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Disseminating and Containing Communist Propaganda to Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia through Hong Kong, the Cold War Pivot, 1949–1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Florence Mok Open the ORCID record for Florence Mok [Opens in a new window]
Florence Mok*
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Department of History, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
*
Email: florence.mok@ntu.edu.sg
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Abstract

This article explores an understudied aspect in Asia's Cold War history: how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used Hong Kong as a Cold War pivot to produce and disseminate left-wing literature for overseas Chinese living in Southeast Asia. It argues that the CCP's expanding cultural influence can be attributed to the Party's commercial acumen. Operating within a permissive colonial regulatory regime, the CCP expanded its control of local and regional markets for left-wing printed materials. The content of CCP literature was inevitably propagandistic – that is, shaped by the changing demands of the Chinese government's foreign policy and by a need to attract foreign remittances and accommodate socialist transformation at home. Hong Kong's emergence as a pivot in propaganda wars that were global in scope created tensions between the United States and Britain, and led governments in Southeast Asia to strengthen state controls on imported communist media. As such, this article makes an original contribution to Hong Kong colonial history and deepens our understanding of transnational dynamics within Southeast Asia.

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Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 65 , Issue 5 , December 2022 , pp. 1397 - 1417
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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4 Ibid.

5 Wang Gungwu, ‘Hong Kong's twentieth century: the global setting’, in Roberts and Carroll, eds., Hong Kong in the Cold War, pp. 1–14, at pp. 6–7.

6 Law, Collaborative colonial power, ch. 6; Johannes R. Lombardo, ‘A mission of espionage, intelligence and psychological operations: the American consulate in Hong Kong, 1949–64’, in Richard J. Aldrich, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley, eds., The clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945–65: Western intelligence, propaganda and special operations (London and Portland, OR, 2000), pp. 64–81.

7 Law, Collaborative colonial power, p. 133.

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13 For example, Ying Du, ‘Censorship’, pp. 118–21, pointed out that the colonial government had the power to censor both local and imported political movies which ‘exacerbate[d] political rivalries’ and encouraged the use of violence to ‘overthrow the rule of law and order or the established government’. The colonial government also sought to control left-wing journalism through legal means, as the suspension of left-wing newspapers in 1952 and 1967 demonstrated: see Mark, ‘Everyday propaganda’, pp. 157 and 164.

14 See Law, Collaborative colonial power; Peter Hamilton, Made in Hong Kong: transpacific networks and a new history of globalization (New York, NY, 2021).

15 Hilton, Matthew and Mitter, Rana, ‘Introduction’, Past & Present, 218, suppl. 8 (2013), pp. 7–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 12.

16 William P. Alford, To steal a book is an elegant offense: intellectual property law in Chinese civilization (Stanford, CA, 1995), pp. 56–7; Fei-hsien Wang, Pirates and publishers: a social history of copyright in modern China (Princeton, NJ, 2019), pp. 253–4, 262, 281.

17 James Jiann Hua To, Qiaowu: extra-territorial polices for the overseas Chinese (Leiden, 2014), p. 17; Hong Liu, ‘Opportunities and anxieties for the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia’, Current History, 115 (2016), pp. 312–18, at p. 313.

18 To, Qiaowu, p. 59; Fitzgerald, ‘China and the overseas Chinese’, pp. 15–17; Milton Easmen, ‘The Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia’, in Gabriel Sheffer, ed., Modern diasporas in international politics (New York, NY, 1986), pp. 130–63. Some scholars argued that this was a shift from the jus sanguinis model, which considered everyone of Chinese ancestry to be Chinese citizens, to the decolonization model, which increasingly perceived overseas Chinese as a ‘foreign policy liability’ that strained China's relations with other governments. Lea E. Williams, The future of the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (New York, NY, 1966), p. 65; Stephen Fitzgerald, China and the overseas Chinese: a study of Peking's changing policy, 1949–1970 (Cambridge, 1972), p. 14; Pieke, Frank N., ‘Four models of China's OC policies’, China Information, 2 (1987), pp. 8–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Historians hold different views towards the nature of the PRC's overseas Chinese policy. Some scholars believed that the policy was outward-facing as it was through the overseas Chinese that the Party managed to export revolution and mobilize them to oppose their host governments. Elegant and Lu, however, pointed out that the policy had an important domestic perspective: it took China's internal policies and development into consideration. See Purcell, Victor, ‘Overseas Chinese and the People's Republic’, Far Eastern Survey, 19 (1950), pp. 194–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buss, Claude A., ‘Overseas Chinese and Communist policy’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 277 (1951), pp. 203–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 210–12; Elegant, The dragon's seed; Lu Yu-sun, Programs of communist China for overseas Chinese (Hong Kong, 1956), pp. 14–15. Fitzgerald acknowledged the Party's need to secure foreign remittances but believed that the overseas Chinese policy was ‘ultimately concerned with external policies’: see China and the overseas Chinese, pp. 13–15. Revisionists such as Peterson and Lim, however, have argued that China's overseas Chinese policy was domestically oriented and emphasized economic utilitarianism. In other words, overseas Chinese were assumed to have an important role in contributing to China's modernization. Lim even suggested that qiaowu (overseas Chinese affairs) was a ‘political economy’. See Glen Peterson, Overseas Chinese in the People's Republic of China (New York, NY, 2012); Jin Li Lim, The price and promise of specialness: the political economy of overseas Chinese policy in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1959 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2019).

20 Lim, Price and promise of specialness, p. 5.

21 Ibid.

22 Chi-kwan Mark, The everyday Cold War: Britain and China, 1950–1972 (London, 2017), p. 20.

23 How overseas Chinese received this communist literature is not covered by this article, owing to its limited scope.

24 Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War, p. 2.

25 Ibid.

26 Fitzgerald, ‘China and the overseas Chinese’, pp. 15–17; Easmen, ‘Chinese diaspora’; Lim, Price and promise of specialness, p. 133; Frank Dikotter, The tragedy of liberation: a history of the Chinese revolution, 1945–1957 (London, 2013).

27 Lim, Price and promise of specialness, pp. 18, 134–5, 147, 223–3.

28 Compared to the files mentioned, FCO 21, FCO 40, and CO 129 are used more widely by scholars who work on post-war Hong Kong.

29 Juxton Barton, Minutes on ISD 105/01, 27 Feb. 1956, The National Archives, London (hereafter TNA), CO 1030/188.

30 Purcell, ‘Overseas Chinese’; Buss, ‘Overseas Chinese’, pp. 210–12; Lu, Programs of communist China, pp. 14–15; Elegant, The dragon's seed; Fitzgerald, ‘China and the overseas Chinese’, p. 2.

31 Sacks, Milton, ‘The strategy of communism in Southeast Asia’, Pacific Affairs, 23 (1950), pp. 227–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 233 and 247.

32 Mao Zedong, ‘On coalition government’, 24 Apr. 1945, quoted in Lim, Price and promise of specialness, p. 28.

33 Mao Zedong, ‘Overseas Chinese export money to help the war’ (海外華僑輸財助戰), 24 Apr. 1945, and ‘Some important problems of the Party's present policy’ (關於目前黨的政策中的幾個重要問題), 18 Jan. 1948, quoted in Lim, Price and promise of specialness, pp. 28–31, 47, and To, Qiaowu, p. 38.

34 To, Qiaowu, p. 62; Zhang Shu Guang, Economic Cold War: America's embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1963 (Stanford, CA, 2001), pp. 54–6.

35 Zhang, Economic Cold War, p. 52.

36 Lim, Price and promise of specialness, p. 42.

37 Hong Kong Police Special Branch, ‘The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong’, 30 June 1949, p. 10, TNA, CO 537/4816.

38 Ibid.

39 Leslie C. Smith to C. B. B. Heathcote-Smith, 1 Oct. 1949, TNA, CO 537/4817.

40 Barton, Minutes on ISD 105/01.

41 J. M. Martin to A. Grantham, 25 May 1956, TNA, CO 1030/188.

42 Jin Yaoru (金堯如), Fifty years of memories in Hong Kong (香江五十年憶往) (Hong Kong, 2005), pp. 26, 33–5; Mark, Everyday Cold War, p. 39.

43 Jin, Fifty years of memories, pp. 30, 35; Wong Man Fong (黄文放), China resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong (中國對香港恢復行使主權的决策歷程與執行) (Hong Kong, 1997), pp. 34, 96.

44 Tsang, Steve, ‘Strategy for survival: the Cold War and Hong Kong's policy towards Kuomintang and Chinese Communist activities in the 1950s’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 25 (1997), pp. 294–371CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 298; Mark, ‘Everyday propaganda’, pp. 155–6.

45 A. G. Grantham, ‘Report on communist activities in Hong Kong for the six months ending 31 December 1949’, Jan. 1950, TNA, FCO 141/4419.

46 ‘Appendix VI. C.C.P. and pro-C.C.P. publishing houses’, attached to Hong Kong Police Special Branch, ‘The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong’.

47 Ibid.

48 ‘Bookshops’, in appendix II, attached to Hong Kong Police Special Branch, ‘The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong’.

49 Fitzgerald, ‘China and the overseas Chinese’, pp. 10–11.

50 Quoted in ibid., p. 11.

51 To, Qiaowu, p. 60; Fitzgerald, ‘China and the overseas Chinese’, p. 20.

52 Address from the 89th session of the National People's Executive Conference, 30 Dec. 1957, quoted in To, Qiaowu, p. 60.

53 Fitzgerald, ‘China and the overseas Chinese’, p. 11.

54 Ibid., pp. 11–12; Oyen, ‘Communism’, pp. 87–8.

55 To, Qiaowu, pp. 61–3.

56 Ibid., p. 61; Zhang, Economic Cold War, p. 1; Lim, Price and promise of specialness, p. 69.

57 Peterson, Overseas Chinese, p. 7, argues that the overseas Chinese policy was ‘centred above all on an economic calculus’. Lim, Price and promise of specialness, pp. 2, 4, suggests that the overseas Chinese policy was a ‘political economy’, a ‘political practice by the Chinese party-state in service of economic objectives’.

58 A. M. MacDonald to John Martin, 25 Apr. 1956, TNA, CO 1030/188.

59 Chen, Hao, ‘Resisting Bandung? Taiwan's struggle for “representational legitimacy” in the rise of the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League, 1954–57’, International History Review, 43 (2020), pp. 244–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 To, Qiaowu, p. 58; Easmen, ‘Chinese diaspora’.

61 ‘Communist bookshops and publishers in Hong Kong’, Oct. 1958, p. 1, TNA, CO 1030/582.

62 Wang, Pirates and publishers, p. 253.

63 Speech by Hu Yuzhi at the opening ceremony of the New China News Agency Bookstores’ headquarters, 23 Feb. 1951, cited in Wang, Pirates and publishers, p. 260.

64 Wang, Pirates and publishers, pp. 260 and 265.

65 Ibid., p. 261.

66 Ibid., p. 262.

67 Ibid., pp. 269–74.

68 Ibid., p. 281.

69 ‘Communist bookshops and publishers in Hong Kong’, p. 1.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid., p. 2.

73 Ibid., p. 3.

74 Ibid., p. 2.

75 Ibid., p. 3.

76 Ibid., p. 2.

77 Xiao Zi (蕭滋), Publishing, art, and life (出版 藝術 人生) (Hong Kong, 2017), pp. 195–6.

78 Lu Hu (鲁虎), Exploring the perceptions of China in Singapore and Malaysia, 1949–1965 (新馬華人的中國觀之研究, 1949–1965) (Singapore, 2014), pp. 60–1.

79 ‘Left-wing bookshops, publishing companies and printers, October 1958’, O. H. Morris to A. J. W. Hockenhull, 6 Nov. 1958, TNA, CO 1030/582.

80 Local Intelligence Committee, Review of communist activities in Hong Kong, 11(59), 3 Feb. 1959, attached to ‘Communist activities in Hong Kong’, governor to secretary of state, 19 Feb. 1959, TNA, CO 1030/579.

81 ‘Communist bookshops and publishers in Hong Kong’, pp. 2–3.

82 Ibid., p. 2.

83 Ibid.

84 Lu, Exploring the perceptions of China, p. 61.

85 A similar phenomenon was noted by the PRC's ministry of foreign affairs in ‘Report by the Medan consulate on the distribution of books, magazines, movies, and newspapers for overseas Chinese’, 1956, archive file no. 118-0056-05, cited in To, Qiaowu, p. 174.

86 Lorenz M. Luthi, The Sino-Soviet split: Cold War in the communist world (Princeton, NJ, 2008), ch. 2.

87 For example, during the Land Reform, overseas Chinese who only became landlords after they had gone overseas were allowed to keep their private properties. For those overseas Chinese landlords who were involved in industrial and commercial activities, lands that were used for such purposes were also exempted from expropriation. Lim, Price and promise of specialness, pp. 5, 66–7.

88 Ibid., pp. 117, 160.

89 Ibid., p. 129.

90 Ibid., pp. 5, 19, 135, 147.

91 Ibid., pp. 5, 188, 222–3; Michael R. Godley, ‘The sojourners: returned overseas Chinese in the People's Republic of China’, Pacific Affairs, 62 (1989), pp. 330–52, at p. 333.

92 Xiao, Publishing, art, and life, pp. 14, 195–6.

93 He Ganzhi (何干之), The revolutionary history of modern China handout: first draft (中國現代革命史講義:初稿) (Beijing, 1954), preface.

94 Geng Huamin (耿化敏), ‘A model of revolutionary history writing in the 1950s: comment on He Ganzhi's revolutionary history of modern China’ (五十年代革命歷史書寫的典範–評何干之主編中國現代革命史), Tribune of Social Sciences, 8 (2010), pp. 205–8, at p. 207; He, Revolutionary history.

95 Geng, ‘Model of revolutionary history’, p. 206.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid., pp. 205–6; He Ganzhi (何干之), The revolutionary history of modern China (中國現代革命史) (Hong Kong, 1958). The revised edition was also printed in Beijing for domestic consumption.

98 Zhou Dong-yuan (周東元) and Qi Wen-gong (亓文公), eds., Selected fifty-year historical materials of China's foreign languages publishing administration (中國外文局五十年史料選編) (Beijing, 1999), pp. 48–50.

99 China Pictorial, 23–5 July 1958, pp. 23–4.

100 China Pictorial, 28–9 Mar. 1958, pp. 38–9.

101 Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong's nineteen poems (毛澤東詩詞十九首) (Hong Kong, 1958).

102 The actual figure of left-wing publications printed in and disseminated through Hong Kong is difficult to trace, as many of these books and magazines were exported from Hong Kong to Southeast Asia secretly through point-to-point posts. They were not documented in government official trade records.

103 Government Printing Office, Colony of Singapore: annual report 1958 (Singapore, 1959), p. 11.

104 ‘Govt. gets wide power to ban publications’, Strait Budget Serial, 9 Oct. 1958, TNA, CO 1030/582.

105 ‘Communist literature in Singapore’, Legislative Assembly, Singapore, Sessional paper no. 14, 9 Mar. 1959, p. 2.

106 Daniel Wei Boon Chua, US–Singapore relations, 1965–1975: strategic non-alignment in the Cold War (Singapore, 2017), pp. 33, 43.

107 C. M. Turnbull, A history of Singapore, 1819–2005 (Singapore, 2009), p. 254.

108 ‘The communist threat to the Federation of Malaya’, reproduction of Legislative Council Paper no. 23, 24 Feb. 1959, p. 11.

109 Singapore Intelligence Committee, report for the period 11–25 June 1958, TNA, CO 1030/582.

110 ‘Communist threat to the Federation of Malaya’, p. 11.

111 Wen-Qing Ngoei, Arc of containment: Britain, the United States, and anticommunism in Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2019), p. 69.

112 Ibid., p. 93.

113 The policy of ‘Malayanization’ was first implemented by the Secretariat of Chinese Affairs in 1948, as the colonial government was worried that the local communities would not ‘buy into’ the British version of ‘an independent Malaya within the Commonwealth’. It was also a response to the failure of the Malayan Union project, which supposedly would have granted equal rights to Chinese-born residents. Taylor, Jeremy E., ‘“Not a particularly happy expression”: “Malayanization” and the China threat in Britain's late-colonial Southeast Asian territories’, Journal of Asian Studies, 78 (2019), pp. 789–808CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 790–6; Sharon A. Carstens, Histories, cultures, identities: studies in Malaysian Chinese worlds (Singapore, 2005), p. 148; Ting-hong Wong, Hegemonies compared: state formation and Chinese school politics in postwar Singapore and Hong Kong (New York, NY, 2002), ch. 6.

114 Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War, p. 36.

115 Ibid., pp. 178, 180.

116 Lu, ‘American Cold War’, pp. 129, 132.

117 Law, Collaborative colonial power, pp. 139–40.

118 Ibid., p. 138.

119 Ibid., pp. 145–6; Ip Lam-chong, ‘Where does “Hong Kongese” come from?’, in Law Wing Sang, ed., Whose city? Post-war Hong Kong civic cultures and political discourse (Hong Kong, 1997), p. 33.

120 Michael Ng, Political censorship in British Hong Kong: freedom of expression and law, 1842–1997 (Cambridge, forthcoming 2022), ch. 3; Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War, pp. 198, 204–7.

121 Tsang, ‘Strategy for survival’, p. 305; Priscilla Roberts, ‘Cold War Hong Kong: juggling opposing forces and identities’, in Roberts and Carroll, eds., Hong Kong in the Cold War, pp. 26–59, at p. 36.

122 Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War, p. 197.

123 Oyen, ‘Communism’, p. 64.

124 P. G. F. Dalton to W. I. J. Wallace, 7 Mar. 1958, TNA, CO 1030/583.

125 Sedition Ordinance 1938, Hong Kong, s 4(1)–(2).

126 ‘Communist propaganda’, July 1958, TNA, CO 1030/583.

127 P. G. F. Dalton to A. J. de la Mare, 7 Mar. 1958, TNA, CO 1030/583.

128 Ibid.; P. G. F. Dalton to M. B. Hanley, 5 May 1954, TNA, CO 1030/188.

129 P. G. F. Dalton to W. I. J. Wallace, 5 Feb. 1958, TNA, CO 1030/582.

130 Dalton to de la Mare, 7 Mar. 1958.

131 A. J. de la Mare to P. G. F. Dalton, 12 Feb. 1958, TNA, CO 1030/583.

132 Taylor, ‘“Not a particularly happy expression”’, p. 796; ‘Transmission of communist literature from Hong Kong’, 26 June 1954, TNA, FCO 141/14596.

133 MacDonald to Martin, 25 Apr. 1956.

134 ‘Govt. gets wide power to ban publications’.

135 Taylor, ‘“Not a particularly happy expression”’, p. 798.

136 C. B. Burgess to W. I. J. Wallace, 27 Aug. 1958, TNA, CO 1030/583.

137 Ibid.

138 W. I. J. Wallace to C. B. Burgess, 25 July 1958, TNA, CO 1030/583.

139 Local Intelligence Committee, monthly report, Jan. 1959, TNA, CO 1030/582.

140 Ibid.