“Thunder without Rain” ARCI, the Far East Refugee Program, and the U.S. Response to Hong Kong Refugees

✣ Meredith Oyen

On 9 January 1955, Paul Liu and his wife Priscilla, along with their two children, became the first Chinese refugees to be admitted to the United States under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. Paul was not a stranger to American life; he had lived in Ohio in the 1940s, earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ohio State University. In 1946, he decided to return home to Shanghai. There he met Priscilla, but two years in a chaotic country torn apart by civil war were more than enough for the young couple, and they fled to Taiwan. Though not engulfed in war, Taiwan was also in disarray, unwillingly absorbing thousands of Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers and officials as the leader of the KMT and the Republic of China (ROC), Chiang Kai-shek, relocated his government to the island. By October 1949, Chiang and the KMT had lost the war and were left to create some semblance of order and a functioning economy on an island that was deeply worried about Communist infiltration. Seeing few prospects, Paul and Pricilla joined thousands of Chinese fleeing to Hong Kong. Although the route for Paul and Priscilla to Hong Kong was unusual among Chinese refugees, their situation was not. As the civil war drew to a close, the British colony off Guangdong Province swelled with increasing numbers of migrants until the population of the city had more than doubled in size. Some were members of the KMT government who had missed the first wave of evacuations to Taiwan but hoped to get there eventually; these people included many members of the ROC’s army and police forces. Others were anti-Communists unwilling to wait to experience life under Chairman Mao Zedong’s newly proclaimed People’s Republic of China (PRC). Inevitably, some were migrants who saw new economic opportunities in Hong Kong and took advantage of the traditionally porous border to establish themselves in the colony. In the 1950s, the number of new and not-yet-integrated arrivals swelled, posing a problem of international scope.

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 16, No. 4, Fall 2014, pp. 189–221, doi:10.1162/JCWS_a_00520 C 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Elsewhere in the world, the postwar recovery combined with the emerging Cold War had created other crises of refugees or displaced persons. The United Nations (UN), the United States (both through the UN and via its own policies), other traditional countries of immigration, the countries of first asylum, and non-governmental organizations all stepped up to offer assistance, including immediate charity, long-term projects to facilitate integration, and programs to resettle the migrants and refugees elsewhere. The situation in Hong Kong proved to be a fundamentally different problem from the one in Europe for all of these parties, not least the U.S. government. Long accused of caring more for Europeans than about the plight of oppressed or struggling Asians, officials in Harry S. Truman’s administration attempted to formulate a policy for Hong Kong that would promote U.S. interests—U.S. prestige and image in the emerging Cold War and the effort to prevent the newly “Red” Chinese state from spreading Communism further—but at little cost to the American public. Efforts to achieve this goal led to a period of unprecedented cooperation with non-governmental organizations in Asia, but also a good deal of contention. This history of refugee movements and refugee policy has become a subject of increasing interest in scholarship on the Cold War and the relationship between transnational migration and international relations. At the heart of several recent works is the politicization of what is, essentially, a local problem. The Cold War transformed the historically common movement of people between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province into a subject of international attention and created a free world/Communist world debate on who should be considered a refugee.1 Other studies have raised the issue of private voluntary organizations (PVOs) in postwar refugee work in Europe and Hong Kong, noting the extent to which Cold War politics trumped humanitarian concerns in the development of an international response to migration problems, as well as studying how U.S.-based PVOs reflected and interpreted larger U.S. foreign policy goals.2 This work builds on these findings, revealing the bureaucratic

1. Carl J. Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Chi-Kwan Mark, “The ‘Problem of People’: British Colonials, Cold War Powers, and the Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong, 1949–62,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 6 (2007), pp. 1145–1181; and Michael G. Davis, “Impetus for Immigration Reform: Asian Refugees and the Cold War,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations,Vol.7,No.3–4 (Fall–Winter 1998), pp. 127–156. 2. Kim Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War: Toward a New International Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1991); Grace Ai-Ling Chou, “Cultural Education as Containment of Communism: The Ambivalent Position of American PVOs in Hong Kong in the 1950s,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 3–28; and Rachel M. McCleary,

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impetus for the close ties between the U.S. government and one PVO in 1950s Hong Kong. The focus of this article is people like the Liu family: Chinese refugees in Hong Kong who relocated via the combined efforts of the U.S. Refugee Relief Program (RRP) and a PVO called Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc. (ARCI). Studying this cooperation highlights the extent to which policy toward refugees in Asia was an important element in U.S. foreign policy, as well as demonstrating how the changing relationship of the U.S. State Department and PVOs affected refugee policy. Beyond their shared love for acronyms, ARCI and the RRP spent the 1950s engaged in a project of shared mythmaking. ARCI worked to bolster the position of the United States as engaged in and concerned for Asia, and the U.S. government supported ARCI long past the point when the interest and support of private citizens had faded. Over the course of the decade, ARCI served a useful purpose for U.S. government projects as both an agent with specialized knowledge and a scapegoat when plans went awry. The article first discusses the nature of the Hong Kong refugee problem and the international response. It then reviews the origins and work of ARCI. It then turns to the history of cooperation between State Department offi- cials and the organization, before finally offering conclusions about the U.S. government-PVO relationship vis-a-visHongKong.`

Aiding Refugees in the Early Cold War

In early 1949, a trickle of migrants entered the British crown colony of Hong Kong. By late 1950, the trickle had become a deluge. The new population topped 2.1 million people—500,000 more people than had ever lived in the colony, and 1.3 million more than the population at the end of the Second World War six years prior.3 With or without the refugees, the Hong Kong economy would have been struggling, hindered by the effects of the U.S.-led economic boycott against the PRC and by Britain’s struggle with postwar recovery. The combination of these factors and the population increase meant that jobs were in short supply. The city also lacked sufficient housing facilities,

Global Compassion: Private Voluntary Organizations and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1939 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009). 3. Edvard Hambro, The Problem of Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong (Leyden, Netherlands: A. W. Sijthoff, 1955).

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schools, and hospitals to support the rapid growth in residents.4 Some arrivals had relatives or friends who helped them find work in the city, but most people arrived with few plans and no local contacts. The British government’s limited resources made aggressive economic policies difficult, and it was perpetually torn between the humanitarian drive to provide food and shelter and a fear that wide-scale relief programs would draw in even more refugees. The UK created limited food programs in the ad- hoc squatter camps that sprang up in the New Territories, but most newcomers had no access to these programs, and the food provided was often rice porridge mixed with whatever was available—often including unplanned extras like pebbles or rat droppings.5 Although Hong Kong’s governor, Sir Alexander Grantham, and local officials knew the meal programs served only a minority of those in the camps, strict regulations were in place against cooking fires or stoves—on more than one occasion fast-moving fires swept through the camps and destroyed large swaths of homes. This threat was increased because the camps themselves consisted of makeshift shelters, which Grantham described as being “made of beaten-out kerosene tins, old pieces of discarded match- boarding or old sacking .... From a distance they looked quite picturesque, especially those on the hill-sides, with their jumble of buildings. A visit to them, however, soon dispelled sentimentality and revealed the full horror of their squalor.”6 No one doubted that many of the new arrivals to Hong Kong faced questions of basic survival, but debate continued about how to alleviate their plight. Creating a refugee policy is a highly politicized act because it invariably includes a judgment about the country or regime from which people are fleeing. During the early Cold War, refugee projects were fraught with controversy. After World War II, an elaborate international network of programs and organizations emerged to aid displaced persons in Europe, and most of these continued their work to benefit “escapees” as the Iron Curtain fell. Staring in 1946, the newly formed UN was at the center of efforts to aid displaced persons and refugees. In Europe and China, the UN Relief and Rehabilitation

4. Hu Yueh, “The Problem of Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong,” Asian Survey,Vol.2,No.1(March 1962), p. 30. 5. In the Rennie’s Mill Refugee Camp, one of the earliest filled with KMT loyalists who followed the army, at most one in five refugees had a coveted meal card. Howard to Emmet, Letter No. 16, 27 June 1952, in Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc. Records (ARCI), Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong March–August 1952; transcript of interview with Hao Chiang in Hu Chunhui, ed., Xianggang Diaojingling Ying de Dansheng yu Xiaoshi, Oral History Series No. 12 (Taipei: Academia Historica, 1997), pp. 182–183. 6. Alexander Grantham, Via Ports: From Hong Kong to Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965), p. 155.

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Administration (UNRRA) was the first to take charge of repatriating people scattered across both continents by the German and Japanese armies. Its work was taken over by the International Refugee Organization (IRO), also a UN body, in 1947. The core of the IRO mandate was to finish the work of the UNRRA in Europe; it had limited authority to work in Asia. IRO offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong took responsibility for completing the repatriations of displaced overseas Chinese and stateless Europeans stranded in China until the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) took over from the IRO in the early 1950s. According to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the term “refugee” applied not only to anyone previously under the High Commissioner’s mandate (which included some unfinished business from the League of Nations), but also to those who were fleeing their homes and unable either to return for fear of persecution or to avail themselves of the protection of their home government. As the Cold War unfolded, Western countries tended to define as refugees anyone fleeing from Communism, a definition that met with stiff resistance from the Eastern bloc in the UN. In the 1950s, the ROC made repeated entreaties to the UN to consider the plight of Chinese fleeing Communism as well. They based these appeals on the need for equal treatment of Europe and Asia. They claimed that the UNHCR had to extend its mandate to include Chinese refugees in Hong Kong and Macau to show that Asians were equal to Europeans in international importance—a lingering concern based on observation of how the Western powers ranked the European and Pacific fronts during the Second World War. 7 In seeking fairness and credibility, the UN did have an interest in aiding Chinese refugees, but a question persisted as to whether it had legal authority. Uncertainty over whether the UN mandate could be extended to include Hong Kong delayed the organization from taking action until 1953, when it finally appointed a commission to travel to Hong Kong and study the situation and return with an assessment of what the UN’s responsibility and contribution might be. With the aid of a Ford Foundation grant and the leadership of Norwegian lawyer and political scientist Edvard Hambro, the committee spent three months in Hong Kong interviewing refugees and assessing the situation. Hambro had three major questions to answer: first, were these really political refugees (and not simply people looking for economic opportunities); second,

7. Memorandum from Bacon to Johnson, 31 December 1952, in National Archives and Records Administration, College Park (NARA), Record Group 59, ECOSOC and Refugee Reports in Recent Committee Three Meetings, Reel 25. The United States also came to the aid of White Russians, who were more readily awarded refugee visas than the Chinese were.

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did the UN mandate apply to them; and third, what could be done to help them? The first question was the easiest to answer and required no more than examining the timing of the refugees’ arrival in Hong Kong and their expressed ideology. Hambro estimated that more than three-quarters of the migrants could be considered political refugees fleeing persecution; the rest were economic migrants. The second question was much harder to answer—the divided govern- ment was one problem, but divided recognition was the real issue. The refugees’ homes were in a place to which they could not return. That much was certain. However, the UN recognized the ROC as the government of China, and the ROC claimed all of the refugees as its citizens. This meant that the refugees actually had access to the protection of their own national government, and this in turn meant they did not fall under the UN mandate. But that formula- tion was not as straightforward as it seemed. The refugees were in Hong Kong, Hong Kong was a colony of Britain, and Britain recognized the PRC as the government of China. Thus, as far as the Hong Kong government and any other government recognizing the PRC was concerned, the refugees could not seek the protection of their home government.8 With no clear answer avail- able, Hambro split the difference: he argued that the “political immigrants” in Hong Kong did not fall under the UN mandate because of UN recognition but that the governments of the world considered them refugees and had a responsibility to aid them anyway on humanitarian grounds. Divided recognition also colored the efforts of the countries that were interested. The United States, given its support of the ROC, had a great interest in seeing the migrants treated as refugees from Communism, whereas the Hong Kong government had a strong interest—namely, its relationship with the PRC—in placing them in the more prosaic category of economic migrant. This difference in perspective led to frequent clashes between the two governments as each looked after its own interests while trying to cope with the swelling population. The debates over status led inevitably to the third question: what could be done for the camp residents, be they squatters, immigrants, or refugees? Refugee crises, no matter when or where they occur, have only three realis- tic solutions: repatriation, integration, and resettlement. In the early 1950s, voluntary repatriation was not much of an issue: nothing prevented refugees from migrating back across the border if they chose to do so.9 Later waves

8. Hambro, The Problem of Chinese Refugees, pp. 34–40. 9. Once the chaos of establishing a new government had died down, the PRC put into place a policy that made returning to China easy and leaving difficult. This policy was eventually replaced with relaxed

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of migration in 1957 and 1962 were subject to involuntary repatriation, as the frustrated Hong Kong government began to class new arrivals as “illegal immigrants” and to deport anyone it caught in the process of traveling to the colony. (Hong Kong did employ a “touch base” policy: if you made it into Hong Kong, you could stay, but if you were caught while swimming or boating from Guangdong, you were apt to be sent back.) Throughout the 1950s, however, the ROC and the United States were vocal opponents of any attempt to turn back anti-Communist refugees, so involuntary repatriation policies carried their own political risks.10 The two other options were integration and resettlement. The former required that new infrastructure be built into Hong Kong society to absorb the refugees; the latter necessitated locations outside Hong Kong willing to accept new Chinese migrants. Hambro’s poll of refugees revealed that approximately half preferred permanent residence in Hong Kong to any other option, while another 40 percent were willing to move elsewhere, mostly to Taiwan.11 Both were fairly tall orders. Although the primary responsibility for the refugees necessarily lay with the government of Hong Kong, several other governments and organizations tried to help. The ROC and PRC were both interested in aiding the migrants, but because politically any work done by one Chinese government would have to be balanced by equal access for the other, the Hong Kong authorities were never terribly enthusiastic about aid from either of them. International faith- based organizations like the Church World Service, the National Lutheran Council, and the War Relief Services of the National Catholic Welfare Con- ference stepped in with a variety of emergency relief programs, usually with the backing or financial support of the U.S. government and other Western powers. Meanwhile, the commitment of the U.S. government to aiding refugees in Europe meant that it could not afford to ignore the situation in Hong Kong. In 1951, the U.S. government’s Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) considered

rules toward returning overseas Chinese, but over the next decade the PRC loosened and tightened restrictions on the border with Hong Kong as necessary to suit other policy goals. See Guanyu huaqiao qiaojuan chu ru guo shen pi yuanze de zhishi, 31 December 1955, in PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive, Beijing (MOFA-Beijing), 118-00317-01. 10. For example, as late as 1962, the ROC government and Free China Relief Association (a quasi- nongovernmental organization) publicized the story of a group of students arrested while sailing to Hong Kong and deported by the British authorities, indicting the whole of the Free World for their failure to adhere to humanitarian principles. “Deportation of Young People Seeking Freedom in Hong Kong,” 4 April 1962, in Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taipei, Taiwan (MOFA Taiwan), Xianggang Nanbao wenti ziliao, 642/0047. 11. Hambro, The Problem of Chinese Refugees, p. 185.

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the role of refugee policy in overall U.S. foreign policy considerations. The PSB was especially concerned about dealing with escapees—refugees fleeing from Communist countries—and the board noted that, “the manner in which such escapees were taken care of in the areas to which they escaped had a very important bearing upon future defection, upon potential guerillas now resident in Iron Curtain countries, and upon the reception given to free world propaganda addressed to audiences in those countries.”12 These issues gave rise to the United States Escapee Program (USEP), which used Mutual Security Act funds to aid, resettle, and train refugees from the Eastern bloc. Officials in the Truman administration who were engaged in PSB work made a further distinction between ordinary escapees and bona fide defectors. The latter were academics, government officials, military officers, and other individuals of high value who chose to get away from Communist rule.13 Much of U.S. refugee policy in the 1950s was colored at least in part by a desire to reap the benefits of defection: each defector was a propaganda coup, a source of intelligence on closed countries, and a means of weakening Communist institutions. However, the U.S. public was not in favor of spending large sums on the Chinese (having already contributed to the losing side in the Chinese Civil War), and there was certainly no political support for opening wide the doors for Chinese migrants to enter the United States. Eventually, the U.S. government settled on two courses of action. A small fund from the USEP was designated for Asian programs, and it was intended mainly to offer grants to PVOs engaged in helping refugees integrate into city life in Hong Kong or relocate to Taiwan. After the passage of the Refugee Relief Act in 1953, Congress made 5,000 visas available to refugees from Asia—2,000 of which were specifically reserved for Chinese with passports endorsed by the ROC. The resulting Far East Refugee Program (FERP) used PVOs to help with the paperwork of finding and screening applicants for visas. In both courses of action, PVOs played a critical role. Most of the organizations working with the United States were large and well established. The Church World Service, for example, had been working in Europe since 1946, coordinating donations from churches of every denomination across the United States and distributing them in Europe, often in conjunction with

12. “Action by PSB Relative to Problem of Caring for Refugees from Iron Curtain Countries,” 24 October 1951, in Harry S. Truman Library (HSTL), Papers of Harry S. Truman, Staff Member and Office Files (HST-SMOF): Psychological Strategy Board Files (PSB), Box 33, 383.7 Escapee Program—Section I [Part 1 of 6]. 13. On the origins of the USEP in Europe and the breakdown of types of refugees, see Susan L. Carruthers, “Between Camps: Eastern Bloc ‘Escapees’ and Cold War Borderlands,” American Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3 (September 2005), pp. 911–942.

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Lutheran World Relief and the National Catholic Welfare Program. ARCI was, in comparison, a minor upstart with an exceedingly narrow focus and limited resources. But it was the only organization with a claim to being both non-religious and non-partisan, well as the only one solely focused on Asia and with close ties to ROC and U.S. officials. A study of ARCI provides a unique window into the nature of U.S. government cooperation with PVOs in Hong Kong.

Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc.

In 1951, Eugene K. Moy, a pillar of the Chinese American community and a man with close ties to KMT officials, approached David Martin of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a PVO engaged in European refugee problems, to discuss whether the IRC would consider expanding its mission to include people fleeing from Communist China to Hong Kong.14 The IRC praised the new cause but ultimately determined that it was unable to broaden its activities. Martin suggested instead that Moy seek to create a separate organization. Moving quickly, Moy recruited former U.S. ambassador to China J. Leighton Stuart to chair a new Committee for Emergency Aid to Chinese Intellectuals. After premature publicity caused some shuffling in the leadership, the original ad-hoc committee enlisted the aid of Walter Judd to lead a new organizing drive. Judd was a doctor and a Republican Congressman from Minnesota. Before being elected, he had lived for years in China as a medical missionary. He was an ardent supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT and during his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives was always out front on any issue that involved anti-Communism and China. Initially, Judd and the new committee had no trouble finding prominent Americans to support their work, and they hatched a plan to send a survey mission to Hong Kong to investigate the situation.15 Out of this original group, ARCI was born as a “non-profit, non-political, non-partisan, non-sectarian voluntary relief agency” with four aims: to aid in the “resettlement and rehabilitation” of refugee Chinese intellectuals, to

14. Moy was well known but not always well liked. The U.S. Congress in particular remained highly suspicious of his activities during and after World War II. See Ena Chao, “Lengzhan yu Nanmin yuanzhu: Meiguo ‘Yuanzhu Zhongguo Zhishi Renshi Xiehui,’ 1952–59,” Ou Mei Yanjiu,Vol.27,No. 2 (June 1997), p. 69. 15. Background of Committee to Aid Chinese Refugees, n.d., in Hoover Institution Archives (HIA), ARCI, Box 1, Folder: Background Material of ARCI.

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distribute aid without discrimination (any form of anti-Communist politics was acceptable), to increase public awareness of the “oppressed and imperiled people in Asia” and thereby facilitate aid, and to raise and disperse the funds necessary to achieve these goals.16 Despite claims of being non-political, ARCI from the outset openly presented itself as an asset for the Free World in the Cold War, a stance visible even within its stated rationale for its limited scope. Chinese intellectuals not only had scientific and technological know-how that the West wanted to deny to the Communist government, but they would ideally also be at the heart of rebuilding efforts in China after the collapse of the Communist regime—an event presumed to be just over the horizon. Trained scientists, professors, and medical doctors were also less useful in the sorts of menial employment (e.g., low-skill factory work) available to a migratory population, and the prospect for new jobs in Hong Kong was limited by the U.S.-led embargo on China.17 The focus on intellectuals was also spurred by the recognition that a small private aid organization had little hope of changing the material circumstances of the hundreds of thousands of refugees still pouring into the colony. Hence, the organization needed to narrow the scope of the project quite significantly. Moreover, a concern specific to Hong Kong was that many of the now- homeless Chinese intellectuals had been trained in the United States and still had friends or family there. A survey of refugees conducted by the American University Club of Hong Kong suggested that thousands had graduated from universities in the United States or from U.S.-affiliated church schools in China. The committee initially thought that connections between the Hong Kong refugees and the Chinese-American community were strong enough that the bulk of initial fundraising activities could be concentrated in U.S. Chinatowns, but these hopes proved overly optimistic.18 With the basic parameters in mind, the fledgling organization set out to create a registry of refugee intellectuals in Hong Kong in order to determine who needed help and how best to serve them. This was a logical step in the progression of the organization, but the thoughtlessness with which it was

16. Statement of Purposes Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc., n.d., in HIA, ARCI, Box 1, Folder: Purpose and Program of ARCI. 17. The decision to aid only “intellectuals”—a category that itself proved to be more nebulous than exclusive—was not without precedent. In the evacuation of the mainland in the final days of the civil war, the KMT arranged for key faculty at major mainland universities to be brought out and employed at reconstituted universities or the Department of Education on Taiwan. See Memorandum from Chinese Embassy to Walter Judd, 27 March 1952, in HIA, Walter H. Judd Papers (WHJ), Box 166, 166.1. 18. Memorandum for file, 5 June 1952, in HIA, ARCI Papers, Box 7, Chinese Community, CCBA.

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initiated became a major stumbling block for ARCI throughout its existence. The problems can be narrowed to two larger issues: the difficulty of defining who and what could properly be called an “intellectual,” and the dilemma of raising expectations of solutions that the PVO had no real way to fulfill. Defining the term “intellectual” might appear to be a simple task, but most of the time for ARCI it proved to be a relative term. The first great wave of registrations included a staggering 25,000 individuals, which soared to around 100,000 when family members were included. At no point in the life of the organization did ARCI have the funds, the personnel, or the political clout to deal with refugees in those numbers. For much of its first full year of operation, ARCI activities were limited to exploratory tours and experimental talks. In 1953, the organization began operating with an initially promising intake of donations from the U.S. public, but major grants from organizations such as the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation—both of which were heavily involved with displaced persons work in Europe—were not forthcom- ing. Limited resources, combined with limited options for aiding the refugees, created a large gap between the expectations of the registrants and the actual work of the organization. That gap widened in subsequent years. Despite these difficulties, ARCI proposed an initial slate of sometimes quite creative ideas for aiding migrants. These fell into three basic categories: limited efforts at emergency relief, local employment projects, and resettlement efforts. The prospect of immediate relief was clearly what drove the initial enthusiasm for registering with ARCI. But the problem was that ARCI lacked the organization, the funds, and the necessary permission from the Hong Kong government to provide even small handouts to registrants. In addition, tempo- rary aid—no matter how necessary—could not solve the problem of finding a new livelihood for refugees, and ARCI faced this dilemma year after year when registrants descended on its offices in desperation and near starvation. Instead, ARCI looked to employ refugee intellectuals in ways that would also offer needed services to the larger masses of migrants, often modeling programs on initiatives undertaken by refugee and escapee aid organizations in Europe. Initial plans called for three major projects. First, given the large number of former professors and teachers among ARCI registrants, they de- veloped a proposal either to enlarge college facilities in the colony or to create an entirely new university—a “Free China University.” This plan overlapped with State Department concerns about overseas Chinese students traveling to the PRC to continue their education because no “free world” alternative was readily available. This quixotic notion ran up against two distinct realities: lack of funds for building facilities and paying salaries; and the Hong Kong government’s staunch opposition to the project. Colonial officials also strongly

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opposed a separate proposal to create hospitals and clinics staffed by refugee doctors and nurses. Part of the problem was that the project was temporary in nature and had the potential to create expectations about access to medical care for both the refugees and the general population—expectations that the beleaguered Hong Kong government would later have to meet.19 In the cases of both the university plan and the medical project, Hong Kong officials also complained that refugees were not certified under the British system, and al- lowing them equal status with locally trained professionals risked a dilution of standards across the colony. The third proposal was to employ Chinese refugees in direct fighting on the Cold War information front, an idea met with skepticism and concern by Hong Kong officials, but not with outright opposition. One plan was to create research centers focused on particular regions of China that could use the refugees’ understanding of local conditions to disseminate targeted propaganda; another was to create a journal of Communist publications re- viewed and dissected for the reading public. The most elaborate proposal was a publishing project that would translate books and pamphlets from English and solicit and publish original new Chinese manuscripts, a model already in use among escapee organizations in Europe, including the National Commit- tee for a Free Europe (itself secretly funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency).20 The Free China Literature Program (FCLP), as it would come to be known, took on a life of its own, ultimately working in partnership (and sometimes in competition) with the U.S. Information Service (USIS) to cre- ate anti-Communist–themed reading materials for dissemination in Southeast Asia. The continual budget shortfalls for ARCI, however, put real strains on the FCLP, and by mid-1953 ARCI was already proposing to turn over the project to the Committee for a Free Asia (CFA). The CFA and its Euro- pean counterpart were engaged in similar work, so this would eliminate any potential for duplication and would allow the freed-up ARCI funds to be spent on resettlement programs.21 The work of the FCLP often put ARCI at

19. Howard to Emmet, 10 September 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong September–October 1952. 20. Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 31–36. The National Committee for a Free Europe had put forth a lot of the same ideas proposed by ARCI, including a “University in Exile,” though it, too, ran up against local constraints that made such projects infeasible. Revelations of the ties between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and NCFE and the CIA and CFA led to questions about CIA funding for ARCI that linger to this day. Although ARCI had some potential for intelligence collection in its work registering and interviewing escapees, the bulk of its work focused on the relocation of indigent refugees, and it always struggled to find the necessary funds. 21. 15th Executive Committee, 11 August 1953, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2.

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odds with the Hong Kong government, which repeatedly complained that this supposedly “non-political” organization was engaged in overtly political and anti-PRC activities. ARCI consistently defended its work as necessary to the larger (and noble) fight of the Free World in the Cold War.22 Beyond these grander ideas for making use of refugees’ past educa- tion, ARCI also became involved in a much more basic program to provide employment—even menial work—for those without prospects or a desire to resettle elsewhere. The need for this was readily apparent to the staff at the Hong Kong office, even if the New York office insisted that such efforts were outside the organization’s original scope. The Hong Kong staff made a per- suasive argument for some sort of work program, however, noting that “after over six months of ARCI activity, we have made no move towards alleviating in any real way the large scale misery and want with which we are faced. We just have no answer for the starving man or his sick family, no answer to the man who, unemployed for three years or more, asks only for a job, any job.”23 Complaints that ARCI was concerned only with organization and registra- tion and not with actual aid spurred the initiation of a handicraft program in which refugees could make embroidery, woven bamboo mats, and screens for export—all occupations already emerging in the squatter camps but which ARCI would now help finance. A fledgling project to do just that became the Chinese Refugee Development Organization (CRDO), ultimately the only ARCI project to become fully self-supporting. The program was justified as a way to keep dissatisfaction from sullying the name of ARCI and inhibiting its chances for future work.24 Keeping faith in the organization alive despite a long period of perceived inactivity between the start of registrations and the first visible efforts to relocate migrants became a major challenge for ARCI. The long delay had two causes. The first was finding the funds to implement its programs (i.e., those the Hong Kong government approved), and the second was navigating the diplomatic challenges of arranging resettlement abroad. But before any thought could be given to the latter, the organization had to have money. After some initial success fed at least in part by the novelty of the request, fundraisers for the

22. ARCI Free Chinese Literature Project, n.d., in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong Sept–Oct 1952; and Ernest Nash to B.A. Garside, Expanded Literary Program, 20 May 1953, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 18, Letters from Hong Kong January 1953; and Chao, “Lengzhan yu Nanmin yuanzhu,” p. 76. 23. Howard to Emmet, 15 September 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong September–October 1952. 24. George A. Fitch to B. A. Garside, 28 November 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 5, Folder: ARCI Agenda 1952.

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organization realized that the level of public interest in the plight of the Chinese refugees was meager. As a result, the organization worried that “ARCI faces what is primarily a public relations rather than a fund raising problem.” That might have been the case, but it did not mean a great deal of donations would be forthcoming anytime soon.25 In general, Americans were far more interested in European refugees, no doubt for reasons of tradition and personal or ethnic ties, though “donor fatigue” might have played a role, too. Despite the evident lack of interest, campaigns for funds were necessary for ARCI to remain in principle a “nongovernmental organization.” ARCI’s initial efforts at public fundraising cost more than they brought in, so in 1954 the organization began a joint fundraising campaign with the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China. What ARCI discovered was that, no matter what fundraising method it used, U.S. government officials were more enthusias- tic than private businessmen about the group’s work, an indication that “the apathy toward Free China which affects this group, one of the great potential resources of private American philanthropy.”26 That apathy was, fundraisers found, widespread by the mid-1950s and extended to most campaigns con- nected to China. They attributed the apathy to several causes, including an “anti-Chiang hangover” that was the result of the U.S. failure to support the ROC in its struggle against the Communists in the late 1940s and the evidence published in the China White Paper of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption in the KMT-led regime. ARCI added to these concerns its own frustration with U.S. policy, claiming that the “seeming reluctance of our government to recognize or treat Free China as a full-fledged ally” inhibited efforts at relief activities involving Taiwan. Instead, limited attention to the ROC’s problems and the added complication that former Taiwan governor K. C. Wu was touring the United States and denouncing the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek meant that Americans were often reluctant to give money to any organization focused on the future of “Free China.”27 One suggestion, then, was to recast the fundraising question in terms of larger Cold War policy, to convince potential donors that, “it is to our country’s interest—aside from humanitarian and ethical considerations—to have the island of Formosa in friendly hands .... There can be no doubt that

25. Report to ARCI Executive Committee by the Executive Director, 10 December 1953, attached to 18th Executive Committee, 10 December 1953, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 26. Memorandum from Marvin Liebman to ARCI and AMBAC, 5 May 1954, attached to 21st Executive Committee, 5 May 1954, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 27. Memorandum from Marvin Liebman to ARCI and AMBAC, 16 September 1954, attached to 21st Executive Committee, 16 September 1954, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2.

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if Formosa is lost, our nation’s position in the remainder of the Pacific will be menaced.”28 According to ARCI, preventing the loss of the ROC was possible by funding the transfer of talented individuals (and ARCI registrants) from Hong Kong to Taiwan. Although privately donated money was useful as a measure of mass support for the organization’s goals, one look at the European refugee relief programs revealed that the more lucrative option was to secure grants from private foun- dations. ARCI made repeated approaches to the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, and Rockefeller Foundation, all of which had been active on refugee issues in Europe. The Ford Foundation showed the most interest, but it had already contributed more than $4 million to relief work in Europe and ultimately chose to fund the UN investigation of the situation in Hong Kong rather than ARCI itself.29 In October 1953, Harold Oram, a philanthropy con- sultant and professional fundraiser, suggested making a straightforward appeal to major private foundations, saying that they needed to fund ARCI “to make clear that American philanthropy does not discriminate against Chinese.”30 That bit of public relations blackmail did not work, however, and ARCI never received a significant grant from a private organization. The funding prob- lem would have resulted in the quick demise of the organization if not for a new development in 1953: the growing interest and engagement of the U.S. government in Hong Kong refugee problem. The ultimate solution to ARCI’s unending funding troubles was coop- eration with the U.S. government. The State Department wanted to achieve certain goals in the region but liked the cover of an NGO that could bear the brunt of the responsibility. The money was made available thanks to the Ker- sten amendment to the Mutual Security Act. In 1951, Representative Charles J. Kersten, a Republican from Wisconsin, proposed that funds from the act be used for promotion of anti-Communism among East European refugees. The amendment was in line with the thinking of Truman’s PSB, which was also reviewing the role of refugee policy in larger U.S. foreign policy considerations. U.S. government support for similar groups in Europe also included Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funds, something that cannot be ruled out in the case of ARCI, regardless of whether the organization’s workers on the ground

28. Ibid. 29. 6th Executive Committee, 13 October 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2, Folder: Executive Committee (I). 30. Memorandum by Harold Oram to ARCI Executive Committee, Fall Fundraising Campaign, 5 October 1953, attached to 5th Executive Committee, 15 May 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2, Folder: Executive Committee (I).

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in Hong Kong and Taipei were aware of it. On both continents, the PSB’s con- cerns pertained to escapees from Communist countries. The board noted that “the manner in which such escapees were taken care of in the areas to which they escaped had a very important bearing upon future defection, upon potential guerillas now resident in Iron Curtain countries, and upon the reception given to free world propaganda addressed to audiences in those countries.”31 The Eisenhower administration’s implementation of the Kersten Amendment and PSB proposals became the U.S. Escapee Program in 1953, the same year the State Department began allotting some of the funds for resettlement of Chi- nese refugees.32 The first grants came in five installments of $50,000 each and helped ARCI move refugees out of Hong Kong and into Taiwan and Southeast Asia. In obtaining these funds, ARCI officials felt they had achieved a major goal: they had drawn the attention of the U.S. government to the situation in the Far East. “This will place Chinese anti-Communist refugees on a par with European anti-Communist refugees in respect to our national concern,” one internal report proclaimed.33 This claim was overly optimistic, but U.S. government funds did quietly take over ARCI budgets, rising from 42 percent of the organization’s funding in 1953 to 92 percent in 1959, when ARCI ceased its resettlement operations. The relationship between ARCI and federal grant- makers was periodically troubled by audits and accounting disagreements, but both partners agreed they derived a net benefit from the arrangement.34 These funds, at times supplemented with grants from the ROC government, allowed ARCI not only to undertake its major project, the resettlement of several thousand refugee intellectuals in Taiwan, but also positioned the organization to work as a clearinghouse for applications to emigrate to the United States. Both programs suited U.S. foreign policy goals, and in both cases the U.S. government preferred to claim this was the work of private citizens. This symbiotic relationship continued until ARCI began to shut down resettlement operations in the late 1950s, though through it all ARCI continued to campaign to raise private funds to maintain its status

31. “Action by PSB Relative to Problem of Caring for Refugees from Iron Curtain Countries,” 24 October 1951, in HSTL, PSB, HST-SMOF, Box 33, Folder: 383.7 Escapee Program—Section I [Part 1of6]. 32. Walter L. Hixon, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1949–1961 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), p. 67. 33. 10th Executive Committee, 20 March 1953, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 34. Chao, “Lengzhan yu Nanmin yuanzhu,” p. 87.

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as a private organization.35 Although the literary project and development corporation both became major projects for ARCI, its primary work—the part that had the most unqualified access to government funds—was always focused on facilitating the relocation of stranded refugees. ARCI spent the next few years trying to find overseas jobs, housing, and transportation for Chinese intellectuals, supported by USEP grants. Unlike similar projects in Europe, however, most of the potential destinations for the Hong Kong refugees had long, sometimes storied, histories of denying entry to Chinese migrants. As a result, ARCI personnel initially were overly sanguine about the possibility of a positive reception for Chinese refugees overseas, suggesting the relocation of registrants in Taiwanand across Southeast Asia. Few locations were enthusiastic about the prospect of receiving Chinese refugees. The countries of Southeast Asia, with long-established Chinese commu- nities and a potential need for Chinese teachers, professors, and scientists, at first first seemed to be a kind of Promised Land for Chinese refugees. As one ARCI survey noted, the region had already incorporated millions of Chinese into local societies and “could undoubtedly still take many more were it not for the anti-Chinese sentiment running so strongly in those countries.”36 Even before 1949, UN organizations like the UNRRA and IRO engaged in long, often fruitless negotiations with Southeast Asian countries trying to convince them to accept former residents back into their countries; new migrants were an even tougher sell. Fearing that the refugees were Communists in disguise, the Southeast Asian countries were reluctant to welcome them. In some cases, these countries produced Chinese refugees of their own. Attention turned for a time to the idea of a large-scale colonization project on a relatively unpopulated expanse of land somewhere in the Pacific. These hopes were based on a paternalistic and unrealistic view of the Chinese refugees, seeing them as wedded to a simple way of life: “Both the food and the way of life of the Chinese are much simpler [than that of European refugees]. Their food and staples are rice and flour (depending on whether from north or

35. 39th Executive Committee, 25 November 1957, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. The necessity of maintaining at least the appearance of distance between ARCI and the U.S. government was due in part to the Hong Kong authorities’ endless frustration with the swollen size of the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong and the tendency of Great Britain to use its colony as a base for conducting overt anti- Communist campaigns. By the end, no substantial difference existed between government employees and ARCI staff, but the appearance of the distinction remained important to the organization’s work. 36. Report by Hong Kong Office of ARCI, Inc., n.d., in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong, September–October 1952; and Savingram No. 1449 from Hong Kong to SSC, “Activities of the Judd Committee,” 8 September 1952, in The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNAUK), Colonial Office (CO), CO 1023/117s.

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south China), with a few vegetables and a little meat or fish. The most simple form of housing would be sufficient. They are an adaptable and ingenious race.”37 This notion became the basis for a few proposals to move up to 20,000 Chinese refugees to unpopulated locations in the Pacific to form a new colony. A proposal to create such a utopia on the island of Borneo ran afoul of local authorities there. ARCI then turned its attention to the underpopulated landscape of Portuguese Timor, holding several meetings with the Portuguese government to discuss the idea.38 In the process, ARCI learned some hard lessons about the limits of its status in the international sphere, as discussed in a press release in 1952: “The problem of finding and persuading other countries to permit resettlement is one which can be dealt with only on the highest levels, through governments and with the help of the United Nations.”39 ARCI’s best hope for resettling migrants was always the ROC on Taiwan, and much of the organization’s early work focused on trying to make the ROC government agree. Judd in particular was convinced that intellectuals were necessary for the ROC’s ability to develop and challenge the PRC.40 Throughout the decade, however, the ROC proved recalcitrant. Faced with its own population pressures, abundant sources of internal subversion, and a barely functioning economy, the leaders on Taiwan did not relish adding hundreds of thousands of new arrivals, whatever the propaganda opportuni- ties that existed in the crisis. Moreover, most refugees had not previously been aligned with the KMT, adding to the security concerns raised by bringing them to Taiwan.41 The ROC government claimed that Communist infiltra- tors had been discovered even in the Rennie’s Mill camp, itself meant to be a haven for anti-Communists. These security concerns led to careful screening of all potential arrivals. Even bringing just a few hundred families to the al- ready overcrowded island meant dealing with social infrastructure: inadequate facilities for health care, education, even drinking water.42 Still, recognizing the political implications of refusing to accept refugees, ROC officials maintained that as soon as refugees could be screened thoroughly,

37. Report by Hong Kong Office of ARCI, Inc., n.d., in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong, September–October 1952. 38. ARCI Report by Fitch, Far Eastern Representative, 5 October 1953, attached to the 17th Executive Committee, 5 October 1953, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 39. Press Statement, December 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong November–December 1952. 40. Chao, “Lengzhan yu Nanmin yuanzhu,” p. 73. 41. Alan Valentine to Judd, 1 February 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 166, Folder 166.1. 42. ARCI, Inc., “Purpose and Program of ARCI,” n.d., in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 1.

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they would be admitted to Taiwan and granted both work and housing.43 The standing requirement for obtaining an entry permit to Taiwan included nam- ing two guarantors of high standing already there, along with a thorough back- ground investigation by KMT security agents when the applicants were still in Hong Kong. Most ARCI registrants had no hope of providing guarantors, so the organization obtained a waiver of sorts from the ROC government.44 That helped speed up the process, but the security check could not be waived, so progress was still generally slow. Over the next few years, the practical tasks involved in moving intellectuals and their families to Taiwan became a significant portion of ARCI’s work. Once ARCI made the difficult decision to focus on Taiwan repatriations, it looked past transport to scouring the island for potential work and housing. At the height of the resettlement operations, ARCI even took responsibility for building housing units, including a block of temporary apartments outside Taipei that became known as “Juddville” and housed refugees in transition. ARCI also distributed milk to children; offered job counseling; and explored building a clinic in Taipei.45

The State Department, the Hong Kong Consulate, and ARCI

Although the Hong Kong office was created in large part to facilitate relocations to Taiwan, by the mid-1950s it had found for itself a crucial role to play in facilitating the entry of refugees to the United States. The U.S. Congress passed the Refugee Relief Act (RRA) in 1953, granting 200,000 non-quota visas to refugees and escapees for relocation to the United States. With the strong backing of Representative Judd, Congress added an additional 5,000 visas for refugees in Asia, 2,000 of which were reserved for ROC passport holders.46 An additional 2,000 visas were reserved for “non-indigenous” people in Asia, mostly Belorussians and Jewish escapees who had fled to China over the previous 30 years. Some of the visas were reserved for the indigenous

43. Memorandum from George Yeh, 16 May 1952, attached to 5th Executive Committee, 15 May 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2, Executive Committee (I). 44. ARCI Report by Fitch, Far Eastern Representative, 5 October 1953, attached to the 17th Executive Committee, 5 October 1953, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 45. G. A. Fitch, Report to the ARCI Advisory Board of Taiwan, 12 August 1955, in HIA, WHJ, Box 171, 171.2, China Files. 46. Pub. L. No. 83–203 §§ 2–4, 67 Stat. 400, 405–407 (1953).

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populations of Asia. Many went to Chinese students and residents long in the United States but without permanent residency, but others went to victims of natural disasters in Japan, to Korean orphans, or to other East Asian migrants. Still, the visas represented the best chance for Chinese refugees in Hong Kong to emigrate to the United States. The bureaucratic issues with finding suitable candidates for the visas and completing the extensive paperwork, security reviews, and health checks needed before visas could be granted necessitated assistance from outside the already overworked Hong Kong consulate. The FERP placed its own staff in the consulate to oversee the program and conduct the necessary investiga- tions. For the FERP staffers, who were employed directly by the Security and Consular Affairs division of the State Department, the work in Hong Kong was far more complicated than for equivalent staff members in Europe. For example, as of the week of 20 May 1955, the Hong Kong post had 1,259 approved “assurances”—that is, promises from refugee sponsors in the United States to help refugees with jobs and housing and ensure they did not become a public charge. Finding and approving assurances were potentially the most difficult part of getting a refugee visa, but in Hong Kong, even with 1,259 approved, only 18 refugee visas were issued the week of 20 May.47 Members of Congress whose constituents included Chinese Americans or people who had granted assurances began to face increasing questions about the slow speed of approvals in Hong Kong, and they in turn peppered Washington-based State Department officials with inquiries. With general applications and assurances received, three things slowed the processing of refugee visa applications: the need for a certificate of reentry, the security investigation of the applicant, and the application for a passport endorsed by the ROC government. The reentry problem became a subject for negotiation with each individual government that was playing host to one or more potential refugees. For refugees to receive refugee visas, another government had to certify its willingness to take them back if for some reason they could not be admitted to the United States. Potential Chinese refugees were scattered across Asia, especially in Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and continental Southeast Asia. The United States concluded a certificate of readmission agreement with the British government of Hong Kong in December of 1954 and another with the Portuguese for

47. Scott McLeod to Everett Drumright, May 1955, in NARA, RG 59, Records of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs, Office of Refugee and Migration Affairs, Records Pertaining to the RRP at Foreign Service Posts (SCA—ORMA), Box 19, Hong Kong Survey.

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Macau in the summer of 1955.48 The Philippines and Indonesia never granted readmission certificates, severely curtailing the ability of U.S. consuls in those areas to offer refugee visas, and Japan did not begin to issue the certificates until after a long series of negotiations. The second issue, that of investigation, also proved complicated and the object of some amount of bureaucratic infighting. The root of the problem was the history of document fraud among Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong, itself a product of the long-standing restrictiveness of U.S. policy on Chinese immigration. As Halleck Rose, an RRA investigator, observed, the consular officers in Hong Kong tended to assume that “every Chinese seeking to enter the United States is a fraud.”49 This history colored the perspectives of most of the regular consular staff, from Frank Wathen, the principle fraud investigator, right up to Consul General Everett Drumright, who wrote a scathing indictment of the problem, connecting it to the potential for Chinese Communist spies, and sent it to Washington in the form of an 89-page Foreign Service Despatch in December 1955.50 The result of the history of falsified applications (the unit claimed to have found evidence of fraud in 85 percent of cases) and the consular staff’s sensitivity to it was that regular passport and visa investigations were intensive and time-consuming. As Halleck Rose noted, these included home visits that were “lurid affairs where every scrap of correspondence in the home is piled into sacks and taken away to be examined in the fraud office. The ‘visits’ are made with the approval of the Hong Kong police but they have not endeared us to the Chinese community.”51 Not only did heavy-handed U.S. investigations undermine some of the public relations benefits of the refugee policy, but the system greatly com- plicated the refugee visa cases. The regular consular staff could not handle the added load of the refugee visas, but Hong Kong authorities often ex- pressed their concern about adding more investigators to the already bloated U.S. consulate. Moreover, individuals who were turned down for passport or non-immigrant visa applications frequently then applied for a refugee visa, requiring substantial coordination between the two staffs. That coordination

48. Memorandum from Jean J. Chenard to Gerety, 31 January 1956, in NARA, RG 59, SCA-ORMA, Box 8, Folder Far East. 49. Memorandum from Halleck Rose to Gerety, 31 January 1956, in NARA, RG 59, SCA-ORMA, Box 8, Folder Far East. 50. Foreign Service Despatch No. 931, 9 December 1955, in NARA, RG 59, Records of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs, Box 7, Folder 1-C/4. 51. Report on the Survey of the Investigative Section and RRP in the Consulate General in Hong Kong, 14 July 1955, in NARA, RG 59, SCA-ORMA, Box 8, Folder Far East; and Memorandum by Rose to Gerety, 31 January 1956.

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was never easy because the two groups had fundamentally different missions. Rose acknowledged that the RRP and the regular immigration and passport program at the consulate were “directly opposed to each other in their objec- tives. We are seeking to facilitate the entry into the US of qualified Chinese refugees and the regular program is, in effect, seeking to restrict Chinese im- migration to the United States.”52 State Department records for the program in the Far East are filled with disputes between the regular consular staff in Hong Kong and the temporary FERP investigators. The third problem was the ROC government’s reluctance to provide en- dorsed passports for the refugee applicants. In response to the U.S. Congress’s repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, the ROC created a new passport screening process after World War II. The new process involved investigating the education, background, and language ability of any potential applicants to ensure that only the best representatives of China would arrive in the United States and become future U.S. citizens. After the ROC lost the civil war and retreated to Taiwan, the screening process changed very little, simply replacing mainland school records with interviews with people who knew the applicants in their hometowns.53 The inauguration of the RRA meant that the ROC amended the existing procedures with a special new case-by-case investigation procedure to determine who would receive an endorsed passport.54 The com- bination of the anti-fraud visa investigations in Hong Kong and the passport investigations in Taipei meant that a single applicant with an assurance in hand could wait a year or more for the chance to travel. Faced with difficulties in getting applicants processed, U.S. government officials approached the NGOs working with Chinese refugees in Hong Kong to secure their aid in implementing FERP, bringing together representatives from ARCI, China Institute in America, the Church World Service, the Na- tional Lutheran Council, and the War Relief Services of the National Catholic Welfare Conference.55 ARCI’s particular usefulness under the FERP was re- lated to its experience negotiating with the ROC government, which helped U.S. programs in obtaining entry visas for Taiwan and passports for refugees. The complex procedures for issuing visas ensured that there would be more potential applicants than would be approved within the timeframe of the act,

52. Memorandum from Rose to Gerety, 31 January 1956. 53. “Meiguo Xiugai Yinmin Lv,” Memorandum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, n.d., in Academia Historica, Taipei, 172-1/1940-2. 54. “Zenyang shenqing tebie yimin fu Mei,” Huaqiao Yue Bao, Vol. 25 (July 1944), pp. 7–11; and “Fu zhu Niuyue qiaowu weiyuanhui,” Huaqiao Yue Bao, Vol. 40 (October 1945), pp. 40–41. 55. 18th Executive Committee, 10 December 1953, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2.

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but organizations like ARCI, with their registered members, could pull the files of individuals with strong credentials and a high likelihood of being ap- proved. ARCI also met with ROC officials to try to facilitate faster approval of passports, even going so far as to give preferential treatment to refugees registered with ARCI as people likely “to be an asset to this country as well as a credit to their country of origin.”56 That brings us back to Paul and Priscilla Liu. After five years in Hong Kong, where Paul had found work in a warehouse by day and at a YMCA by night, he was still actively looking for places he could go to with his family and use his training in horticulture. ARCI helped with the process of applying for an RRA visa and paid for the family’s passage to the United States, where they became the first Chinese to enter under the RRA. Paul, using his contacts at Ohio State University, arrived in the United States with employment lined up at the Ohio Agricultural Experimental Station. The Liu family story was widely publicized in the English and Chinese-language press on both sides of the Pacific, a clear reminder of the usefulness of refugee work to the larger public diplomacy goals of U.S. Cold War foreign policy.57 At the same time, the news of their arrival increased the hopes of many looking to emigrate, as the Hong Kong consulate had previously been well known for its reticence in supplying quota, non-quota, student, or even visitor visas to Chinese nationals. After a few months of work on the RRA cases, the law was modified in ways that facilitated intellectuals’ cases. The rule on employment clearances from local labor offices was relaxed. The requirement that applicants have jobs lined up in the United States before applying for RRA visas was dropped, and preference could now be given to cases submitted by ARCI. Nevertheless, the greatest difficulty in getting intellectuals cleared for entrance to the United States was the fact that many were much older than the average immigrant and most had health problems. Finding work for them in the United States was thus unusually difficult.58 Rather than running the risk of raising hopes unrealistically high, as had been done with the Taiwan resettlement program, ARCI took a conservative approach to the RRA applications, opting at first to provide its assistance

56. RRP Report, Attachment to 30th Executive Committee, 8 December 1955, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 57. Paine Knickerbocker, “Five Happy Refugees from China Dock Here,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9 January 1955, p. 19, press clipping in HIA, WHJ, Box 165, China File, ARCI General Records 1952–59. 58. 27th Executive Committee, 15 March 1955, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. One ARCI report suggests that as many as 90 percent of Chinese refugees in Hong Kong in the mid-1950s were suffering from tuberculosis. See 30th Executive Committee, 8 December 1955, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2.

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only to those who had substantial contacts in the United States—contacts that were already eager to offer them support and assistance.59 ARCI also managed applications from Chinese already in the United States who wanted to adjust their status and avoid being required to return to China upon the expiration of their visas. By 1956, fully half of the applications received by the organization were from the United States. ARCI departed slightly from this conservative approach by processing a limited number of applications from Chinese who resided in Latin America and were hoping to migrate to the United States, though in these cases, the migrants’ status as bona fide refugees was harder to establish.60 Over the course of its work on the RRA applications, ARCI developed what was for the most part a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with the U.S. government. As a result of this cooperation, U.S. officials occasionally approached ARCI about participating in other projects related to Chinese migration. For example, in 1956 the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong reported that hundreds of Chinese students from Southeast Asia had been enticed into traveling to the Chinese mainland to enroll in universities. After miserable experiences in the PRC, they fled back to Hong Kong and now needed assistance in returning to their homes across the region. As with its work under the RRA, the directors of ARCI agreed that if the U.S. government could provide the necessary funds, they would be happy to help.61 ARCI also took on the responsibility of locating refugees with marketable stories for use in USIS films, publications, and radio. With no direct access to the refugees themselves, USIS had trouble finding suitable subjects unless ARCI stepped in to help.62 However, by taking on this role, ARCI only increased the suspicion that it was more of an extension of the State Department than a partner. The RRA expired in 1956, raising important questions about what was next for ARCI. The numbers of migrants willing to relocate to Taiwan had dwindled, and ARCI began to explore halting its operations. The ROC govern- ment remained interested in seeing more U.S. visas made available to Chinese refugees as a signal of U.S. support for Free China. The Office of Chinese Af- fairs in the State Department picked up the cause, highlighting the importance of continuing to provide a haven for intellectuals: “Since Communist China

59. Report on the Refugee Relief Program, attached to the 19th Executive Committee, 13 September 1955, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 60. 32nd Executive Committee, 23 February 1956, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 61. 34th Executive Committee, 29 May 1956, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 62. Foreign Service Despatch 67, 14 January 1957, in NARA, RG 59, SCA-ORMA, Box 15, Hong Kong Post July 1 1956 to March 13 1957 [Folder 1/2].

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can ill afford to lose any of its better educated, highly trained personnel at this time, such defections would promote the United States policy objectives in the Far East.”63 In 1957, Congress passed PL 85-316 to allow for the entry of additional refugees into the United States, and ARCI again accepted some responsibility for screening the migrants before their voyage to the United States. But by this time ARCI was starting to close down, so the cooperation was short-lived. As early as the spring of 1955, ARCI found that the rate of resettlements to Taiwan had declined drastically, a situation the organization blamed on the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954–1955 and on concern about the extent to which the United States was committed to the defense of Taiwan—why relocate to Taiwan if it will shortly be taken over by the PRC? The more long- standing concerns for migrants—such as an inability to find employment and housing—also remained important issues. But another major factor in the reduced numbers relocating to Taiwan was the sheer length of time it took to complete resettlements. By 1955, many of the refugees had been in Hong Kong for five or six years, and they were increasingly finding ways to adapt and assimilate into local society.64 The reduced numbers also meant that both ARCI and the U.S. State Department could start to talk about ending their partnership in Taiwan. The relationship had not been without contention. In 1956, USEP ad- ministrators audited ARCI out of concerns over the level of financial support the organization received from the ROC government and supposed irregular- ities in the handling of housing grants and payments to new arrivals. ARCI’s Taiwan director, George A. Fitch, explained away the problems as the result of a misunderstanding over bookkeeping procedures.65 Officials in Washington held a slightly different view. James Campbell of FERP, in a letter to Lau- rence Dawson of USEP in April 1956, suggested that the time had perhaps come for ARCI to shut down operations in Taiwan and that the resettlement project had been largely supplanted with general welfare work “which they are reluctant to give up as they believe that these services justify their existence. Obviously they inflate their caseload statistics, giving the false impression of great activity for many people.” In addition to voicing suspicion about falsified data (something he attributed less to Fitch and more to Fitch’s “incompetent” Chinese subordinates) and complaining about shifting priorities, Campbell

63. Aide-Memoire´ from Chinese Embassy, n.d. [1957]; and Memorandum from Robertson to Mc- Collum, n.d. [1957], in NARA, RG 59, Chinese Affairs 1957, Box 3, 211.1 Refugee Program. 64. 28th Executive Committee, 25 May 1955, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 65. 34th Executive Committee, 29 May 1956, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2.

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embraced a larger critique emerging from the State Department at this time; namely, that too many PVOs were becoming accustomed to being funded via the new Cold War initiatives and therefore were becoming too dependent on government funds rather than private donations. Campbell insisted that “the time has come to definitely put a stop to this ‘feeding at the public trough’ and to bring down the curtain on what has been a very good ‘show’ without further boring the audience with a 5th or 6th Act, in Chinese opera style.” He cautioned, however, that Fitch and his office should continue to operate in Taiwan just long enough to regain public support, so that closing down oper- ations there would not have an adverse effect on U.S. foreign policy objectives or on the Nationalist government.66 Even as the controversy continued over ARCI’s Taiwan operations, Camp- bell and Dawson continued to look favorably upon the work of the ARCI Hong Kong office. The U.S. State Department found its cooperation with the Hong Kong office so useful, especially because ARCI was a non-religious organization, that senior officials wanted ARCI to stay on to act as an agent in Hong Kong. If ARCI proved unwilling to expand its mission and stay open after 1960, officials hoped another organization with a broader mission (but perhaps the same personnel) would emerge.67 ARCI was, in the end, unwilling. Financial problems never ceased to plague the organization, and the volume of work was winding down. As ARCI personnel processed applications for visas under the new act, they also began closing down the offices, selling off “Juddville” in Taiwan, collecting on loans made to migrants who needed no assistance other than airfare, and ending fundraising operations. Completing the organization’s business took years—the last travel loans were still being cleared in 1970—but the major efforts of ARCI decreased dramatically in the late 1950s. Throughout these years of waning activity, State Department officials made repeated attempts to convince ARCI Hong Kong to stay open. On more than one occasion, ARCI’s board of directors voted to shutter operations, only to be convinced to extend the deadline as new funds were offered by FERP representatives at the Hong Kong consulate and in the State Department.68 Even as ARCI was winding down its efforts in Hong Kong, the core staff of the organization mobilized once more in 1959 to form a new “Ad Hoc

66. James H. Campbell to Laurence Dawson, 30 April 1956, in NARA, RG 59, SCA-ORMA, Box 11, U.S. Escapee Program. 67. 46th Executive Committee, 14 April 1960, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2. 68. Telegram from State Department to Hong Kong, 23 April 1957, in NARA, RG 59, SCA-ORMA, Box 15, Folder: Hong Kong Post March 14 1957 to [Folder 2/2].

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Committee for Tibetan Refugees.” The Chinese Communist crackdown in Tibet in March had prompted large numbers of Tibetans to cross the border into northern India. The staff’s rationale was that “since Tibet is an autonomous province of China it is both legitimate and logical for organizations serving the Chinese people to take the lead in seeking assistance for these Tibetan refugees.”69 Travis Fletcher from the ARCI Hong Kong office made a quick trip to India to assess the situation, reporting back that many of the refugees had been wounded in the fighting before they fled, so the most immediate need was for medicine. Using the infrastructure in place for ARCI and ABMAC, the Free China Fund quickly raised $100,000 for supplies, along with in- kind donations of medical supplies and transportation from pharmaceutical companies and Pan-American Airlines. This ad-hoc committee rose and died away relatively quickly, but it demonstrated the continued interest of the original ARCI staff in East Asian refugee issues and was a clear reminder that the organization saw aiding the fight against Communism in Asia as part of its mission, no matter what the circumstances. When a second wave of Chinese refugees descended on Hong Kong in 1962 as a result of the failures of the Great Leap Forward, it, too, seemed like a perfect opportunity to reopen the offices and bring ARCI back from the dead. Instead, although the usual suspects from the ARCI offices again rallied to the cause, this time they attempted only a campaign to raise awareness and did not try raise funds for relief efforts. Instead, Anna Chennault formed an organization called Chinese Refugee Relief that promised to address the needs of new arrivals in Hong Kong more directly. A Chinese American herself, Chennault hoped to be able to rally other Chinese Americans to the cause— an approach ARCI had earlier pursued with scant success. In a letter asking Judd to join the organization as a sponsor, Chennault explained that, “our first aim is to raise money to feed, clothe, and re-settle the Chinese refugees. But we consider it equally important to dramatize to the world that the American people are as sympathetic to Oriental Refugees as they have been to European and Cuban refugees.”70 Although Judd and the rest of ARCI had good reason to think otherwise about the American people’s actual sympathies, he promised at least his name and the appearance of support.

69. Memorandum from B. A. Garside to ARCI and ABMAC Executive Committees, 30 March 1959, in HIA, WHJ, Box 190, Folder: 190.5 American Emergency Committee for Tibetan Refugees, Non-printed Material, January–May 1959. 70. Claire L. Chennault to Walter Judd, 1 June 1962, in HIA, WHJ, Box 185, Folder 185.3 Emergency Committee for Chinese Refugees.

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“Thunder without Rain:” Shared Mythmaking andSharedDefeats

Given the close, sometimes almost indistinguishable nature of the relationship between the U.S. government and ARCI, criticism of the organization hit more broadly at U.S. policy in Asia. With Hong Kong refugees, as with many issues arising out of the Chinese Civil War, both the problem and the aid efforts became a source of cross-strait contention between the PRC and the ROC, and the Hong Kong and U.S. governments waded in to defend their interests. Two matters were of particular importance: first, the extent to which aid programs politicized the refugees such that their real, humanitarian needs were lost in the earnest efforts to be indignant on their behalf; and second, the repeated failure of the UN to take action in Hong Kong. In both cases, the close ties between ARCI and the U.S. government shaped their roles in the debate. Although the founding members of ARCI were the first to highlight the organization’s good intentions, there was plenty of room to criticize its actual work. The most fundamental problem with the project had to do with the choice and manner of limiting aid to intellectuals. In founding ARCI, Judd suggested that the privileged position of intellectuals in Chinese society would forestall any resentment toward the organization for choosing to limit its aid in this way. That claim, however, proved foolishly optimistic by 1952, when C. Y. Stone of the Hong Kong office reported receiving numerous threatening letters complaining that ARCI was spending a lot of money to help a few professors while the rest of the refugees starved.71 Some refugees accused ARCI of graft and corruption in the Hong Kong office. One wrote that his son had died of malnutrition while refugees who had relatives among the office staff received unneeded aid.72 The staff of the Hong Kong office even considered a new insurance policy and moving to a new, undisclosed location, because “letters coming in from our applicants show a more and more threatening attitude and there seems to be a growing atmosphere of impatience and frustration which, although entirely unwarranted, is none the less disturbing.” The author went on to blame Communist-affiliated newspapers for sowing the seeds of discontent.73

71. David W. K. Au to Emmet, 11 August 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong, March–August 1952. 72. Liu Yung to Walter Judd, 5 August 1954, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 12, Judd Correspondence 1954. The frequency of this accusation is also noted in Notes on Dr. Judd’s Speech, ARCI Board Meeting, 20 January 1954, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 12, Judd Correspondence 1954. 73. Au to Emmet, 10 June 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters to Hong Kong, March– December 1952.

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A related criticism came from within the organization: Although the goal of saving intellectuals might have been entirely reasonable at the outset, ARCI in its first flush of activity registered far too many people. Using a vague definition of “intellectuals” that included military police and others with limited higher education but two to three years of work experience, ARCI staffers quickly discovered that “our relief efforts embrace a very small group of intellectuals, but exclude almost 99% of those to whom we have given the right to register with us as intellectual refugees.”74 This situation could not help but exacerbate the already prominent public criticisms of the organization for registering too many and helping too few. At the time, ARCI staff attributed many of the attacks to Communist opposition to the organization’s project, fundamental misunderstandings of the nature and goals of ARCI, inevitable delays in accomplishing tasks as difficult and complex as those adopted by the organization, the occasional slipup by ARCI personnel, and sheer pettiness on the part of critics. Even after citing all those excuses, however, the staffers did acknowledge that they had taken too long to get the programs under way. If resettlement was not an immediate possibility, ARCI ought to have taken some course of action in the meantime. After all, not only the organization’s own success but its accomplishments “in strengthening friendly ties between China and America” depended on it.75 In late 1952, the New York and Hong Kong offices of ARCI reported increasingly violent attacks on the organization in the English- and Chinese- language press. These attacks generally centered on the idea that ARCI was less “nongovernmental” than it tried to appear. No matter how many times ARCI reiterated that it was only “a group of private citizens who happen to be especially aware of the needs of the Hong Kong refugees, and considered it their duty to call this to the attention of the American people and Government,” Communist officials and newspapers continued to express doubt that ARCI was anything more than an extension of the U.S. government.76 The Mutual Security Act of 1951 had been met with skepticism and derision on the part of the PRC’s People’s Daily, especially the provisions of the act intended to fund the refugee aid activities of organizations like ARCI. The PRC newspaper

74. Howard to Emmet, 15 September 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong September–October 1952. 75. 7th Executive Committee, 12 December 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2, Folder: Executive Committee (I). 76. Emmet to Au, 11 October 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters to Hong Kong March– December 1952.

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claimed that such projects were front operations for covert operations aimed at the total destruction of the Chinese Communists. The official Soviet Tass news service similarly reported that ARCI was at the center of a network of U.S. spies.77 Frequent charges that ARCI was little more than a front organization for the CIA were not limited to the Chinese. In the years since the organization ceased operations, scholars have made their own accusations, and individuals and organizations tied to ARCI had enough links to CIA programs to invite questions about the extent of funding ties or other forms of cooperation. However, ARCI was never primarily an intelligence-gathering organization.78 The PRC did not consider the Chinese in Hong Kong—even the post- 1949 arrivals—to be refugees. Instead, Chinese officials pointed to a tradition of movement between Hong Kong and Guangdong and accused the British colonial government of sealing a traditionally lucrative open border. The PRC government of also consistently and adamantly opposed the ROC’s attempt to get the UN to consider getting involved in Hong Kong, pointing out that the British government was not taking responsibility for the colony’s residents and was even allowing the United States and the ROC to use (and abuse) migrants for their own propaganda purposes to counter the PRC.79 The UN’s designation of 1959 as “World Refugee Year” met with similar disdain from the PRC, which noted that the program was a way for the imperialist West—the United States in particular—to target socialist countries in the Cold War battle for world public opinion. World Refugee Year included a stamp campaign in which countries issued World Refugee Year stamps for letters in order to raise funds for refugee aid. The Chinese Communist authorities instituted a policy of returning any letters that both used the stamps and referred to the refugees, as well as any letters that made special reference to Tibetan refugees.80

77. “Meiguo zai Xianggang jianli tewu zuzhi; wangtu dui wo guo jianshe jinxing pohuai,” Renmin ribao, 22 August 1952, p. 3; Report by G. W. Aldington, 17 November 1952, in TNAUK, CO, CO 1023/117; “An Espionage Center at Hongkong,” n.d., in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 7, British Government. 78. Wilford, pp. 187, 295–296. Wilford unequivocally identifies ARCI as a CIA “front” organization, though this meant different things to different organizations at different times. Several of the individuals working with the organization, including Harold Oram, were involved in other CIA-funded groups, and ARCI cooperated with the CFA, which like its European counterpart also had CIA ties. Most likely, at least some of the U.S. government funds received by ARCI came via the CIA, though no conclusive evidence of this has yet emerged. 79. Guanyu lianda taolun xianggang zhongguo “nanmin” wenti de qingshi, 6 August 1957, in MOFA- Beijing, Dui shierjie lianda taolun Xianggang Zhongguo “nanmin” wenti de taidu, File 113-00302- 01(1). 80. Guanyu dui Guowai lai tieyou “Shijie Nanmin Nian” youpiaohegaiyou “Shijie Nanmin Nian” youchuo de xinjian, April 1960, in MOFA-Beijing, “Shijie Nanmin Nian” youpiao he youjian wenti de chuli, File 113-00280-01(1).

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The PRC’s critique of the “refugee” relief projects demonstrates the extent to which Beijing viewed any effort to aid the migrants—whether undertaken by American PVOs or the UN—as an extension of U.S. government policy. The critique of U.S. refugee aid came not just from the Cold War enemies of the United States, however. The Hong Kong government had its own, not unrelated, complaints. ARCI proposals for projects and even its actual work frequently met with opposition from Hong Kong officials who worried about managing the crisis and the colony’s precarious international position. Gen- erally, the only PVO work Hong Kong officials supported was resettlement abroad: anything else had the potential of either raising false expectations for integration into the colony or, worse, inspiring more migrants to come. Lim- iting aid—whether to intellectuals or to refugees in general—when thousands of long-term residents of the colony starved or struggled also had the potential to create backlash or riots.81 Moreover, any aid project undertaken by a U.S. or pro-ROC organization had to be matched by the government letting in a pro-PRC organization, which was the only way to be certain of continued cooperation between the colony and Beijing.82 ARCI upset all of these delicate balances, and its programs more often than not were undeniably political. The FCLP was a particular cause of concern, insofar as Hong Kong officials worried it would turn the colony into a base for the production of anti-Communist lit- erature (something USIS had already effectively accomplished, though under great protest from Hong Kong officials), adding tension to the already tenu- ous relationship between the colonial government and the PRC. In response to this concern, ARCI officials discussed creating a new propaganda bureau in Taipei to create anti-Communist materials, though the idea never gained much traction.83 The most fundamental criticism of the organization, however, encapsu- lated all of these issues and hit at the heart of the problem of being a PVO addressing a governmental problem. As a Hong Kong staffer wrote to the office in New York, “ARCI is referred to as ‘thunder without rain.’ ...Frank

81. Fearing that riots would break out, the authorities tried to prevent overtly political actions in the camps. Only once, in1956, did such actions reach the level of physical violence between pro-Nationalist and pro-Communist residents. See Frank Welsh, A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong (New York: Kodansha International, 1993), pp. 453–456; and John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), p. 146. 82. Sir A. Grantham to SSC, “Chinese Refugees,” 25 January 1952, in TNAUK, CO, CO 1023/117. The PRC did not recognize the migrants as refugees, but it did believe them to be indigent and suffering from capitalistic policies. The PRC proposed sending its own aid organizations to Hong Kong but never followed through. 83. 12th Executive Committee, 22 May 1953, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 2.

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skepticism was expressed by certain Government circles as to what we can really do.”84 What could ARCI really have done? At a board meeting in 1954, Judd explained that, “the greatest asset we have in Asia are the Free Chinese. There are three groups: 1.) the refugees; 2.) the Overseas Chinese—with the exception of the Communist agents the overseas Chinese are altogether for Free China; 3.) the prisoners of war.”85 This statement is a reminder that for Judd and his fellow members of ARCI the refugee issue was never just about humanitarian aid. The work to aid Chinese refugees was always caught up in the larger rhetoric about Free China, its ability to challenge the PRC, the spread of Communism in Asia, and winning the Cold War. According to Lih-wu Han of the Taiwan office, The success of ARCI is two-fold. Firstly, it is a political success. It has shown the friendship of American friends, their sympathy and support for Chinese refugees, which the UN and other organizations neglected. It has also shown that Free China has open arms for all anti-Communist [sic] who are not willing to live under Communist despotism. Secondly, ARCI, by bringing in thousands of trained personnel, helped to meet some of the needs of Free China.86 Resettlement or rehabilitation might have been the daily work of the organi- zation, but its purpose was to fight the Cold War. That purpose was why the organization existed and why the U.S. government was willing to commit to its success. By its own accounting, ARCI helped 14,000 Chinese intellectuals (in- cluding their families) settle in Taiwan, brought 2,350 refugees to the United States, and helped another thousand relocate to other parts of the world. Be- yond that, it claimed to have helped 15,000–20,000 refugees find work in Hong Kong, in some cases employing them through the FCLP and CRDO. To those people, ARCI made all the difference in the world. The Liu family is not the only example of grateful refugees thanking ARCI for its work. That said, ARCI had significant drawbacks. First, it needed government funding to stay alive because its cause and program never captured enough of the U.S. public’s imagination to succeed at private fundraising. That led to

84. A. U. to Garside, 5 December 1952, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 17, Letters from Hong Kong November–December 1952. 85. Notes on Dr. Judd’s Speech, ARCI Board Meeting, 20 January 1954, in HIA, ARCI Records, Box 12, Judd Correspondence 1954. In the last point, Judd was referring to Chinese prisoners of war from the Korean War who refused repatriation to the PRC and went instead to Taiwan. 86. Memorandum by Han Lih-wu to Fitch, 1957, in HIA, WHJ, Box 171, 171.2 ARCI Reports, 1953–62.

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significant soul-searching at the U.S. State Department, where concerns grew that the PVO’s increasing dependence on federal funds would lead to an un- viable future of quasi-PVOs wholly dependent on the U.S. government for money but divorced from official control. Nonetheless, the State Department needed organizations like ARCI as political cover for U.S. aid to Chinese refugees and Taiwan. Although ARCI had to operate as a PVO to receive funds, its most fundamental tasks could not be completed without govern- ment involvement because PVOs did not have the authority or standing to conduct the diplomacy necessary to facilitate the entry of Chinese into foreign territories. ARCI spent the entirety of its short life trying to navigate among these realities, with the result that its potential for aiding refugees was always circumscribed. ARCI’s other problem was largely of its own making: it was hurt by the overwhelming politicization of the refugees in Hong Kong, a process in which it played an important role itself. Many refugees were no doubt fleeing Communism—many of the residents of the Rennie’s Mill camp in particular had strong KMT ties—but the use of the refugees for propaganda, for building the future of Free China, and so forth limited the options of ARCI to help them. The more politicized refugee aid became, the less cooperative the gov- ernment of Hong Kong was and the more difficulty it had with governments other than the ROC. The obvious solution to these problems was to have a neutral international organization take the lead in resettlement and refugee relief in Hong Kong. If the UN had embarked on the task, more attention might have been given to the simple humanitarian problem and less to the propaganda opportunities it created for China, Hong Kong, and the United States. The UN’s ability to act was circumscribed by its own Cold Warrior members, who limited its usefulness. The UN declared 1960 World Refugee Year and, while confirming that its formal mandate did not cover the Chinese in Hong Kong, suggested that more neutral international efforts be made to deal with the poverty in the colony that had been aggravated by the influx of refugees. The reality was that most of the refugees and migrants themselves were not fighting the Cold War; they were fighting to survive.

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