruption Campaign that would have wide ramifications in the city during the 1970s.

While the colonial government, responding to escalating public anger, announced in June 1973 that Sir William Alexander "Alastair" Blair-Kerr, a respected public servant, would be appointed to head a one-man Commission of Inquiry, the general public remained unconvinced that Godber would ever be brought to justice.92 As it became clear that public sentiments were supportive of further demonstrations of indignation, especially since the issue was even raised on the floor of the Legislative Council, student activists were able to build a Campaign that had already begun to mount immense pressure on the government.93 Indeed, the first Blair-Kerr report merely stated that the reasons for Godber being able to escape was that he had used the special permit issued to senior police officers, and that in the future, officials accused of similar crimes be put under close supervision.94 By the end of July 1973, the Federation of Students began to mobilise. Press releases and letters were issued calling for the extradition of Godber, the beginning of wider investigations regarding corruption, and the establishment of an organisation to combat official corruption. 95 A subsequent signature collection campaign

90 Sun Bao Gang 孫寶鋼, ' lan jian yiyuan: Dui yu xianggang zheng zhi gai ge de jian yi’ ‘ 英藍堅議員:對 於 香 港 政 制 改 革 的 建 議’ (British Member of Parliament’s Suggestions on Political Reforms in Hong Kong), Xinshe hui 新社會, 一九六七年一月十五日(New Society, 15 January 1967), pp. 2-3 (p. 2). 91 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, p. 23. 92 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 157. 93 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, pp. 157-158; pp. 934-935; Meeting of 18 July 1973, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1973 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1973), pp. 934-935. 94 First Report of the Commission of Inquiry under Sir Alastair Blair-Kerr (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1973), p. 18, p. 20. 95 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 159. 150 collected 50, 000 signatures.96 Student activists even began to cooperate with workers and other civic organisations, and thirteen youth and student organisations merged into the Thirteen

Anticorruption Groups in mid-August.97

At student protestors became fully involved in the Campaign, their actions assumed an increasingly confrontational and anti-colonial tone, and activities that were explicitly staged to enraged colonial authorities became integral to the efforts against official corruption. The

Thirteen Anticorruption Groups, of which student activists played a leading part, originally planned to stage a protest at Morse Park, but due to rain, its members instead marched to

Victoria Park in August 26th.98 It should be noted that all these activities, strictly speaking, were illegal, as participants had not obtained the required governmental consent for their actions.

Twenty-one participants were arrested during the march.99 Another protest that was deemed illegal by colonial authorities took place in Morse Park in September 2nd, and twelve persons who were arrested refused to show up at court, and in doing so made themselves wanted criminals.100 By this time, the Campaign was likely supported by the majority of those residing in the colony, and this public backing served as a stimulus for further actions.101 As a further act of rebellion against ‘unreasonable colonial rules and regulations’, there was another public meeting on , 1973 that took place in Victoria Park, the theme of which was

‘Corruption Guilty, Public Meetings not Guilty’. Activities on that date included a march to the Government House to present a letter of containing the demands of the protestors, the most prominent of which were the immediate extradition of Godber, a public declaration of the

96 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 159. 97 'Xianggang? Zhongguo? Douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lishu pianduan - 4 'fantanwu, zhuo ge bai' ‘香港 ？中國？- 鬥爭激烈的分歧局面：（二）歷史片段 - 4「反貪污，捉葛柏」' (Hong Kong? China? – The Fierce Struggle: (2) Historical Incidents – ‘Anti-Corruption, Catch Godber), zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp. 74-78 (p. 78). 98 'Xianggang? Zhongguo? Douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lishu pianduan - 4 'fantanwu, zhuo ge bai', p. 78. 99 'Xianggang? Zhongguo? Douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lishu pianduan - 4 'fantanwu, zhuo ge bai', p. 78. 100 'Xianggang? Zhongguo? Douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lishu pianduan - 4 'fantanwu, zhuo ge bai', p. 78. 101 'Xianggang? Zhongguo? Douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lishu pianduan - 4 'fantanwu, zhuo ge bai', p. 74. 151 government’s determination to stop corruption, the cessation of governmental efforts to undermine the Anti-Corruption Campaign, and the dropping of charges against protestors. The letter was subsequently burnt at the conclusion of the march. Not surprisingly, this march drew the ire of the police, who later arrested twenty-six participants.102

The second Blair-Kerr Report of 1973 actually did not explicitly argue for an independent agency to eliminate official corruption; nevertheless, the new Governor, Murray

MacLehose, ultimately decided to establish the Independent Commission Against Corruption

(ICAC) in 1974. It is difficult to imagine the establishment of the ICAC in 1974 and the extradition as well as the subsequent conviction of Godber in 1975 in the absence of the

Campaign that was led by student activist.103 At a time period when the capacity of the student movement to influence changes in society was arguably at its peak, so much so that a new agency was set up mostly due to protests that was led by student activists, unity within university campuses begun to fracture and different factions began to emerge. The Trotskyites were seen as too confrontational and too radical, especially as they never hid their determination to overthrow the colonial government through the mobilisation of the working class, an outcome they attempted to engineer during the early stage of Campaign in spite of the fact that opened rebellion was not supported by the majority within the student movement. As a result, the Trotskyites were sidelined by other student activists who did not want to be associated with a faction that was openly advocating for armed revolts.104 There was also the

102 ‘'Xianggang? Zhongguo? Douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lishu pianduan - 4 'fantanwu, zhuo ge bai', p. 78; Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 160. 103 I.C.A.C. & Anti-Corruption (Hong Kong: Political Science Association/HKUSU University of Hong Kong, 1978), p. 29, p. 35, p. 4; Robert Klitgaard, Controlling Corruption (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 113. 104‘Xianggang? Zhongguo? - douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lisshi pianduan - 14. gang daxuesheng hui gaixuan ji luo ren ganshi biao te xun (1975 nian 1 yue) ‘ 香港？中國？- 鬥爭激烈的分歧局面：（二）歷史 片段 - 14. 港大學生會改選及落任幹事表特訊 (1975 年 1 月）' (Hong Kong? China? – The Fierce Struggles: (2) Historical Incidents – 14. University of Hong Kong Student Union Elections and Defeated Candidates Special Bulletin (January 1975), zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp. 89-90 (p. 89). 152 socialist faction, the members of which were convinced that the energy of the student movement should be focused on the reform of Hong Kong society through the implementation of socialist ideology.105 The pro-PRC faction did not concur with the conviction held by the

Trotskyites and the socialists that local affairs should be the focal point of the student movement. Pro-PRC activists’ determination to concentrate single-mindedly on developments within the PRC that would sharply divide the student movement.

At this stage, the pro-PRC faction had become increasingly uninterested in Hong Kong affairs, even if its official slogan was now ‘Recognise China, Care About Society’ (認中關社).

This slogan was actually highly misleading, as it was by the mid-1970s an article of faith within the pro-PRC faction that understanding the PRC, and dissimulating positive information about it, represented the most important duty of its partisans in Hong Kong.106 While it had been suggested that the refusal to participate in movements for social reforms was motivated by a belief held by some activists that they were simply too weak to affect changes, Albert Ho argued that it was the increasingly confrontational tone of the protests that led to this alternation in the policy direction of the pro-PRC faction. After the 1967 riots, there was simply no appetite for further confrontations against colonial authorities.107 One should also not discount the fact that during this period, the international standing of the PRC was rapidly transforming, and it was recognised as a great power on the world stage. Significant events such as the replacement

105 ‘ Xianggang? Zhongguo? - douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (san) guocui - shehui pai zhi gangling - fangwen ceng shu ji xiansheng tan xueyun (1983 nian 3 yue)’ ‘香港？中國？- 鬥爭激烈的分歧局面： (三）國粹-社 會派之綱領 - 訪問曾澍基先生談學運（1983 年 3 月）' (Hong Kong? China? – The Fierce Struggles: (3) The Platforms of the Pro-PRC and Socialist Factions – Interview with Tsang Shu-ki Concerning the Student Movement (March 1983), zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp. 101-103 (p. 103). 106 ‘ Xianggang? Zhongguo? - douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (san) guocui - shehui pai zhi gangling - (1983 nian 3 yue)’ ‘香港？中國？- 鬥爭激烈的分歧局面： (三）國粹-社會派之綱領（1983 年 3 月）' (Hong Kong? China? – The Fierce Struggles: (3) The Platforms of the Pro-PRC and Socialist Factions (March 1983), zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp. 97-100 (p. 98). 107 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 3. 153 of Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan) by the PRC at the United Nations in 1971 and President

Richard Nixon’s historical visit to China in 1972 occurred in rapid succession, and it should therefore surprise no one that members of the pro-PRC faction were convinced that history was on their side.108 This rising patriotic sentiment was already evident in January 1971, when trips were being organised so that students could return to mainland China, a practice that would continue throughout the 1970s the purpose of which was to demonstrate the domestic achievements of the PRC.109

A manifestation of the pro-PRC faction’s reorientation from Hong Kong affairs to campaigns to promote awareness and acceptance of the PRC was the staging of the first China

Week in the summer of 1973.110 The first China Week was proposed by students at the Hong

Kong Baptist College when the Anti-Corruption Campaign was reaching its height in the summer of 1973, which in hindsight, deprived the Campaign the political energy needed to evolve into a full-fledged anti-colonial movement, as a significant segment of its partisans lost interest in local affairs.111 The first China Week was made up of a photo exhibition of modern

Chinese history in HKU, which attracted 5000 visitors and exhibitions at the Baptist College as well as Hong Kong Polytechnic concerning fossil fuel and energy development in the mainland.112 The success of China week, which ran annually from 1973 to 1978, ensured that

108 Joshua S. Goldstein and John R. Freeman, Three-way Street: Strategic Reciprocity in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 110; Steve Tsang, The Cold War's Odd Couple: The Unintended Partnership Between the Republic of China and the UK, 1950-1958 (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2006), p. 14 109 ‘ Xianggang? Zhongguo? - douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (san) guocui - shehui pai zhi gangling - fangwen ceng shu ji xiansheng tan xueyun (1983 nian 3 yue)’ , p. 101; Lei Wen 雷文同 ‘Zuguo dadi you zhi er: Yisheng zhongdi ershi wutian’ ‘祖國大地遊之二： 一生中的二十五天'(Trip Back to Motherland Part Two: Twenty-five Days in My Life’, Xue yuan 學苑，一九七三，九月一日 (Undergrads 1 September 1973)，p. 3 110‘ Xianggang? Zhongguo? - douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lisshi pianduan – 5. diyi jie zhongguo zhou (1973 nian 10 yue)’ ‘香港？中國？- 鬥爭激烈的分歧局面：（二）歷史片段 - 5. 第一屆中國周（1973 年 10 月）' (Hong Kong? China? – The Fierce Struggles: (2) Historical Incidents – 5 The First China Week), zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), 78-81 (p. 78). 111 ‘Xianggang? Zhongguo? - douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lisshi pianduan – 5. diyi jie zhongguo zhou (1973 nian 10 yue)’, p. 78. 112Xianggang? Zhongguo? - douzheng jilie de fenqi jumian: (er) lisshi pianduan – 5. diyi jie zhongguo zhou (1973 nian 10 yue)’, p. 81. 154 the pro-PRC faction would remain the predominant force within the student movement for most of the 1970s.113 By any measure, the first China week was a considerable success, as nearly six years after the 1967 riots, the pro-PRC faction was able to compel a significant portion of the population to become keenly interested in not only Chinese culture, but also the social, economic, and political developments within the PRC. Not surprisingly, members of the pro-PRC faction were infused with a great sense of self-confidence, for if the PRC was emerging as a great power, then they were vanguards of the party-state in the British colony, and China week was the perfect occasion that allowed them to express and promote their nationalism.114

The success of the first China Week, the enthusiasm that it engendered, and belief that they were on the right side of history ensured that the pro-PRC faction would dominate the

1970s Hong Kong student movement. The pro-PRC faction also most likely received instructions, from leaders of the grey line such as Paul Yip Kwok-wah, to not be too confrontational against the British.115 It was not that members of the pro-PRC faction were totally unmoved by the injustices that occurred within colonial Hong Kong, it was just that they were convinced that they were powerless to eliminate them.116 The pro-PRC faction, therefore, did not want to reform colonial society. Nor did its members wanted to eradicate colonialism.

Instead, they were determined that the pro-PRC nationalism they espoused, one that placed

113 ‘ 'Dichao? Xinsheng? yi jiu qi qi dao ba ling nian de xueshengyundong: (yi) lishi pianduan - 5. diliu jie zongguo zhou' '低潮？新生？一九七七到八零年的學生運動：(一）歷史片段－5. 第六屆中國周’(Low point? Revival? Student Movement from 1977 to 1980: (1) Historical incident – 5. The Sixth China Week), zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp. 158-160 (p. 160). 114 ‘Tan zhongguo zhou de yiyi' '談中國週的意義' (Lets Talk About the Significance of China Week)，xue yuan 學苑，一九七三年十月十大日 (Undergrads，16 October 1973), p. 2; He Mu 何穆 , 'xie zai guoqing zhihou "zhongguo zhou" zhiqian' '寫在國慶之後「中國週」之前’(Written After National Day but Before ‘China Week)，xue yuan 學苑，一九七三年十月十六日(Undergrads, 16 October 1973), p. 4. 115 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 4. 116 A Bing 阿丙，‘Mingbai nide "bumingbai" fantanwu yundong de chabei li fengbo’ '明白你的「不明白」反 貪污運動的茶杯裏風波’(Understand What You Don’t Understand About the Anti-Corruption Campaign), xue yuan 學苑，一九七三年十月十六日 (Undergrads, 16 October 1973), p. 12. 155 loyalty to Beijing above all else, be the dominant ideology in the colony. In other words, they wanted their ‘habitus’ to be the dominant one in the colony in preparation for Chinese resumption of sovereignty in the near future. The fact that the pro-PRC faction had its own schools, social events, social circles, employment opportunities all but guaranteed that its partisans would possess viewpoints regarding Hong Kong that would be vastly different to those of their peers who were not affiliated with the PRC.117 The ideological foundations of other factions of the student movement were much more pluralistic, thereby making them more tolerance of differences, and at the same time, much more difficult to enforce internal discipline or preserve unity. In contrast, a partisan sympathetic to the PRC interpreted conditions in

British Hong Kong mostly through the lenses of being a supporter of Beijing. It was this unity of purpose that enabled the pro-PRC faction to take over the student movement and began its quest to extend its dominance over the wider Hong Kong society.

The Rise of Alternative Forces within the Student Movement and the Decline of the Pro- PRC Faction Just when the influence of student activists sympathetic to Beijing was reaching its apex, new political actors with different ideologies were emerging to challenge the pro-PRC orthodoxy within the student movement. In his memoir, Albert Ho proclaimed the political beliefs of the pro-PRC faction to be highly illogical, as its members had to accept the PRC in its totality and essentially ignore all its flaws. 118 Even more damningly, Ho asserted that members of the pro-PRC faction of being partisans of an authoritarian regime for the sole purpose of boosting their own egos, as they wanted to be seen as patriots of a great power while not having to live under the harsh rule of the party-state.119 Not surprisingly, he was highly critical of various trips postsecondary students took to China in the 1970s, and compared them

117 Pierre Bourdieu, In other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans by Matthew Adamson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 63. 118 He，Qianbei de fendou, p.15. 119 He，Qianbei de fendou, p.15. 156 to propaganda events staged by the PRC.120 This hostile attitude towards the PRC, the influence of Xu Guansan, who taught him to be sceptical of dogmas, and his reading habit that included a heavy dose of works written by Karl Popper that stressed the importance of testing and challenging existing theories, constituted the foundation of Ho’s intellectual beliefs.121 By the mid-1970s, Ho was emerging as one of the founding members of the liberal-democratic faction, a segment within the student movement that was critical of both the PRC and the British, while at the same time, aimed for progressive reforms in Hong Kong and the city’s eventual retrocession to a democratic China.122 The liberal-democratic faction would become a force to be reckoned with in the student movement in the mid-1970s.

At this stage, the socialist faction still played an important role within the student movement, but on its own, it lacked the sheer manpower, or even the inclination, to take on the pro-PRC student activists, as both camps actually shared a high degree of ideological affinity due to their belief in socialism.123 As a result, in the mid-1970s, the pro-PRC faction remained by far the most powerful bloc within the student movement, so much so that its members essentially controlled the editorial direction of the Undergrad.124 In 1974, a candidate was even slated to succeed the pro-PRC head of the HKU student union unopposed, as it was assumed that the faction had achieve such a degree of dominance that dynastic succession was possible.125 What was ignored, however, was that the increasingly arrogant ways with which members of the pro-PRC faction treated their peers, and the fact that their opponents had been scheming for months for some kind of counterstrike. In November 1974, Mak Hoi Wah, A member of the socialist faction, with Ho as his campaign manager, was elected as the head of

120 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 4. 121 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 4; He，Qianbei de fendou, pp. 8-9, p. 13. 122 He，Qianbei de fendou, p. 13, pp. 17-18, pp. 20-21. 123 He，Qianbei de fendou, p. 18. 124 He，Qianbei de fendou, p. 18. 125 He，Qianbei de fendou, p. 18. 157 the HKU student union. 126 According to Ho, the victory of Mak was made possible by widespread dissatisfaction with pro-PRC partisans on campus, which in turn was the foundation of a coalition of all the factions that were unhappy with the current direction of the student movement, with its heavy emphasis on PRC affairs at the exclusion of all other viewpoints. The intense dissatisfaction with the pro-PRC faction created a coalition that made the victory of Mak possible. 127

While the socialists and the liberal democratic faction were emerging as challengers to the pro-PRC faction’s dominance, Hong Kong society continued to evolve, and there were still numerous issues that provoked the outrage of activists determined to improve the welfare of

Hong Kong Chinese. In January 1975, the Hong Kong Telephone Company announced a whopping 70% price increase, a move that was, not surprisingly, widely decried as putting the profit margins of big businesses ahead of the middle and working classes of the colony.128 In a recent interview, Mak stated that he was outraged by the price increase, but curiously, while there were subsequent citywide protests, postsecondary students, in a stark contrast to previous social movements, played a minor role.129 In the end, the Hong Kong University Students

Union, the College Students’ Association of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Federation of

Catholic Students planned signature collection campaigns and issued a joint publication that protested the price increase.130 The inaction of the student movement was due in large part to pro-PRC faction’s continued dominance, and its members’ refusal to confront the colonial government. Members of the socialist and liberal democratic factions were indeed able to fight

126 Zhong Yao Hua 鍾耀華, ‘Jiaguo, zeren, xianggang - mai hai hua (shang)’ ‘家國、責任、香港 - 麥海華 （上）’, 端傳媒, 二〇一五年八月二十一日, ‘https://theinitium.com/’, [進接: 二○一七年九月十 二日]. (Zhong Yao Hua, ‘Country, Responsibility, Hong Kong - Mak Hoi Wah, 21 August 2015). 127 He，Qianbei de fendou, p. 23. 128 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 164. 129 Zhong, ‘Jiaguo, zeren, xianggang - mai hai hua (shang)’. 130 Zhong, ‘Jiaguo, zeren, xianggang - mai hai hua (shang)’. 158 their ways into positions of power within various student organisation; at the same time, the pro-PRC faction remained the preeminent force within the student movement. Even after the victory of Mak, most student unions in other institutions of higher education were led by members of the pro-PRC faction.131 For members of the pro-PRC faction, the imperative of promoting the interests of Beijing still took precedent over defending the welfare of men and women residing in Hong Kong.

The critics of the pro-PRC faction were targeted for vicious personal attacks by those who felt that men and women of Hong Kong who refused to display loyalty to the PRC were ignorant at best, treasonous at worse. The fact that most members of the pro-PRC faction formed an interconnected network united by educational, social, and ideological ties enabled them to form a strong united front against other blocs in the student movement who refused to accept the legitimacy of the PRC. Indeed, if members of the pro-PRC faction possessed a habitus, then it was one that was particularly of intolerant of competitors or oppositions. It was not at all clear that the pro-PRC faction’s Beijing-centric nationalism was supported by the majority of Hong Kong society, its members’ dominance within the student movement notwithstanding. The pro-PRC faction was determined to destroy their opponents by using the charges of disloyalty, for they knew they were at a position of disadvantage, especially since even after achieving dominance within their student movement, only a minority segment of the population hold views that were highly supportive of the PRC. It was therefore it necessary to adopt an aggressive stance so that the ideological conviction of pro-PRC partisans could be advanced in Hong Kong.

The capacity of the pro-PRC faction to combat its opponents were tested again and again during the 1970s, as Beijing experienced one political crisis after another, and its critics in Hong Kong were given repeated opportunities to question the legitimacy of the party-state.

131 He，Qianbei de fendou, p. 23. 159

Of course, the most important historical events in 1976 were the deaths of Mao and Zhou Enlai.

There were, however, other important political episodes within the PRC as well. There was the

Tiananmen Square incident of April 1974, during which protestors who put up signs commemorating the passing of Zhou Enai and highly critical of the Gang of Four were forcefully and violently dispersed.132 There were also signs protesting Deng Xiaoping’s second fall from power earlier that month.133 The HKU delegation to the Hong Kong Federation of

Students actually tried to pass a motion protesting these events in the PRC, arguing that the

Gang of Four was acting in an unconstitutional manner.134 The student activist responsible for this motion, President of College Students Association of Hong Kong and a member of the liberal-democratic faction active in HKU, Mai Zong Min, ( 麥宗民), then submitted a declaration of human rights on May 4th, 1976 to the headquarter of New China News Agency

(NCNA), the PRC’s de facto consulate in the city.135 In what would be remembered as the ‘Mai

Zong Minu Incident’, Mai was severely attacked by members of the pro-PRC faction who saw him as their sworn enemy.

The series of escalating verbal attacks launched against Mai would become an infamous chapter in the history of the Hong Kong student movement. Using a verbal attack technique that would become common against men and who were critical of the

CCP, Mai was accused of collaborating with foreign powers determined to undermine the internal stability of the PRC.136 Regardless of their political affiliations, all student activists

132 Jiaqi Yan and Gao Gao, Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution, trans and ed. by D. W. Y. Kwok (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1986), p. 495. 133 Maurice Meisner, Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic, 3rd Edition (New York: the Free Press, 1999), p. 433. 134 ‘ Huohong de niandai? Yi jiu qi liu nian: (Yi) beijing - [fu] qianze zhonggong zhongyang weixian yian: Dongyi ren: Mai zong min/he yi ren: Liao jin xin’ ‘火紅的年代？一九七六年：（一）背景 - [附]譴責中共中央違憲 議案: 動議人：麥宗民/和議人：廖錦新’ (Fiery Era? 1976: (One) Background – [Appendix] Motion to Condemn the Unconstitutional Action of the Central Government: Sponsor: Mai Zong Min/Co-sponsor: Liao Jin Xin) , zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp: 134-136 (p. 135). 135 He, Qianbei de fendou,pp. 28-29. 136 ‘ Huohong de niandai? Yi jiu qi liu nian: (Yi) beijing - [fu] gan zhi qiang, zhong zi wei tongxue de shengming’ 160 saw themselves as Chinese patriots; in fact, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism were ideological unifiers of all factions within the movement. To allege that someone was serving as a foreign collaborator, therefore, was to aim for the total annihilation of his or her reputation.

If enemies of the pro-PRC camp could not be eliminated by physical means, then they had to be put into an existence that was ‘unnatural, useless, and dangerous’, so much so that they would become pariahs. 137 Indeed, the techniques that the pro-PRC faction utilised in its members’ attacks on Mai were reminiscent of how criminals were treated by state authorities in 18th and 19th centuries Europe, a period during which prisoners were isolated, and their integration back into societies was made as difficult as possible due to having been branded as lawbreakers.138 The calls to unite against alleged traitors such as Mai, a move that was quite explicitly designed to isolate him, was a clear indication that the pro-PRC faction was determined to conduct character assassination campaigns against their opponents.139

While the deeply personal attack against Mai provoked widespread revulsion, for a while at least, opposition against the pro-PRC faction remained, at most, a significant minority.

In October, however, everything changed, as the Gang of Four suddenly fell from power.140

Most members of the pro-PRC faction at first thought it was a rumour, then they had to pretend it was business as usual.141 Eventually, the pro-PRC faction was dealt a harsh blow, as there was a perception that everything they had preached was a lie – they had thought that the Gang

‘火紅的年代？一九七六年：（一）背景 - [附] 甘志強，鍾子維同學的聲明’ (Fiery Era? 1976: (One) Background – [Appendix] The Declaration of Gan Zhi Qiang and Zhong Zi Wei),'在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang: Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp. 141-142 (p. 142). 137 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, p. 266. 138 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, pp. 266-267. 139 ‘ Huohong de niandai? Yi jiu qi liu nian: (Yi) beijing - [fu] gan zhi qiang, zhong zi wei tongxue de shengming’, p. 142. 140 Brian L. Evans, Pursuing China: Memoir of a Beaver Liaison Officer (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2012), p. 190. 141'’Huohong de niandi? yi jiu qi liu nian: (yi) beijing’ ‘火紅的年代？一九七六年：（一）背景 ’, zai xianggang xueshengyundong huigu 在香港學生運動回顧, xianggang zhuan shang xuesheng lian hui bian (Xianggang : Guang jiao jing chu ban she : Fa xing Hua feng shu ju, 1983 Chu ban), pp . 129-130 (p. 130). 161 of Four was the legitimate vanguard of Maoist thoughts. According to Albert Ho, the pro-PRC faction was convinced that Hong Kong would eventually be returned to a China ruled by the

Gang of Four or its successors.142 It is therefore difficult to overstate the psychological shock that was dealt to the pro-PRC faction. Yang Bao Xi (楊寶熙), the head of the CUHK Student

Union in 1975 and the head of Hong Kong Federation of Students in 1976, stated that after the fall of the Gang of Four, she came to the conclusion that student leaders were merely being manipulated by the PRC into propagating the interests of Beijing in the colony.143 The rapid fall of Gang of Four revealed to its supporters in Hong Kong that politics was indeed a cynical game; there was no room for idealism or sentimentality.

The decline of the pro-Beijing faction did not lead to the rise in power of an alternative bloc; instead, after 1976, there was a sense that the student movement was gradually losing its influence. There was still the Campaign to Reopen the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee

Secondary School from 1977 to 1978, during which university students played prominent roles in organising protests and providing tutorials for high school students who missed classes due to their school’s closure; but the peak of the student movement was from 1970 to 1976, during which British Hong Kong was often explicitly challenged.144 The spectacles of student activists protesting at sites that were not designated as areas for peaceful gatherings were not repeated after 1976. Postsecondary students were quite vocal about their displeasure at Beijing, London, and other leaders of British Hong Kong in the years leading to retrocession, but deliberate attempts to challenge the very legitimacy of colonial rule became increasingly rare in the

142 Oral Interview with Albert Ho, p. 3. 143 Zhong Yao Hua 鍾耀華, ‘Ge diao jia guo de huohong - yang bao xi (xia)’ ‘割掉家國的火紅─楊寶熙（下 ）’, 端傳媒, 二〇一五年八月十二日, ‘https://theinitium.com/’, [進接: 二○一七年九月十四日]. (Zhong Yao Hua, ‘Cutting Ties with the Fiery Nation - Yang Bao Xi, 7 August 2015). 144 Lam, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong, p. 172. 162

1980s.145 So why does the student movement during the 1970s still matter? Firstly, it was a training ground for future Hong Kong leaders. Albert Ho represents a prominent example in this regard. Just as important was that the Hong Kong student movement did make the city a better place, as it would be difficult to imagine the establishment of the ICAC without the involvement of student protestors in the Anti-Corruption Campaign.

Concluding Remarks

While the pro-PRC faction did not make everyone in Hong Kong Beijing loyalists, its activists arguably demystified the mainland, making it easier for people to see it as a potential destination for investment in the Deng era. While not all Hong Kong Chinese were enthusiastic about the PRC, the popularity of the China Week at least demonstrates that men and women of the city were willing to learn about internal developments within mainland China and that efforts to create a positive image of Beijing among the local population did not contradict Hong

Kong’s unwritten moral code. Intentionally or not, the pro-PRC faction did establish a social network, through its partisans and supporting institutions, that served as a point of linkage between the city and mainland China. As stated by Jasper Tsang, while he was effectively abandoned by his high school and university friends upon becoming obvious that he was a PRC supporter, figures from his past began to approach him again after the commencement of the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping, as it was obvious that mainland China would be full of economic opportunities in the post-Gang of Four era, and prospective investors would need someone like Tsang to provide guidance on how to conduct business there.146 Indeed, it was now clear to all observers that economic interactions between Hong Kong and mainland

145 The collection of primary documents focusing on Hong Kong student activism in the 1980s compiled by Cai Ziqiang (蔡子強) et al provides a useful overview on how a new generation of young activists reacted to social, political, and economic changes that were occurring in Hong Kong during the final years of colonial rule. Cai, Ziqiang 蔡子強, Huang Xin Ran 黃昕然, Zhuang Yao Guang 莊耀洸 , eds 編錄, Panni suiyue: xianggang xueyun wenxian xuan ji 叛逆歲月 : 香港學運文獻選輯 (Xianggang : Qing wen shu wu, 1998) 146 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 8. 163

China would intensify.147 By 1979, it also was obvious that a new era was dawning in Hong

Kong. Many who were involved in the student movement were now emerging as successful figures in Hong Kong society. The stage was set for those who played influential roles in Hong

Kong’s student movement to utilise the skills they had acquired when they were activists to become public figures in debates concerning the colony’s future.

Without ever intending to do so, the pro-PRC faction in the student movement significantly strengthened an already growing sense of belonging in Hong Kong. This particular development, while surprisingly, should not be seen as entirely unexpected. In the struggle within the student movement between those who were sympathetic to Hong Kong and those who were stridently loyal to the PRC, partisans of Hong Kong enjoyed a distinct advantage, as the very controversy concerning whether the city was deserving of emotional attachment represented a recognition that the colony as a polity was distinct from the PRC, as, unlike any other cities in South China, its proper status was a source of contention among student politicians of different political persuasion. To adopt a sport motif, activists like Ho enjoyed a kind of ‘home court advantage’ in the 1970s, as his actions could directly impact those residing in Hong Kong.

While activists who saw Hong Kong as the principal focus of their political allegiance could be seen as victors in the 1970s student movement, the defeat of the pro-PRC faction was by no means total. Indeed, many activists from the pro-PRC side emerged as successful professionals and opinion makers in the colony. The collective personal successes of prominent members of the pro-PRC faction, their various activities in promoting emotional attraction to the PRC, and Deng’s economic reforms all ensured that when the 1980s arrived, almost the majority of the population in Hong Kong was willing to, at minimum, see mainland China as a potential destination for their investment, a dramatic turnaround from how the PRC was

147 Tsang, Modern History, p. 236. 164 perceived in 1967. Indeed, by the 1980s, even Ho was making regular trips to Shenzen to train

PRC officials.148 Activists like Ho did not deal a death blow to the pro-Beijing faction, most likely because they didn’t want to, and it is difficult to imagine them being able to pull off such a measure even if there existed the political will. The political dramas of 1970s ended with both sides ready to resume their conflicts when negotiations concerning Hong Kong’s future came to the forefront during the sunset era of colonial rule.

148 He, Qianbei de fendou, p. 76.

165

Chapter Four – Protests, Constitutional Reforms, and Consolidation of a Hong Kong Identity: The Politics of Mobilisations during the Sunset Period of Colonial Rule

Introduction

Martin Lee was never particularly interested in politics. When his eventual successor as leader of the Democratic Party of Hong Kong, Albert Ho, was commencing his career as a student activist, Lee was busy saving money to study law in London, a career path that would see him rising to the top of the legal profession in Hong Kong. Given that by the 1980s, Lee had a thriving legal practice, there was no incentive for him to enter politics. He likely found politics distasteful anyway; according to him, Zhou Enlai’s determined effort to recruit his father, KMT Lieutenant-General Lee Yin-wo, a personal obsession of the Chinese prime minister that began when he met the elder Lee while studying in Lyons, forced the Lee family to move several times to escape the recruitment efforts of the CCP.1 Lee’s non-involvement in politics during the earlier period of his life contrasted strongly with the ways in which he wholeheartedly throw himself into the local political scenes during the sunset period of colonial rule. In a way, Lee’s metamorphosis strongly mirrored how the men and women of Hong Kong, seemingly overnight, became politically engaged after years of societal peace from the 1970s to the 1980s.

This chapter will examine how the British and local administrators were able to establish such a well-functioning colonial administration that the PRC was determined to inherit en tout after Beijing’s reassumption of sovereignty in 1997. Recognising the PRC’s intentions, the British quickly abandoned the efforts to liberalise Hong Kong before 1997, the protestations of local activists notwithstanding. The efforts to deny liberal constitutional governance to those residing in Hong Kong would have been successfully had it not been the outbreak of earthshaking political events before the end of the colonial era that deeply strained

1 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, 3/11/2017, p. 2 166 the relationship between the city and its future sovereign power. The final decade of colonial rule witnessed mass protests and the emergence of partisan politics in Hong Kong, two developments that rendered irrelevant Beijing’s plan to inherit an apolitical city in 1997. The refusal of the majority of the Hong Kong population to accept that the post-1997 political system should be the carbon copy of the British colonial regime, the shock created by the political disturbances within the PRC that motivated an impressively large number of residents to participate in protest marches, and the rise of a confrontational brand of politics that made clear that politicians with public support could conceivably challenge both the British and

Beijing all demonstrate that by the end of colonial rule, the people of Hong Kong possessed a sense of local identity, one that often motivated them to confront their current as well as future sovereign power.

Theoretical Framework

It is worthwhile to take a deeper look into the theoretical case presented by Crawford

Young regarding how colonial administrators constructed what they perceived to be ideal governing machineries most able to enhance the living standards of the native population.

‘Rational, prudent management of the colonial estates by a professional cadre of administrator’ enabled the colonial state to be seen as legitimate when it was being challenged by a growing local bourgeoisie the members of which were well-schooled in the political discourses of their colonisers, thereby most able to expose colonial hypocrisies.2 Clear, efficient governance had to be complemented by a nascent welfare state, one that improved the ‘life chances’ of the subject population.3 Through the implementation of efficient governance, the effectiveness of was enhanced by its providence of social welfare to those under its charge, the colonial state aimed to not only outmanoeuvre the educated native elites who were becoming less and less

2 Young, The African Colonial State, pp. 164-165. 3 Young, The African Colonial State, p. 164, p. 168. 167 enamoured with colonialism, but also to secure the loyalty of lower class colonial subjects, whose allegiance to their colonisers would become the bedrock of political stability.

In addition to seeing Hong Kong as a well-functioned colonial state with a population that was seen as satisfied with British rule, Beijing viewed Hong Kong as a city that was devoid of history and the primary utility of which was the creation of wealth for its sovereign power.

It would therefore be useful to give a summary of the theory introduced by Henri Lefebvre on power, politics, and the occupation of space. Instead of seeing space as a neutral property,

Lefebvre saw it as something that was infused by the dominant ideology of a specific era. In a capitalist society, space was arranged in such a way that would ensure the maximisation of profit. At the same time, the capitalist arrangement of space is often presented as natural, something that should not be questioned. In this way, capitalism, and its adherents’ arrangement of space, create a singular mode of life, one that was wholly unnatural but was nonetheless seen as regular and unexceptional. 4 The ‘representations of space’, which

Lefebvre understood to be how planners, architects and other bureaucrats with power over their societies conceived and conceptualised the space around them, would, in a capitalist system, concentrate overwhelming on the production of ‘abstract space’, spatial region that was presented as having no prior history and the sole purpose of which was to generate wealth.5 In this power dynamitic, ‘spaces of representation’, which Lefebvre identified as the spaces of everyday existences, were transformed by the dominant societal ideology into abstract space through the alteration of ‘spatial practices’, which was how members of a society utilised the spaces they had around them.6

Protests during the final years of colonial rule could be seen as spatial practices utilised by an engaged population to prevent Beijing from transforming Hong Kong into an abstract

4 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 308. 5 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 308. 6 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, pp. 49-51; 168 space governed by an unreformed colonial state. The mobilisation efforts in the late 1980s and

1990s were aimed at the transformation of Hong Kong’s constitutional structure the significance of which stemmed from the fact that they were participated by a record number of

Hong Kong Chinese. While a reformed and liberalised Hong Kong was the aim of the protestors, as this chapter will go on to demonstrate, protests in Hong Kong from 1980s onwards increasingly focused not only on the achievement of a defined objective, but also on the ‘legitimation’ and ‘expression’ of a collective identity. 7 A collective determination to prevent the transformation of Hong Kong into an abstract space was the foundation upon which a local identity became consolidated.

Colonial Governance of Hong Kong during the Sunset Period of Colonial Rule

While he was responsible for reforms in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 riots that witnessed the introduction of the City District Officer (CDO), the chief purpose of which was the improvement of communication between the urban population and the colonial administration, by the end of David Trench’s mandate (1964-1971), many in the city were still unsatisfied with the social conditions they encountered in Hong Kong.8 It is not surprising that

Trench’s successor, Sir Murray MacLehose (1971-82) was confronted with an enormous political crisis, almost as soon as he came into office. Initially sceptical of the need to carry out a widespread anti-corruption campaign, in spite of the fact that his predecessor, to his credit, actually set up a commission to investigate graft in Hong Kong almost immediately after the

1966 riots, MacLehose went as far as to convey to local prominent journalists that ‘the Chinese community was not interested in getting rid of corruption’.9 The escape of Peter Godber, a high-ranking police officer suspected of corruption led to such an outpouring of condemnation against official corruption that MacLehose had to overcome his initial reluctance and take

7 Calhoun, ‘The Problem of Identity’, p. 52. 8 Tsang, Modern History, p. 190. 9 Kowloon Disturbances 1966: Report of Commission of Inquiry (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1967), p. 128; pp. 130-131; Leo F. Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners, p. 145. 169 dramatic actions.10 Displaying ‘a keen instinct for political survival’, MacLehose called for the establishment of the ICAC in 1973 in order to damper public anger.11 As described by Elsie

Tu, before the Godber case, ‘informers on corruption are treated as liars, their evidence is discarded, and they are intimidated’.12 Not surprisingly, ‘in the local Chinese community there existed a widespread and well-entrenched idea that the colonial government was corrupt from the bottom right up to the very top’.13 The fact that Sir Jack Cater, who was appointed to be the inaugural director of the ICAC due mostly to his leadership skills demonstrated in counterriot efforts in 1967, carried out the initial anti-corruption campaign with almost an religious zeal did much to convince that public that the new governor was not merely interested in ‘swat the flies’ while not catching ‘the tiger’.14 While by 1977, the colonial government did became unnerved when a full scale revolt mounted by policemen suspected of corruption became a distinct possibility, and MacLehose relented by issuing ‘a general amnesty of doubtful legality’ that promised besides ‘heinous’ cases, there would be no new investigations against suspected corrupted officials, it was clear to the public that by then ‘honest administration had become part of the civil service culture’.15 While the anti-corruption campaign did not persecute all corrupted officials, it did establish that members of the MacLehose administration as ‘skilled practitioners in the reason of colonial state’ who could manage Hong Kong with a high degree of efficiency, thereby enhancing the legitimacy of the British rule in the eyes of the general public.16

In addition to the establishment of the ICAC, another pillar of policy achievement, that over time, cemented MacLehose’s reputation as one of the best rulers in the history of British

10 Tsang, Modern History, p. 203. 11 Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners, p. 146. 12 Elsie Tu, Hong Kong’s Unsolved Injustices (n/a: n/a, 1975), p. 52. 13 Tsang, Modern History, p. 204. 14 Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners, p. 146; quoted in Tsang, Modern History, p. 204. 15 Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners, p. 146 16 Young, The African Colonial State, p. 160. 170

Hong Kong, was another policy initiative that further expanded public housing in the city. Just like the anti-corruption campaign, the successful implementation of MacLehose’s housing policy was assisted greatly by the efforts of his predecessor, who, in 1969, boasted that about

‘one third of the population [were residing in] publicly provided homes’, and that his administration planned to ‘accommodate a further 830,000 between 1968 and 1974’.17 Trench, however, lacked MacLehose’s flair for the dramatic, and it was the latter’s ‘high-profile approach that caught the imagination of the local Chinese’.18 Aiming to ‘take determined action over a considerable period’ over a ten year period from 1972 to 1982, the stated objective of

MacLehose’s plan was to build 180, 000 housing units to house 1. 8 million persons per year, a policy goal that would be assisted by the efforts of private developers as well.19 MacLehose proudly proclaimed that ‘[s]uch a target, if achieved, would lead to the virtual disappearance of squatter areas, eliminate overcrowding and sharing in both private and public housing, and…would also keep pace with the natural expansion of the population’.20 By 1983, more than 40% of the Hong Kong population was residing in public housing.21

While MacLehose also introduced a public assistance scheme and universal education for nine years, as well as investment in social welfare and transportation, the Ten Years

Housing Scheme was definitely the flagship social program during an era when the Hong Kong public found its governor and his administration to be ‘too good to be true’.22 The massive improvement in social welfare, in combination with the success of the ICAC, led Steve Tsang to conclude that by around 1980, ‘the British colonial government of Hong Kong’ had ‘reached the best standards of government practicable in the traditional expectations of the Chinese’.23

17 Meeting of 1 October, 1969, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1969 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1969), p. 6. 18 Tsang, Modern History, p. 205. 19 Meeting of 18 October, 1972, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1972 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1972), pp. 4-5. 20 Meeting of 18 October, 1972, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 4. 21 John Carroll, Concise History, p. 161. 22 Tsang, Modern History, p. 205; Carroll, Concise History, p. 161. 23 Tsang, Modern History Kong, p. 206. 171

According to Tsang, the Chinese expectations of being left alone by their rulers, who would nevertheless provide honest and efficient governance, were fulfilled by the British.24 Careful readers would notice that ‘the best possible government in the Chinese political tradition’ closely reassembles the ideal colonial state as described by Crawford Young, as both modes of governance would provide a degree of social welfare to the general population, the members of which would largely be left alone by rulers who, while almost totally unaccountable to those they ruled, were supposedly able to provide sound and efficient administration.25 To his credit,

Tsang recognised that by the 1980, irrespective of how British colonial officials were able to abide by ‘[s] of the ideal government in the Chinese tradition’, colonialism had by then become ‘a nasty word’.26 A colonial government, even one able to conform to ancient

Chinese political tradition, should not exercise dictatorial power over a Chinese population; budding democrats such as Martin Lee would agree with this statement, and for completely different reasons, so would the CCP.

The Opening Salvo of the Sino-British Negotiations

Besides ensuring the acquiescence of the local population, British insistence on good governance was no doubt inspired by the conviction that a well-functioning Hong Kong would deprive the CCP a reason to encroach on local affairs, and that when the time came that London had to engage with the PRC on the question of transfer of sovereignty, especially when the expiration of the ninety-nine year lease on the New Territories was fast approaching, Beijing would insist on minimum change to Hong Kong’s way of life.27 Indeed, since the 1967 riots, it was assumed that by ruling Hong Kong with such an efficiency that its economic usefulness to the PRC would be maintained, Britain would be able to preserve a degree a leverage when the

24 Tsang, Modern History Kong, p. 206. 25 Tsang, Modern History, pp.208, Young, The African Colonial State, p. 59, p. 159, p. 165. 26 Tsang, Modern History, p. 206, p. 208. 27 Tsang, Modern History, pp. 212-213. 172 need for formal negotiation arose.28 By 1979, Hong Kong was already an engine for economic changes for the PRC during the reform era launched by Deng Xiaoping. 29 Specifically concerning southern China, the rapid development of Guangdong in the 1980s would not have been possible in the absence of Hong Kong as a role model to emulate, a partner in economic as well as infrastructure development, and a financial centre from which potential investors and capitals could be obtained.30 A highly competent local administration, one that would greatly improve local living standards, would also reveal British commitment to remain in

Hong Kong for the long haul, a stance that was deemed vital to continued British rule.31

With the expectation that given its economic importance to the PRC and the capacity of the local administration to effectively govern the city, the PRC leadership would be willing to allow the British to continue to rule Hong Kong post-1997, MacLehose departed for Beijing in 1979 to informally begin discussion over the colony’s future. By then, with only eighteen years before 1997, there were already significant concerns within the business community regarding potential instability when the New Territories lease expired.32 The decision to begin discussion with the PRC leadership, and doing so in an informal manner, was consistent with the British government’s internal policy stance that talks had to begin when the local economy was booming, and that reaching an informal understanding with a Chinese leader in control of a moderate regime, a description that fitted Deng, would be most advantageous to both Hong

28 TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945: ‘Cabinet. Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Long Term Study. Note by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. 26th March 1969’, p. 35. 29 For a detailed analyse of the economic reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping, see Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA, and London, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). 30 TNA: PRO: ‘FCO 21/1831: From David Wilson to T. J. B. George. Financial Secretary’s Visit to China. 15 May, 1980’, p. 1; TNA: PRC: ‘FCO 21/1831: Record of a meeting at the Guangdong Provincial Guest House at 4p.m. on 20 October, 1980’, p. 1; TNA: PRC: ‘FCO 21/1831: Hong Kong’s Developing Economic Links with China, 14 August 1980’, pp. 1-2. 31 TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945: Cabinet. Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Long Term Study. Note by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. 26th March 1969’, p. 19. 32 Tsang, Modern History, pp. 212-213 173

Kong and Britain.33 To the shock of the governor, Deng, while asking the British to put investors’ heart at ease, was absolutely determined to reclaim Hong Kong, a policy stance that the British side would later attempt to obscurate. 34 British efforts at obscuration was so successful that when Martin Lee was unexpectedly invited to have an informal discussion on

Hong Kong’s future while he was in Beijing on a business trip in 1981, he was shocked to discover the CCP leadership’s determination to reclaim Hong Kong.35

Lee’s meeting with CCP cadres, Li Kan and , both members of the Hong Kong

Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO), had to be extremely unnerving, as he was meeting prominent politicians for the first time.36 While Lee was probably too shocked to examine the thinking behind these two Chinese officials’ tough stance, their conversation did leave some clues on how the CCP wanted to govern Hong Kong and shape its ruling institutions. When Lee questioned whether Hong Kong could preserve its prosperity after a Chinese takeover, Li retorted that if Chinese in Singapore could rule the city-state effectively, then so could the CCP and its Hong Kong supporters.37 Even then, the Beijing leadership was determined to put at ease the troubled minds of potential and actual investors with business interests in Hong Kong, and it was to this end that the team of cadres that met with Lee proclaimed that the Chinese leadership wanted to alter two things after 1997: The flag and the governor. Essentially, the

Union Jack would be replaced by the Chinese flag, and the governor would be a Chinese from

Hong Kong. 38 Explicit in this statement was that the CCP would pursue a relatively conservative strategy in its recovery of Hong Kong, as its leaders envisioned that post-1997,

Beijing would inherit a Hong Kong with its classic colonial governing structure intact.

33 TNA: PRO: CAB 134/2945: Cabinet. Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Long Term Study. Note by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. 26th March 1969’, p. 30, p. 34. 34 Tsang, Modern History, p. 215. 35 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, p. 6. 36 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, p. 5. 37 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, p. 6. 38 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, p. 5. 174

Accordingly, while the vaulted One Country, Two Systems formula, a constitutional model originally devised for eventual unification with Taiwan, guaranteed a high degree of autonomy for regions that the PRC saw as belonging to China proper so that the rule of law, something was noticeably absent within the PRC, could continue to function as the bedrock of Hong

Kong’s capitalist system, there was no question of allowing the colony to be further liberalised politically before 1997.39

The Road to the Sino-British Joint Declaration

When negotiations over Hong Kong’s future began in 1982, the British side, especially its leader, Margaret Thatcher, actually entered the talks with a remarkable degree of confidence.

Originally intended to be a reciprocal visit after then Premier Hua Guofeng’s trip to London in

1979, Thatcher’s meeting with Chinese leaders in 1982 possessed additional significance as it was preceded by conversations between Lord Privy Seal Humphrey Atkins and Prime Minister

Zhao Ziyang, who once again conveyed the official CCP position that the PRC was determined to reclaim Hong Kong, and that PRC leaders were highly confident that the city’s prosperity would continue under Chinese sovereignty.40 Even so, Thatcher was highly ebullient, maybe overly so, on the eve of the Sino-British negotiations, as she was convinced that her recent victory in the significantly enhanced her standing and that of Great Britain, thereby granting her a greater capacity to extract concessions from the Chinese.41 Arguing that

‘confidence and prosperity’ of Hong Kong ‘depended on British administration’, Thatcher

39 Deng Xiaoping, “An Idea for the Peaceful Reunification of the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan, June 26, 1983” in Selected Work of Deng Xiaoping Volume III (1982-1992), ed. by the Bureau for the Compilation and Translation of Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin Under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, (Beijing: , 1994), p. 40; Yang Zhong Mei 楊中美, qian Qichen: Zhonggong waijiao jiao fu 錢其琛: 中共外交敎父 (Taibei shi : Shi bao wen hua chu ban qi ye gu fen you xian gong si, 1999 Chu ban, 1999), pp. 286-289. 40 Tsang, Modern History, p. 217. 41 Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1993), p. 235; Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, p. 217. 175 advocated to Zhao a continued role played by Britain after 1997, an arrangement that she believed was the best defence against ‘wholesale flight of capital’.42

As soon as Thatcher finished her statement, Zhao countered with an ‘unyielding’ prepared statement that clearly expressed the PRC’s absolute determination to recover sovereignty in 1997 and that the prosperity of city would be protected by the One Country,

Two Systems formula.43 According to veteran British diplomat Percy Cradock, the PRC side was willing to risk the collapse of Hong Kong to reclaim sovereignty.44 Thatcher’s meeting with Deng was even stormier, as he not only reiterated ‘the absolute necessity of recovering sovereignty’, but also stated that the PRC reserved the right to unilaterally assume control over

Hong Kong.45 At one point, Deng even threatened an earlier takeover of Hong Kong should negotiations break down.46 At this point, Thatcher made ‘her strongest intervention’ stating that ill-considered PRC action would profoundly destabilise Hong Kong, thereby destroying the stability of the city, and in the process, ruin the PRC’s international reputation.47 According to Thatcher, Deng ‘seemed taken aback’ by her remark, and ‘his mood became more accommodating’.48 It was on this basis that both sides issued a short joint statement promising the beginning of negotiations to decide the future of Hong Kong.

Notwithstanding apparent PRC willingness to become more accommodating after the clashes between Deng and Thatcher, From October 1982 to June 1983, the British and the CCP entered into ‘a Kafkaesque episode’, in which Beijing demanded London to agree to its preconditions before the official commencement of the negotiations. In essence, Beijing wanted London to acknowledge PRC sovereignty over Hong Kong before the start of the talks.

42 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 260. 43 Percy Cradock, Experiences of China (London: John Murray, 1994), p. 179. 44 Cradock, Experiences of China, p. 179. 45 Cradock, Experiences of China, p. 180. 46 Cradock, Experiences of China, p. 180. 47 Cradock, Experiences of China, p. 180; Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 260. 48 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 262. 176

Beijing refused to accept the legitimacy of treaties that transformed Hong Kong into a British colony, thereby ignoring an international legal convention that territorial concessions created by treaties retained their legal validity until there were new agreements replacing the old ones.49

The impasse was overcame only when Thatcher made it plain that she ‘would be prepared to recommended to Parliament that sovereignty over the whole of Hong Kong should revert to

China’.50 The term ‘revert’ implied that the Beijing would be resuming sovereignty over a city that its leaders considered to have always been a part of China. This ‘fitness’, as it was called by Cradock, was interpreted by the Chinese as an indication of ‘the British government’s readiness to move towards a transfer of sovereignty and thereby to make a nod in the direction of [Beijing’s] premise’. 51 With Beijing assuming that London had ‘accepted [Chinese] precondition in disguise’, real negotiations could now begin.52

One of the primary British objectives entering into the negotiations was the retention of London’s ability to continue to administrate Hong Kong, while sovereignty would rest with

Beijing.53 Beijing, not incorrectly, argued that it was impossible to separate sovereignty from administrative responsibilities and negotiations once again became deadlocked. Responding to this diplomatic standoff, in September 1983, Hong Kong’s financial market went into ‘a mild panic’, and the Bank of England, the British government, and the Hong Kong government had to link the local currency to the US dollar, a move that averted a greater crisis.54 Most likely unable to understand the complexities of Hong Kong’s economy, Beijing assumed that the mild panic was created by London to put pressure on the PRC to extract concession. The PRC government declared that if a deal could not be reached within a year, a unilateral solution

49 Tsang, Modern History, pp. 220-221. 50 Tsang, Modern History, p. 221; Cradock, Experiences of China, p. 185. 51 Cradock, Experiences of China, p. 185. 52 Tsang, Modern History, p. 221. 53 Howe, Conflict of Loyalty, p. 366. 54 Tsang, Modern History, pp. 223-224. 177 would be imposed.55 Responding to this threat, London authorised Craddock, who was by then the de facto chief British negotiator, to concede that Britain ‘intended no link of authority between Britain and Hong Kong after 1997’.56 With this major concession offered by London in November 1983, the Sino-British negotiations entered into the last phase and a final agreement was within reach.

With the objective of administrating Hong Kong now abandoned, the British team became determined to secure a favourable agreement from Beijing. According to Craddock, the British team was bent on ‘extracting concessions of substance from Peking and enshrining them in a binding agreement’.57 London was moderately successfully in drafting, with the

PRC’s consent, an agreement that would enable Hong Kong to retain its existing political system. Worried that Beijing would be able to appoint all senior officials in the post- 1997

HKSAR that would not be accountable to the public, London successfully argued for the insertion of the term ‘accountability’ into the final draft of the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

The British team argued that since the governing team of Hong Kong was already accountable to the legislature as expenditure had to be approved by sitting legislators, this particular insertion merely confirmed existing practices.58 British officials, however, were not entirely successful in extracting as much concessions from CCP officials as possible. Most noticeably,

Craddock and his team were unable to enshrine in the Joint Declaration that the post-1997

Legislative Council would be made up of legislators elected by ‘direct geographical election’.59

At the urging of the PRC team, the phrase ‘direct geographical’ that qualified the noun ‘election’ was removed, which was then changed to its plural form ‘elections’.60 It became clear that the

55 Tsang, Modern History, pp. 224 56 Cradock, Experiences of China, p. 192. 57 Cradock, Experiences of China, p. 187. 58 Mark Roberti, The Fall of Hong Kong: China’s Triumph & Britain’s Betrayal (Toronto: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1994), pp. 99-100. 59 Chung, Hong Kong’s Journey, p. 112. 60 Chung, Hong Kong’s Journey to Reunification, p. 112. 178

PRC was unwilling to entertain the notion of having to rule a Hong Kong that possessed a highly liberal political culture. Nevertheless, the Sino-British Joint Declaration that promised the creation of a HKSAR government with a high degree of autonomy was agreed upon and made public in the autumn of 1984. It was also agreed upon that a Basic Law for the HKSAR, essentially the city’s constitution that further entrench the principle of One Country, Two

Systems as laid out in the Joint Declaration, would be promulgated by the National People's

Congress, which would be in effect for fifty years.61

British Attempts at Political Reforms and Continued Confrontations with the PRC

While the British negotiating team was able to successfully enshrine into the Joint

Declaration clauses that ensured the preservation of Hong Kong’s colonial administrative system, it was likely that Craddock and his colleagues were successful because the PRC was not averse to the continuation of an undemocratic political system after 1997. The British appeared to be oblivious to the Chinese intention of preserving Hong Kong’s existing political structure. Indeed, in 1984, Foreign Office Minister Richard Luce responded to questions about reforms in Hong Kong by stating that Britain sought to establish a ‘democratic administration in Hong Kong in the years between now and 1997’.62 It was in this spirit that months before the Joint Declaration was signed, the government of Hong Kong published a White Paper and a Green Paper in 1984, proclaiming that the British aimed to reform local governing machineries, most noticeably be Legislative Council, so that they would be would be ‘more accountable to the people of Hong Kong’.63 The principal reforms dealt with the Legislative

Council, where twenty-four members were to be chosen for the first time by elections within functional constituencies, the electors of which would be made up of members drawn from

61 Tsang, Modern History, p. 227. 62 Quoted in Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China, p. 115. 63 Green Paper: The Further Development of Representative Government: The Way Forward (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1984), p. 1; White Paper: The Further Development of Representative Government: The Way Forward (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1984), p. 3. 179 professional groups.64 The composition of the Legislative Council would also increase from forty-six to fifty-six in 1985.65 The White Paper featured a promise that in 1987 there would be a review concerning the possible introduction of direct Legislative Council elections in

Hong Kong in the near future.66

Given the pace of reforms in Hong Kong, it was unlikely that British governors would see their authority challenged by democratically-elected lawmakers before the transfer of sovereignty in 1997. Conversely, from the perspective of the CCP, who was fairly paranoid concerning potential British attempts to thwart a successful retrocession, all these talks concerning political reforms, the consequences of which the colonial administration would conveniently escape, likely further fuelled anger. The British misconception that that local policymakers could remain in the driver’s seat on policy domains that were sensitive to the

CCP was dispelled once and for all by when Xu Jiatun, the head of NCNA, angrily proclaimed that the Joint Declaration clearly stated that the CCP had to be consulted before major constitutional changes, thereby making British unliteral attempt to introduce political changes a violation of the Sino-British agreement.67

It now became clear that the PRC saw itself as the principal political force in Hong

Kong, especially since the Joint Declaration confirmed that London would play no further role in the city’s affairs post-1997. As the date of retrocession drew closer, it was inevitable that

London’s power to influence events in Hong Kong would diminish, especially if the PRC was determined to thwart political changes that were viewed as detrimental to Beijing’s interests.

As stated by Chris Patten, one of the failure on the British side was the inability to establish some kind of arbitration system that would ensure the proper implementation of the Joint

64 White Paper: The Further Development of Representative Government, p. 14. 65 White Paper: The Further Development of Representative Government, p. 14. 66 White Paper: The Further Development of Representative Government, p. 6. 67 Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, p. 210; Ian Scott, Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), p. 21, p. 25, p. 279. 180

Declaration.68 Therefore, whenever there arose a contradictory view on whether one side was violating the Joint Declaration, the party that was more powerful would inevitably win. In this way, when the PRC vehemently protested a British proposal, London had to back down because the rapid decline of its power to affect political changes in Hong Kong. Beijing publicly proclaimed that all political changes before 1997 had to conform to the Basic Law, the draft of which had barely begun. As Beijing envisioned that its sympathisers would dominate the drafting process of the Basic Law, the PRC effectively gave itself a veto over future constitutional reforms in Hong Kong. 69 With 1997 soon approaching, it became increasingly obvious that Beijing was fast emerging as the preeminent power in Hong Kong.

The 1984 White Paper promised that there would be a public consultation in 1987 on the possibility of introducing direct elections to the Legislative Council in 1988.70 Knowing that to ignore or break this promise would likely destroy the credibility of his administration,

Governor decided that he had no choice but to conduct some kind of public exercise so that a commitment previously made could be fulfilled; at the same time, a poll would likely reveal public desire for the introduction of a degree of representative governance to Hong Kong, a development that would be embarrassing to the British, as it could not contradict the PRC’s objective of preserving the local political system before 1997.71 In the end, upon the release of a highly problematic poll containing a serious of overly long questions the sole purpose of which was to produce a ‘no’ answer, the government determined that those residing in Hong Kong ‘continued to be in favour of retaining the functional constituencies as a system for selecting members of the Legislative Council’.72 Almost three decades later,

68 Chris Patten, East and West: The Last Governor of Hong Kong on Power, Freedom, and the Future (London: Macmillan, 1998), p. 32 69 Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China, p. 116. 70 White Paper: The Further Development of Representative Government, p. 6 71 Tsang, Hong Kong, p. 116. 72 Green Paper: The 1987 Review of Developments in Representative Government (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Printer, 1987), p. 23. 181

Martin Lee still bristled at the dishonesty of the government, as in addition to the almost incomprehensibly long questions in both English and Chinese, the respondents were given the opinions of picking which years (1988, 1991, 1994, or 1997) direct elections should be introduced to the Legislative Council, thereby diluting the level of support shown by those who were in favour of greater level of democracy in 1988.73 The Hong Kong government had committed a blatant act of dishonesty that could justifiably be criticised, or even attacked; the question remained: Would the public be angry enough to mobilise against politically against the Youde administration?

While there were clearly people outraged by the flagrant dishonesty of the colonial administration, they were unable to intimidate the government into changing its policies regarding constitutional changes. While many in Hong Kong was moderately impressed by the fact that around 500 people gathered outside of the Government House in February 1988 to protest the decision of the government to, based on the recently conducted public opinion survey, shelve any reform proposals, the Youde administration simply ignored it.74 Lee did attempt to begin another round of debate concerning the necessity of constitutional reforms on the floor of the Legislative Council; he was, however, mocked by his opponents for being too out of touch with the daily life of ordinary residents. When Lee, paraphrasing Hamlet, proclaimed that the government’s ‘caution (emphasis in the original) doth make cowards’ of government functionaries to enact reforms, , a legislator appointed by the government, mocked her opponent for ‘associat[ing] his call for direct elections, in 1988 with almost any subject we happen to discuss in this Council’.75 She even called Lee’s criticisms of the government ‘negative and emotional’. 76 Lacking a popular support base, Lee seemed

73 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, pp. 8-9. 74 Steve Shipp, Hong Kong, China: A Political History of the British Crown Colony’s Transfer to China Rule (London: McFarland, 1995), p. 65. 75 Meeting of 10 February, 1988, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1988 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1988), p. 761, p. 765. 76 Meeting of 10 February, 1988, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 765. 182 destined to be a sort of Don Quixote, forever engaging in a quest for local reforms that not many people actually cared nor understood.

Everyday Life in Hong Kong during the 1980s

At this point of the inquiry, it is now time to take a detour from high politics and academic theories so that the readers can get a better sense of everyday life in Hong Kong as

1988 was coming to a close. The emigration wave that would further accelerate after the 1989 tragedy was already gaining stream a couple of years prior. In May 1988, it was established by the British government that from 1981 to 1986, about 20,000 persons left the territory annually. In 1987, the figure increased to 30,000; and in 1988, it was 45,000.77 At the same time, while there were indeed a sense of fear and apprehension, in many ways, life in Hong

Kong simply continued as before. Housewife Chen Qiong Xian (陳瓊賢) was initially planning to emigrate, but after a while, she simply decided to stay in the city. After all, her entire life was in Hong Kong, the decision of her daughter to immigrate to Canada with her boyfriend notwithstanding.78 Having survived the 1967 riots, Chen’s assumption was likely that things could not get much worse than what had transpired that year, and having already experienced the most dangerous moment in the history of Hong Kong, there was really nothing to fear after that.79 In many ways, Hong Kong simply went on as before, as there were no other choices. A young salesman working in the city at the time astutely stated that many people just did not have sufficient resources to finance a move to another country.80 In this way, they simply had to make the best out of a very uncertain situation, and many decided that the best course of action was to make as much money as possible. Accordingly, Kitty Shum Ka-dik, a high school

77 Annual Report on Hong Kong 1988 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1989), p. 9. 78 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/ -陳瓊賢, Tape 3, p. 17. 79 Hong Kong Oral History Archive/ -陳瓊賢, Tape 3, p. 17. 80 Gerd Balke, ed., Hong Kong Voice (Hong Kong: Publisher Unknown, 1989), p. 194 183 student in 1988, proclaimed that she had little interest in politics, and her top priority was to ensure ‘money would get into [her] pocket’.81

What could be surprising to current observers is that while there existed a certain degree of condescension among Hong Kong residents when discussing internal developments within

China, and one interviewee even claimed that when it was ‘possible that China may develop as Hong Kong did, but it will surely take a long time’, there was a marked lack of hostility towards the PRC, a somewhat surprising development given that the 1967 riots nearly eradicated colonial rule occurred only twenty-one years prior.82 There was certainly a degree of distrust towards Beijing, a sentiment that coexisted with a healthy dose of admiration for

Deng Xiaoping, as he was seen by many as a ‘very open minded person, and a wise politician’.83 What is even more surprising was the total lack of animosity towards the British at the colonial era was coming to a close, indicating that British rule, by eradicating corruption, and creating the conditions for sustained economic growth, thereby enhancing the local living standards, had, in the eyes of Hong Kong Chinese, became at least acceptable. With an adequate colonial master soon to be replaced by a sovereign power that was on its way to becoming internationally respectable, it appears that the men and women of Hong Kong were resigned to the fact that they could not control their own political destiny.

The 1989 Incident and Its Impact on Hong Kong

As 1988 came to a close, its seems that the two ingredients that were vital to past successful popular mobilisations, a belief that the city’s unwritten moral code was being violated, and the activation of a Chinese nationalism that transcended partisan allegiance but instead found its expression through admiration of Chinese culture and defence of China against a perceived enemy of the Chinese people, were absent in Hong Kong. Then, in the

81 Balke, Hong Kong Voice, p. 245. 82 Balke,, Hong Kong Voice, p. 177. 83 Balke, Hong Kong Voice, p. 177. 184

summer of 1989, everything changed. The passing of CCP Secretary-General Hu Yaobang,a

Chinese politician universally admired for his personal integrity, led to an outpouring of grief, most noticeably among students attending universities in or outside of Beijing.84 A effort to commemorate a respected public figure quickly became very worrisome for the CCP leadership, as public remembrance of a leader possessing a high degree of moral integrity was rapidly transmuting into an explicit criticism of current socioeconomic conditions. Before long, called for reforms emerged in the Chinese capital.85 Never mind that many of the student activists involved were ‘distinctly lukewarm about the idea of giving the vote to the country’s uneducated masses’, or the willingness of some of their leaders to enjoy full meals while supposedly on hungry strikes, what was transpiring in Beijing captured the world’s imagination in the summer of 1989, and many in Hong Kong can’t help but be supportive of their compatriots, who were seemingly fighting for values that the majority of the city found attractive.86

In stark contrast to the mockery levelled at Martin Lee when he was attempting to discuss constitutional reforms, there came to be a sense of excitement among the normally docile legislative councillors, who suddenly lost interest in bread and butter issues and became consumed with the dramas that were unfolding in Beijing. Legislative Councillor Donald

Chow Mei-Tak even proudly proclaimed that in the past, a rally “with an attendance of over a thousand [was] considered to be of a very large scale.”87 Before and after the Tiananmen

Square incident, tens of thousands of people attended multiple rallies and marches in support of reforms in the PRC.88 Chan Ying-lun, again, a legislative councillor not known for his liberal

84 Liang Zhang, Andrew J. Nathan, Perry Link and Orville Schell, eds, The Tiananmen Papers: the Chinese Leadership’s Decision to Use Force (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2001), pp. 23-24. 85 Zhang, Nathan, Link and Schell (eds), The Tiananmen Papers, pp. 23-24. 86 Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (London: Picador, 2011), p. 340; Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China, p. 160 87 Meeting of 1 June, 1989, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 18. 88 Meeting of 1 June, 1989, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 18. 185 politics, made a speech in the legislature stating that ‘after witnessing the two spontaneous protest marches of one million people which took place one after the other in Hong Kong’, he became more ‘confident that no matter how capricious the political situation in China may be,

Hong Kong people will, at the critical moment, put aside their differences and voice their views in unity’.89 Even normally apolitical Cantonese popstars became involved, as on 27 May 1989, over 150 entertainers held a fundraising concert to raise money for the students in Beijing that collected over U.S$ 1.5 million (the equivalent of U.S$ 2.87 million in 2015) .90

Given the degree to much Hong Kong Chinese became involved with the political developments within the PRC, it should surprise no one that when words reached the colony that a crackdown had begun, the city demonstrated a level of public grief that was unprecedented. The memoirs of Xu Jiatun dispelled any doubt the negative effects the

Tiananmen Square incident had on China-Hong Kong relations. While asserting that many in the colony were disappointed in the events that had transpired in Beijing, Xu claimed that those in the city who participated in the popular mobilisations before and after the Tiananmen

Square incident were prominently motivated by a sense of patriotism, love of China, and frustration with the various inadequacies of the ruling party in power.91 In formulating an argument that love and admiration for China would inevitably encompass criticisms of the political party currently in power, Xu was echoing Hong Kong residents’ sentiment that their

Chinese nationalism was not based upon loyalty to the CCP party-state, but on allegiance to their ancestral homeland and the Chinese civilizational and historical legacies that went far

89 Meeting of 31 May, 1989, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 55. 90 Alvin So, ‘The Tiananmen Incident, Patten’s Electoral Reforms, and the Roots of Contested Democracy in Hong Kong’, in The Challenge of Hong Kong’s Reintegration With China, ed. Ming K. Chan, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997), pp. 48-85 (p. 52). Calculations concerning historical inflation of the US dollar were made using tools provided in this website: US Inflation Calculator [Accessed July 11st, 2018]. 91 Xu Jiayun 許家屯，Xu jiayun xianggang huiyilu (xia) 許家屯回憶錄（下）(Xianggang Jiulong : Xianggang lian he bao you xian gong si : Zong jing xiao Lian jing chu ban shi ye gong si, 民國 83), pp. 380-381 186 beyond Beijing’s assumption that Chinese in and outside of China should be loyal to the regime in power.

Another prominent theme that stood out in Xu’s memoir was and the degree to which the men and women of the city came to view the CCP with a sense of suspicion. With a prominent financier who was a leading university activist within the pro-PRC faction worked actively to attempt to use all means at his disposal to destroy PRC state-owned financial institutions in Hong Kong, it could safely be assumed that the reputation of the CCP was at an all-time low. 92 Indeed, within the walls of NCNA, there were even signature collection campaigns in support of the Beijing student movement.93 In the ‘politics of reputation…a good name is conferred in exchange for adherence to a certain code of conduct’.94 The actions of the CCP leadership were clearly seen as unacceptable to many in Hong Kong. The fear, of course, was that the CCP would similarly mistreat the Hong Kong population after the transfer of sovereignty in 1997. According to Scott, even an unequal relationship, the ‘moral standing’ of the strong party would be ‘contingent on how closely would-be patrons conforms to the moral expectations of’ its inferiors.95 In this way, when the expectations that the PRC would be more modernised and even liberalised politically were seemingly dashed, the public image of the CCP suffered greatly as the result.

Given Hong Kong’s active support towards the student movement, it was only natural for the CCP to see constitutional reforms in Hong Kong as a threat. Indeed, Steve Tsang even went as far as to claim that Hong Kong supporters of the student movement in Beijing, in the euphoria of the movement, overlooked some of the obvious flaws of the student leaders, including their willingness to assume an overtly confrontational stance that was highly

92 Xu，Xu jiayun xianggang huiyilu, p. 382. 93 Xu，Xu jiayun xianggang huiyilu, p. 387. 94 Sally Blyth and Ian Wotherspoon, eds, Hong Kong Remembers (Hong Kong ; New York : Oxford University Press 1996), p. 214; Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 185 95 James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven : Yale University Press 1976), p. 170. 187 provocative to the hardliners within the CCP government.96 What was even more dangerous for Hong Kong, according to Steve Tsang, was that local supporters of the student movement in Beijing was overlooking the reciprocal principle that was fundamental to the endurance of the One Country, Two Systems formula: If Beijing would leave Hong Kong alone, then residents of the city should not interfere in the internal politics of the PRC.97 Indeed, ‘self- interest should have encouraged the people of Hong Kong to insulate themselves from volatile

PRC politics to avoid provoking the wrath of big brother’.98 After the summer of 1989, ‘the people of Hong Kong were far too emotionally involved’ to conduct politics in a manner that could have calmed the fears of the party-state.99

Protest Politics in Hong Kong During the Sunset Period of Colonial Rule

It is not difficult to apply Lefebvre’s theories concerning space to the political circumstances of Hong Kong during the sunset period of colonial rule. After all, the PRC’s determination to inherit the British colonial state could be seen as a demonstration of the

Beijing leadership’s explicit goal of transforming Hong Kong into a city made up almost entirely of abstract space, meaning that the sole purpose of the post-1997 HKSAR would be to generate wealth for Beijing. If Beijing was keen on using Hong Kong as one of the engines for the PRC’s economic modernisation, its leaders were equally adamant that Chinese in the city lacked a distinct identity. According to Chris Patten, Beijing ‘furiously contested the notion that there was a polity entity called Hong Kong that could be represented in’ Sino-British negotiations.100 A geopolitical entity lacking an identity was necessarily one that was also missing a past. In this way, the PRC was not only subscribing to the (untrue) conventional wisdom that Hong Kong was merely a ‘borrowed place’ on ‘borrowed time’, but also Chinese

96 Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China, p. 160. 97 Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China, p. 166. 98 Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China, p. 160. 99 Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China, p. 160. 100 Patten, East and West, p. 33. 188 leaders were actively promoting the absence of a distinctive Hong Kong identity or history to legitimise its promotion of the city as an exclusively economic entity that was not suited for liberal political reforms.

Beijing’s Hong Kong policies centred on inheriting in totality the city’s colonial political structure, a plan that would have succeeded had it not been the popular mobilisations that erupted in Hong Kong during the final period of colonial rule. The transformation of Hong

Kong into an apolitical economic city was dependent upon the absence of local constitutional reforms, a political reality the overturning of which became the principal focus of protestors that became highly active during and after 1989. The plan of the CCP to essentially inherit the classic colonial state that was created by the British was torn asunder in 1989, as a new group of political activists emerged to challenge not just Beijing, but Britain as well. It was generally believed that Hong Kong needed a strong defence mechanism against possible violation of the

One Country, Two Systems principle that was promised by Beijing. According to Legislative

Councillor Poon Chi-fai, given that the British government had already refused to grant the right of abode to its subjects in Hong Kong, thereby not giving them ‘an escape hatch’, then

‘in order to pacify the discontent of the Hong Kong people’, the British Government had to

‘vigorously’ push for political reforms in Hong Kong as ‘a substitute for the right of abode in the United Kingdom’.101 Selina Chow, the legislative councillor who mocked Martin Lee for being too emotional when he was pleading for political reforms, was by 1989, broadcasting her

‘fear of the loss of freedom to our children, fear of the breakdown of the value systems that we have taken for granted’.102 The establishment of a Legislative Council in which all members would be elected by residents of the city was seen as the best method to defend Hong Kong’s

101 Meeting of 5 July, 1989, Hong Kong Hansard, p. 56. In an effort to boost local confidence, London changed its mind in 1990 and granted British passports to 50, 000 people and their family members. Wei Bin Zhang, Hong Kong: The Pearl Made of British Mastery and Chinese Docile-diligence (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2006), p. 71. 102 Meeting of 5 July, 1989, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1989, p. 32. 189 interests after 1997.103 The fact that Beijing was against constitutional reforms was largely ignored by local activists. If the CCP was seen as untrustworthy and the British were unwilling and unable to be the city’s protector after 1997, then building upon the unwritten moral code that concentrated on the perseveration of the collective interests of the Hong Kong population, many Hong Kong Chinese were convinced that they had to support constitutional reforms to protect the welfare of their home after 1997.104

Protests became a primary tool with which the Hong Kong population attempted to extract concessions from Britain and the PRC. In this effort, speechifying in the Legislative

Council was complemented by large scale popular mobilisations the likes of which had never been seen before in the history of Hong Kong. On June 4th, 1989, when reports reached the city that troops had moved into Tiananmen Square, an estimated crowd of 200,000 gathered at the

Happy Valley Race Course to protest this course of action.105 On June 5th, 1989, 1 million Hong

Kong Chinese participated in a protest to demonstrate their support for liberal reforms within the PRC, an astonishing number, given that the total population of Hong Kong at the time was

5.7 million.106 Protests before, during, and after the summer of 1989 that often took place in some of Hong Kong’s busiest intersections became increasingly focused on the attainment of local constitutional reforms. As protests became increasingly confrontational, as it was clear that their participants were highly dissatisfied with the proposed post-1997 political arrangement, especially if there appeared to be insufficient protection for the stability and prosperity of the city. As noted by Steve Tsang, there were even voices advocating for the abolition or revision of the Joint Declaration, as the Sino-British agreement lacked a sufficiently strong guarantee promising the eventual establishment of a liberal political

103 Situ, Da jiang dong qu, p. 271. 104 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, pp. 109-110. 105 So, ‘The Tiananmen Incident’, p. 52. 106 Beatty, Democracy, p. 20. 190 structure.107 To utilise the Lefebvrian analytical framework, by engaging in popular protests the scale of which was unprecedented in the history of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Chinese were recontextualising how they viewed and utilised space. The urban designs of Hong Kong might have been devised by technocrats whose representations of space focused primarily on profit maximisation; by 1989, Hong Kong’s spaces of representation and spatial practices were altered, as protestors in Hong Kong were transforming space, and their occupation of it, into powerful political tools the chief utility of which was to voice the local population’s discontent and exert pressure on the city’s current and future sovereign powers. Marches that occupied

Hong Kong’s busiest streets almost became routine, and in stark contrast to previous mobilisation efforts, protests during the final years of colonial rule were participated by a record number of Hong Kong Chinese, a turn of events that gave birth to the colony’s ‘culture of protest’.108

That the PRC was almost able to succeed in its efforts to inherit a largely unreformed colonial state was not only due to Britain’s grudging acquiescence, but also due to the inability of local political activists to garner the necessary public support to force the hands of Beijing and London. This, of course, all changed in 1989, and protests that took place in the summer of that year were remarkably bipartisan, as forces at opposite sides of the political spectrum found themselves literally matching side by side. Still somewhat surprised all these years later,

Martin Lee recounted with a degree of astonishment that at one point, he was marching with

Jasper Tsang, Tam Yiu-chung and Gary Cheng Kai-nam, all prominent PRC supporters who would emerge as Lee’s electoral opponents in the upcoming Legislative Council elections.109

Past political mobilisations, such as the Baodiao Campaign and the Anti-Corruption Campaign, were driven by either Chinese nationalism or a determination to uphold the city’s unwritten

107 Second Report: Hong Kong (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office 1989), p. vii; Meeting of 5 July, 1989, Hong Kong Hansard, Session 1989, p. 32. 108 Bush, Hong Kong, p. 91. 109 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, p. 10. 191 moral code; protests that erupted during and after the summer of 1989, however, prominently featured both of these two pillars necessary for sustained popular efforts, a key characteristic that ensured marches that took place in the final years of colonial rule would be participated by a record number of local Chinese. By taking side in a highly contentious conflict within the

PRC, residents within the city who became politically engaged from 1989 onward were demonstrating their commitment to liberal reforms within China, as constitutional changes were seen as beneficial to both mainland and Hong Kong Chinese. Indeed, Martin Lee was convinced that reforms in Hong Kong would lead to political liberalisation within the PRC, or vice versa.110 The fusion of a determination to uphold the city’s unwritten moral code and

Chinese nationalism was the foundation of popular mobilisations in Hong Kong during the final era of colonial rule.

Protests and marches in Hong Kong in turn consolidated a local identity; in this sense,

Craig Calhoun was certainly correct to assume that participation in popular mobilisations could facilitate the identity formation process of a population.111 As stated by Alvin So, the protest movement that emerged in 1989 ‘led to an explosion in Hong Kong’s civil society’, as a large segment of the local population became interested in using mobilisations to defend what was perceived as the interests of the city.112 The very act of participating in protest marches on behalf of Hong Kong helped cemented a local identity, as many Hong Kong Chinese were reminded that while ‘they were ethnically Chinese, they did not identify’ politically with the

PRC due to divergent values held by the CCP leadership and the city’s majority.113 While

Chinese nationalism and the city’s unwritten moral code served as engines of mobilisations,

110 Beatty, Democracy, p. 20. 111 Craig Calhoun, ‘The Problem of Identity in Collective Action’, p. 53, pp. 64-67. 112 Alvin Y. So, Hong Kong’s Embattled Democracy: A Societal Analysis (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 159. 113 Carroll, Concise History, p. 197. 192 the interests of Hong Kong increasingly became the prominent political consideration for the city’s activists and average residents who participated in protests.

The Rise of Electoral and Partisan Politics in Hong Kong

The massive protests that erupted during and after the summer of 1989 allowed the

British to convinced even the CCP leadership that dramatic gestures to shore up public confidence in Hong Kong was necessary. In 1990, the right of abode in the United Kingdom was given to 50, 000 Hong Kong families.114 A bill of right was introduced in Hong Kong as yet another confidence-boosting measure. 115 More importantly, after rounds of secret negotiations, the PRC government agreed to the addition of eighteen directly elected seats to the Legislative Council in 1991.116 Percy Craddock, the diplomat who was sent to Beijing to negotiate with the PRC, thus secured a major concession from the CCP, as the original draft of the Basic Law stated that the Legislative Council in 1997 would only have fifteen directly elected seats.117 The post-1997 administration in Hong Kong likely would have to confront legislative councillors with a high degree of legitimacy.

Political parties that were supportive of constitutional reforms won 58.22% of the popular vote and fifteen out of the eighteen directly elected seats in the 1991 Legislative

Council election. 118 All ten candidates from the pro-PRC camp were defeated. 119 The conventional wisdom has always been that the electoral results of 1991 confirmed that after

1989, the CCP and their supporters were seen as untrustworthy by significant segments of the local population. As stated by Steve Tsang, the 1991 electoral results ‘dissipated any hope of

114 Tsang, Modern History, p. 252. 115 Tsang, Modern History, p. 252 116 Situ, Da jiang dong qu, p. 232. 117 Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, p. 219; Representative Government in Hong Kong (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1994), p. 7. 118 Situ, Da jiang dong qu,, p. 232; Blyth and Wotherspoon, Hong Kong Remembers, p. 241; Ian Scott, ‘An Overview of the Hong Kong Legislative Council Elections of 1991’, in Votes Without Power: the Hong Kong Legislative Council Elections, 1991, ed. Elaine Chan, (Hong Kong: the University of Hong Kong Press, 1991), pp. 1-31 (p. 5). 119 Scott, ‘An Overview of the Hong Kong Legislative Council Elections of 1991’, p. 4. 193 the Hong Kong people putting the [events of 1989] behind them’.120 While there is no question that the electorate ‘had voted against the restoration of the status quo ante’, upon closer examination of the results of the 1991 Legislative Council elections, one could discover that the Hong Kong public, through still distrustful of the CCP, possessed a pragmatic streak.121

Years later, when discussing the electoral results of 1991, Jasper Tsang was convinced that while pro-PRC candidates were shut out, they were actually able to obtain a fairly high number of votes.122 The popular consensus that a pro-Beijing stance was a electoral ‘kiss of death’ actually did not capture fully the political reality of Hong Kong in 1991.123 Chan Yuen-han, a prominent pro-PRC trade unionist won 44, 894 votes (22.4% of the popular vote) at the

Kowloon Central constituency; eventual winner Lau Chin-shek won 68, 484 votes (34.2% of the popular vote). 124 Similar electoral results were repeated in other geographical constituencies, demonstrating that while there were indeed a tidal wave of anti-Beijing legislators coming to the Legislative Council, there also existed voters who were more pragmatic, who recognised that a sustained confrontational stance against the CCP was detrimental to the future of Hong Kong.125

If the Hong Kong’s unwritten moral code was established upon the preservation of

Hong Kong residents’ collective interests, then after the initial anger against the CCP dissipated, it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that repeated confrontations against

China’s ruling party would eventually be harmful to the city. The total dominance of the

Legislative Council by political parties that were explicitly anti-CCP could not be conductive to the successful implementation of the One Country, Two System formula. There was also a

120 Tsang, Modern History, p. 252. 121 Tsang, Modern History, p. 252. 122 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 10. 123 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 10 124 Ruan Jihong 阮紀宏，Minjianlian 20 nian shi 民建聯 20 年史 （Xianggang : Zhonghua shu ju, 2012 Chu ba ）, p. 4 125 Ruan Jihong，Minjianlian 20 nian shi, p. 2, p. 4, p. 11. 194 resentment among members of the pro-PRC faction against the moral righteousness of emerging politicians like Martin Lee and Szeto Wah, who by then were leaders of the United

Democrats, an explicitly pro-reform party. After all, while Lee was an undergraduate feuding with his English professors, Jasper Tsang was publishing anti-British materials. Compared to

Tsang, Lee was an upstart.126 There had to be resentment concerning the United Democrats’ monopolisation of the moral high ground. All these factors led pro-Beijing grandees to plan for the formation of a new political party that would present itself as pro-reform and pro-Beijing.127

There is no doubt that NCNA played a major role in the formation of the Democratic

Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), the pro-Beijing political party that emerged in 1992. There were even strong indication that the CCP's local party organisation, the Hong

Kong-Macau Work Committee, was strongly involved in the formation of the DAB.128 This new political party always appears to be a sort of Frankenstein monster, as it was an unwieldy combination of traditional pro-Beijing unions and white collar middle class elites. 129

Nevertheless, a sense of loyalty to Beijing, and a conviction that Hong Kong had to be pragmatic about its relations with its new sovereign power in 1997, served to be unifying principles of this new party. In the feverish political atmosphere after 1989, the future leaders of DAB had to rely on pragmatism and loyalty to Beijing as the lodestars for their actions.

While Tsang’s capacity to quickly control his emotions after the events of 1989 and work with the CCP to construct a new party was dismissed by Martin Lee, his erstwhile rival, as actions of a loyal party supporter, an alternative reading could be that it was in the interests of Hong

Kong to work with, rather than against, Beijing.130 At a time when Beijing’s distrust towards

Hong Kong and Britain was at an all-time high, there were opened talked about the CCP setting

126 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, p. 3. Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, pp. 5-6. 127 Ruan，Minjianlian 20 nian shi, p. 11. 128 Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, p. 254. 129 Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, p. 255. 130 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, p. 10; Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 10. 195 up an alternative administration before 1997.131 Deng even told Foreign Minister Qian Qichen that ‘if serious trouble arose in Hong Kong during the transitional period, the Chinese government would have to reconsider the time and way of recovering Hong Kong’.132 In this way, the potential shown by DAB as being a countervailing force against the pro-reform parties most likely calmed the nerve of Beijing, and thereby prevented its leaders from taking rash actions; for that, men such as Tsang played a key role in preserving the city’s stability.133

The formation of the DAB would not have been possible in the absence of the pro-PRC subsociety (or habitus) that was consolidated during the 1967 riots. Besides Tsang, who was a principal of a well-respected pro-PRC school, there were founding members who were imprisoned by the British during the 1967 riots, such as Chen Shi Yuan (陳仕源).134 While many

PRC supporters were no doubt disappointed with Beijing, many did support the founding of this new party.135 One of the chief objectives of the DAB was to present a vision of pro-Beijing

Chinese nationalism that was compatible with the city’s unwritten moral code. Essentially, politicians like Jasper Tsang had to convince the electorate that an amicable relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing was the best guarantee of the city’s long-term prosperity, thereby making it necessary for members of the Hong Kong population to at least acquiesce to the geopolitical reality that the CCP was the ruling party of China for the foreseeable future.

The DAB did not begin, and would not end up, as a doomed political project. While there were inevitably setbacks, the party did find eventual success, and it is now the preeminent pro-

Beijing party in Hong Kong, processing significant representations in both the functional and geographical constituencies, as well as the district councils.136

131 Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, p. 250. 132 Qian, Ten Episodes in China’s Diplomacy, pp. 271-272 133 Qian Qichan, Ten Episodes in China’s Diplomacy, pp. 271-272. 134 Oral Interviews with Chen Shi Yuan/Huang Liangying/Xu Yun Cheng, p. 34. 135 Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay, p. 255. 136 Bush, Hong Kong, p. 79, pp. 44-45, p. 78, p. 214. 196

The proliferation of political parties in Hong Kong, and the backlash against the

Tiananmen incident, no doubt created a climate of political polarisation that still plagues the city to this day. At the same time, the very fact that there were passionate partisans from different political camps engaging in often vicious arguments concerning the proper direction of the city further demonstrated that Hong Kong was a distinct entity with its own social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics that were worth fighting over. As stated by

Craig Calhoun, strong identity often manifested itself in collective action, and its intensity is reinforced when a group was mobilised for the achievement of a particular objective.137 A conviction that Hong Kong’s interests had to be defended through popular mobilisation led to protests, and while Hong Kong Chinese were marching to defend their collective welfare, it further became apparent to them that their city was a distinct entity, as it was the only subnational unit in China containing a population a significant segment of which was willing and able to engage in mass political actions. Unlike previous struggles within the university student movement concerning whether activists should focus more on local affairs or on propagation of pro-PRC nationalism, the partisan political conflicts after 1989 were centred on to what degree could (or should) Hong Kong defy the PRC, and what kind of distance (if at all) should the city keep from Beijing. Instead of a left-right divide, the principal cleavage of politics in Hong Kong was centred on what kind of relationship with Beijing would most benefit Hong Kong. In this way, homelandisation had triumphed over mainlandisation, as even partisans supportive of Beijing had to calibrate their pro-Beijing message so that closer alignment with mainland China was presented as advantageous to the city.

Concluding Remarks

Beijing was determined to inherit an apolitical city containing inhabitants more interested in moneymaking than in politicking. Of course, the Beijing leadership did not

137 Calhoun, ‘The Problem of Identity in Collective Action’, p. 53, pp. 64-67. 197 understand Hong Kong and grossly misread local conditions. The residents of Hong Kong had never been politically apathic, and as demonstrated by the various protest marches in the 1970s, they were more than willing to actively challenge colonial authorities. There was a period of societal peace because the colonial government, through the providence of social welfare, was able to significantly defuse social tensions. The misguided belief that the residents of Hong

Kong had always been political apathetic, and that their protests were only against the CCP, but never against the British, could be seen as one source of tensions between the city and

Beijing. A factor that further undermined relations between Hong Kong and the PRC was that, between the city and Beijing, there existed two prominent forms of Chinese nationalisms. For

Beijing, nationalism meant loyalty to the CCP; for the majority of Hong Kong Chinese, their

Chinese nationalism was centred around cultural values and their appreciation of Chinese civilizational achievements. For many Hong Kong Chinese, their Chineseness was embedded in their daily and everyday life, making it beyond partisan affiliations. Perhaps irrationally, many Hong Kong Chinese viewed the implementation of liberal political reforms as a transparently beneficial measure to all Chinese that should be the goal of any ruling Chinese regime. Support for reforms became a way for many Hong Kong Chinese to demonstrate their love of China.

Of course, another factor that made Hong Kong such a unique, and in the eye of the

CCP leadership, unnervingly independent, Chinese city, was the fact that by the final period of

British colony rule, the citizens of Hong Kong had acquired a local identity that repeatedly expressed itself through popular mobilisations. By the end of the 1980s, the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong had become a focus of political mobilisations. Even the DAB had to argue for acquiescence, if not loyalty, to the CCP, by stating that such a course of action would benefit Hong Kong. By the end of 1989, it became obvious that the post-1997 Hong Kong would not be an apolitical financial centre that would simply further accelerate China’s 198 economic reforms. Hong Kong would once again become a part of China in 1997, but Beijing had to accept the good with the bad. For better or worse, by 1997, Hong Kong was a Chinese global city with a population containing men and women who were willing to protest on the street, a characteristic that has come to define the HKSAR. 199

Conclusion Continued Political Conflicts in Hong Kong, 1992-1997 By 1992, Hong Kong’s political culture, one that predicated on tensions, conflicts and mutual antagonism between pro-PRC and pro-Hong Kong activists, was firmly established. Of course, the saga of colonial Hong Kong would only end in 1997, and with five years remaining before the expiration of the lease on the New Territories and the emergence of an increasingly confrontational partisan culture, it stood to reason that Britain would send to the city an experienced politician as the Crown Colony’s ‘Last Governor’. Chris Patten, a former politician who unexpectedly lost his seat in John Major’s victorious campaign in 1992, arrived in Hong Kong as someone seemingly determined to break the mould.1 Wanting ‘to better his diplomatic predecessor and to leave his own mark’, Patten ‘intended to restore credibility to the governorship in the eyes of the local people’.2 Accordingly, Patten was more than willing to interact with local people as if he was a politician intending to win power through democratic means.3 While not necessarily hell-bent on creating a Sino-British confrontation, it is now clear that Patten was not against engendering a degree of discomfort for Beijing, especially if such a course of action would result in popular acclaim. As a political heavyweight appointed by the prime minister to the Hong Kong governorship as a reward for sacrificing victory in his own riding by campaigning on behalf of the Conservative Party as its campaign chairman, Patten possessed sufficient political weight to carry out his objectives.4

Patten’s inaugural was one of the most important political speeches in the history of Hong Kong, as it laid out the governor’s constitutional reform proposal, which represented the commencement of an epic Sino-British clash merely five years before the

1 Chris Patten, East and West: The Last Governor of Hong Kong on Power, Freedom and the Future (London: Macmillan, 1998), p, 13. 2 Tsang, Modern History, p. 255. 3 John Flowerdew, The Final Years of British Hong Kong: The Discourse of Colonial Withdrawal (London: Macmillan Press, 1998), p. 103. 4 Patten, East and West, p. 13.

200 transfer of sovereignty. Concentrating primarily on reforming the Legislative Council in preparation for the 1995 election, Patten lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen and eliminated multimember geographical constituencies of the Legislative Council to ensure that in future elections, lawmakers would be elected on a ‘single seat, single vote’ basis.5 More importantly, Patten wanted to significantly expand the franchises of the existing functional constituencies so that an additional 2.7 million members of the workforce would be eligible to vote in nine additional functional constituency seats. 6 In this way, workers, instead of corporations, would be able to vote in functional constituencies.7 There was also a plan to add two seats in which members would be directly elected. 8 Directly elected district board members would be responsible for appointing ten lawmakers.9

Under closer scrutiny, the Patten reform package was never as radical as the governor presented it to be. A critical element of the package was the establishment of a ‘Government-

LegCo Committee’ that would facilitate ‘an effective working relationship between’ the executive and the legislative branches, an essential task as Patten abruptly terminated the practice of appointing members of the Legislative Council to the Executive Council.10 In the

1970s and the 1980s, members of the Legislative Council who were appointed to the Executive

Council were gradually accumulating greater and greater power. As demonstrated by the establishment of the Office of Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Council

(UMELOO) in 1963 and its transformation into the Office of Members of Executive and

Legislative Council (OMELCO) in 1985, there was a political tradition in Hong Kong that enabled members of the Legislative and Executive Councils to act as liaison between the

5 Meeting of 7 October, 1992, Official Record of Proceeding (Hong Kong Hansard), 7 October 1992, p. 45. 6 Meeting of 7 October, 1992, p. 45. 7 , 'Government and Business Alliance: Hong Kong's Functional Constituencies', in Functional Constituencies: A Unique Feature of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, eds. by Christine Loh and Civic Exchange (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2010), pp. 19-41 (p. 19). 8 Tsang, Modern History, p.256. 9 Tsang, Modern History, p. 256. 10 Meeting of 7 October, 1992, p. 43.

201 government and the population at large, a role that elected politicians like Martin Lee could utilise to gain a greater level of political prominence.11 At one stroke, Patten significantly undermined the power of elected politicians like Martin Lee, who had a very good claim to be appointed to the Executive Council. Patten’s reform package, which could be seen as a compromise between Beijing’s stated policy to create an executive-led government in which legislators were no longer allowed to serve in the executive branch and local desire for political reforms, likely spooked the PRC, the leaders of which did not totally understood Hong Kong’s political system to begin with.12 Falling to understand the fact that even if Patten’s reform package was implemented in its totality, only one-third of the members of the Legislative

Council would have been directly elected, Beijing become determined to derail Patten’s governorship.13

After months of political campaign aimed at the destruction of Patten’s credibility in

Hong Kong, the height of which saw the governor labelled as ‘the criminal of all time’, ‘a whore of the east’, ‘a serpent’ and, somewhat oddly, ‘a tango dancer’, Beijing, upon realising that London would not send a replacement, very grudgingly agreed to the commencement of another round of Sino-British negotiations.14 After months of fruitless talks, Patten, acting with

London’s permission, and likely annoyed with Beijing’s highly hostile stance, began debates on this reform package in November 1993 on the floor of the Legislative Council.15 In the summer of 1994, significant portions of the Patten reform package were passed, setting the stage for the 1995 election that would be contested on the parameters defined by the governor.16

The team led by Martin Lee and Szeto Wah, which had by then reconfigured itself into the

11 Tsang, Documentary History, pp. 214-215. 12 Lau Siu-Kai, The Practice of "One Country, Two system" Policy in Hong Kong, trans.by Guixia Xie, Xiaoqi Shang, Andrew Herrick (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 2017), p. 54 13 Tsang, Modern History, p. 243, pp. 257-260. 14 Jonathan Dimbleby, The Last Governor: Chris Patten & the (Toronto: Doubleday Limited, 1997), p. 155; Patten, East and West, p. 57. 15 Patten, East and West, pp. 77-78. 16 Tsang, Modern History, p. 265.

202

Democratic Party, once again outperformed the DAB.17 The pro-reform camp won sixteen out of twenty geographical constituency seats and 61% of the popular vote.18 With two years left before retrocession, the results of the 1995 quickly became irreverent. In November 1996, a was established to select the first chief executive of the post-1997 SAR and member of the provisional Legislative Council.19 By December 1996, all members of the provisional Legislative Council were appointed, and opposition figures with popular mandates like Martin Lee were excluded, while ten pro-PRC political figures who were defeated in the

1995 election were appointed. In the same month, Tung Chee-hwa, a shipping tycoon whose company was financially beholden to the PRC, was selected as the inaugural chief executive.20

By the end of 1996, there was nothing for Patten to do but to wait for his term to expire in 1997.

Looking at the Rear-view Mirror: The Emergence of a Hong Kong Identity in the Postwar Era and Political Mobilisation in the Colony Political controversies concerning Chris Patten’s governorship were largely the by- product of Hong Kong identity’s consolidation in 1992, as by the end of this year, the city possessed two political camps the adherents of which engaged in political combats over what type of relations the city should have with Beijing. Even the most radical of pro-PRC partisans had to present loyalty to the CCP as a policy that would benefit Hong Kong, thereby revealing that the prosperity of the city represented the primary focus of activists in the colony. If pro-

PRC partisans were determined to eradicate the British status of Hong Kong in 1967 and transform it into a city under the control of the CCP, by 1992, their political descendants had to explain why closer ties with the PRC would benefit Hong Kong. By the end of the colonial era, even the common people of Hong Kong possessed a Hong Kong-centric world view that made them ready participants of large-scale political mobilisations.

17 Tsang, Modern History, p. 265. 18 Beatty, Democracy, p. 26. 19 Tsang, Modern History, p. 265. 20 Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China, pp. 206-207.

203

The emergence of a Hong Kong identity was not a sudden event; instead, it was a gradual historical process that largely began in 1949, after the establishment of the PRC. As it was demonstrated by Ming. K. Chan, even after becoming a British colony, the absence of borders between Hong Kong and nearby southern Chinese cities meant a remarkably high degree of interactions between populations at both sides of the Sino-Hong Kong divide, so much so that striking workers could easily found shelter, provisions, and even political protection from their compatriots in Guangdong. 21 Indeed, in 1921, this ‘intra-delta mobility’ enabled a significant portion of Chinese residents in Hong Kong to travel to their cities or villages of origin during the Ching Ming festival, thereby distorting the census results to such a degree that the population of the colony was shown to have decreased by about 5.3% from only a year prior.22 The establishment of the PRC ensured that instead of Hong Kong and nearby Chinese cities having two-way traffic that enabled Chinese in the region to travel to whatever destinations they desired, by 1949, there would be refugees coming into Hong Kong, while Chinese in the colony would largely refrain from extended stays in the PRC. Influxes of refugees and the subsequent decision to impose border control not only meant that the colony’s population experienced exponential growth, but also that by the 1960s, Hong Kong possessed a population the majority of which was locally born.

Although members of Hong Kong’s Chinese population shared a profound cultural affinity with their neighbours in the Guangdong province, a local identity began to emerge in the 1960s. Prolonged separation from their counterparts in China and the existence of a Sino-

Hong Kong border ensured the emergence of a sentiment of distinctiveness that was further intensified over the course of the 1967 riots, during which pro-PRC partisans engaged in a campaign to eradicate the British status of Hong Kong. While the pro-PRC faction failed in its

21 Chan, ‘Labor and Empire’, pp. 97-101, p. 312-319. 22 Chan, ‘Labor and Empire’, pp. 101-102.

204 efforts to cripple British rule, its members in the 1970s, mostly leaders in the student movement who were sympathetic to the CCP, were able to rehabilitate the image of Beijing. When the

Joint Declaration was signed in 1984, it was with reluctant acceptance, mixed with a sense of relief that was the by-product of finally knowing their collective fate, that Hong Kong Chinese greeted the announcement that their city would once again become part of China in 1997. Of course, everything changed in 1989, as events in the PRC essentially gave birth to Hong Kong’s culture of protest. The protests in 1989 also significantly enhanced the public profiles of pro- reform activists who previously were warily received by the general public, and this dramatic shift in reputations allowed them to emerge as leaders and to enter the Legislative Council as highly regarded lawmakers. It was in response to the anti-Beijing stances of popular public figures like Martin Lee that veterans of the pro-PRC camp decided to create a countervailing political organisation, the DAB. Hong Kong’s protest culture gave birth to the city’s partisan politics.

Reflections on the Postwar History of Hong Kong This examination of Hong Kong’s immediate past could be seen as a case study on how a society that was in constant state of political instability could lead to the emergence of a strong identity among its residents. Hong Kong had not only historically been a major site of confrontations between colonialism and China, but also a political theatre that witnessed clashes between conflicting allegiances to duelling Chinese states. The 1956 riots represented a major crisis sparked by the CCP-KMT rivalry in Hong Kong. The conclusion of the Chinese

Civil War thus made Hong Kong more, not less, politically charged. Therefore, Hong Kong was never politically apathetic, and to understand the city, one must understand conflicts that had occurred within it. It is for this reason that this dissertation paid significant attention to political mobilisations that took post in postwar Hong Kong. Political conflicts within a society led to a consolidation of an identity, as duelling conceptions of what ought to be the future

205 direction of the polity reinforced the fact that it had in it passionate men and women who were determined to uphold its interests. Failure of pro-PRC partisans to cripple the colonial state in

1967 led to the strengthening of a local identity, a turn of events that represented a tectonic shift in the history of Hong Kong, as it was an indication that Hong Kong Chinese were not politically loyal to the PRC, even if they were often contemptuous of their colonisers and were well aware of the flaws of British policymakers. It was the realisation of societal ills in Hong

Kong that led young activists like Albert Ho to participate in social movements such as the

Anti-Corruption Campaign that ultimately led to the creation of the ICAC. It could even be said that the diminishment of the pro-PRC faction after the 1967 riots gave young activists like

Albert Ho more space to operate in Hong Kong politics, as it became important for supporters of Beijing to win the battle of ideas after being defeated in a physical struggle, the former being a form of confrontation highly suited for young intellectuals active in the 1970s. In these ways, political conflicts in Hong Kong had a transformative effect on local society that is still being felt by the people of the city today.

Of course, it is important to remember that not everyone in Hong Kong was overwhelmingly preoccupied by important political issues of the day, or that partisan political struggles represented the most important aspects of the lives of all Hong Kong Chinese. In this regard, Brubaker and his colleagues were certainly correct to assert that more often than not,

'heated nationalist rhetoric evoked only muted popular response’. 23 Even accepting that it would be naïve to simply take ‘political entrepreneurs’ at their words and accept that nationalist and political passions would easily lead to eruption of crises, it would be equally irresponsible to conduct research as if tensions never erupted in any given society.24 Epoch- defining events did occur in postwar Hong Kong. One of the central concerns of this dissertation is how to

23 Brubaker et al, Nationalist Politics, p. 6. 24 Brubaker et al, Nationalist Politics, p. 28.

206 reconcile the imperative to examine historical events with the need to focus on more banal aspects of daily living. This dissertation therefore examined monumental political events without ignoring everyday life and perspectives of common people.

As it was demonstrated by the history of Hong Kong during the sunset period of British rule, the act of marching together in a protest, a shared determination to fulfil a common objective, and a commitment to define a way of life were finishing touches to an identity formation process that was decades in the making. The actions of Hong Kong protestors therefore illustrate to researchers that ‘risky and unusual collective action places one’s identity on the line in an especially powerful way’.25 A collective desire to preserve Hong Kong’s status as a distinct Chinese city even after 1997 was a motivator for collective actions that resulted in the consolidation of a Hong Kong identity. The prosperity of Hong Kong then became the axis around which even pro-PRC partisans had to operate, as the semi-liberal electoral system that emerged in 1991 made it necessary for them to appeal to an electorate that was convinced that the primary responsibility of lawmakers was to promote the city’s welfare. By then, the existence of a Hong Kong identity could no longer be questioned, as the city’s distinctiveness had been accepted as fact by both the political class and the general public.

The Significance of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Studies This dissertation has devoted pages after pages on the study of a city that is smaller in size than even Westchester Country, New York.26 So is Hong Kong deserving of scholarly attention? After all, with the relentless rise of China, other cities in the PRC seemed determined to eclipse and ultimately replace Hong Kong as mainland China’s gateway to the outside world.

With the exception of periods during which riots or protests erupted in Hong Kong, it also appears that the city is becoming less deserving of global media coverage. So what is so special

25 Calhoun, ‘The Problem of Identity in Collective Action’, p. 61. 26 Bush, Hong Kong, p. 275

207 about Hong Kong? What are the elements in its past that make it deserving of examinations by scholars?

With the exception of Taiwan, the former Japanese colony that has yet to come under the sovereignty of the PRC, Hong Kong is the only Chinese territory in which mass protests and elections for lawmakers are allowed. These political features of Hong Kong are protected by the city’s free press and strong rule of law. While there are indications that these characteristics of the Hong Kong SAR are atrophying, they are foundations that have made the city so vital in China’s modernisation efforts that were begun by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Hong

Kong would not have become an international financial centre that was absolutely essential in the financing of Deng’s reform efforts had it not been the city’s universally respected legal system. In the future, should the CCP leadership decide to liberalise the political structure of the PRC, its leaders would find a ready blueprint to emulate in the past constitutional development of Hong Kong.

By providing a historical account of how a Hong Kong identity came to be, this dissertation demonstrates the intimate, multi-layered, and indeed, inseparable relations between China and Hong Kong. A sense of solidarity that was fundamental to popular mobilisations would not have been possible in the absence of a shared Chinese (Cantonese) culture. It is important to note that Martin Lee and his cohorts saw themselves as Chinese patriots. Indeed, Martin Lee most likely saw Hong Kong as a model for the PRC to emulate, noting that the city’s rule of law and liberal values were essential if the PRC is truly to emerge as a great global power.27 In this sense, local activists were convinced that what was good for

Hong Kong would ultimately benefit the PRC as well. While pro-Beijing veterans like Jasper

Tsang were highly sceptical of Hong Kong’s capacity to influence events in China, pro-reform

27 Oral Interview with Martin Lee, p. 13.

208 activists were convinced that they were doing just that by preserving Hong Kong’s liberal political culture and rule of law.28

At a time when it appears that China’s relentless economic growth will continue for the foreseeable future, talks concerning the Hong Kong SAR serving as a role model for other cities in China likely seem as unrealistic as dreams of independence advocated by the most radical of the city’s political activists. Indeed, what is there for Hong Kong to teach China when the city’s former pupil, , finally surpassed the former British colony in total GDP output in 2017?29 While casual observers are now rushing to dismiss the importance of Hong

Kong, this approach is not repeated by the highest level of state power within the PRC. The

Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area Initiative, the economic integration plan that aims to create a powerful economic bloc in the Pearl River Delta, is slated to be led by Han

Zheng, the PRC’s vice premier.30 If Hong Kong’s economic prosperity is no longer essential for the PRC’s survival, the SAR is still very much China’s sole international financial centre and an engine for Guangdong province’s growth. In other words, Hong Kong is still absolutely essential for Guangdong’s continued economic success as the province becomes the engine for national prosperity. Hong Kong’s participation in the Greater Bay Area Initiative is the clearest indication of the continued importance of Hong Kong. The future political liberalisation of

China and continued Chinese prosperity depended considerably on Hong Kong. Ultimately,

Hong Kong studies is China studies, and as long as China remains a major geopolitical player, there will always be audience for monographs focusing on the past, present, and future of the

PRC’s leading world city.

28 Oral Interview with Jasper Tsang, p. 11. 29 He Huifeng, ‘'Shenzhen surpasses US$338 billion GDP mark in 2017, beats Hong Kong and Singapore's growth', South China Morning Post, 15 May 2018, in < www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/ article /2128310/shenzhen-88-cent-hi-tech-growth-roll-hit-y2tr-2017>, [Accessed on 15 May 2018]. 30 Choi Chi-yuk, Daniel Ren and Tony Cheung, ‘Top Beijing leader will take charge of China’s ambitious bay area integration plan’, South China Morning Post, 28 March 2018m in < http://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/politics/article/2139185/top-beijing-leader-will-take-charge-chinas-ambitious-bay> , [Accessed on 15 May 2018].

209

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67 zhongli yanjiushe 67 重力研究社 (進接：二零一七 年三月十一日) [67 Synergy Group (Accessed 11 March 2017)].

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Appendix 227