When the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, Hong Kong became a Cold War pivot where conflicts between communism and capitalism unfolded. The British colony was used as a base by both the Communists and the Nationalists to produce propaganda to gain the support of overseas Chinese communities.Footnote 1 These twin forms of diasporic nationalism created forms of ‘global geo-strategic thinking’ which encouraged Chinese peoples to make emotional investments and financial contributions that bound them to their motherland, and to its politics.Footnote 2 By 1950, overseas Chinese accounted for 6 per cent (about 9.6 million people) of the population of Southeast Asia, and controlled a ‘disproportionately large segment of the local economies’.Footnote 3 With ex-European colonies such as Burma and Indonesia becoming independent, and colonies such as Malaya and Singapore undergoing traumatic processes of decolonization, the loyalty of the Chinese diaspora became an important concern for governments and civil society groups in Southeast Asia.Footnote 4
In this context, Hong Kong possessed a unique position for Chinese living inside and outside China as it allowed both information and disinformation to be disseminated in a relatively free manner through different forms of media.Footnote 5 The government of the Republic of China, based in Taiwan and supported by the United States, treated Hong Kong as a centre for the dissemination of anti-communist and pro-Kuomintang propaganda, via newspapers, magazines, literature, and films. The United States funded anti-communist publications written by exile intellectuals through the United States Information Service (USIS).Footnote 6 In particular, the Asia Foundation, which was connected with the Central Intelligence Agency, funded three major publishing houses in Hong Kong, namely the United, Today's World, and the Asia Press, all of which supported anti-communist scholarship.Footnote 7 In a similar manner, the PRC utilized the colony as a conduit for pro-communist propaganda.Footnote 8 Through Hong Kong, left-wing literature and magazines were disseminated to overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, which the Central People's Government (CPG) considered to be a ‘readily exploitable fifth column’ in 1949, able to facilitate communist expansion.Footnote 9
Recent scholarship has recognized that socio-cultural development in Asia, once considered ‘a sideshow’, is crucial to the understanding of the Cold War.Footnote 10 Until recently, most studies discussing Hong Kong's role in the Cold War have focused on diplomatic history and communist-inspired civil actions, notably the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-controlled trade unions and the 1967 riots.Footnote 11 Since the first decade of this century, however, there has been increased research on the cultural Cold War, work that has sought to explore cultural and social trends in Hong Kong, such as the political orientation of newspapers, literature, and films, and how they were used to draw Chinese audiences away from each other.Footnote 12 This new literature has also focused on the institutions that controlled the media.Footnote 13 How the USIS financed right-wing publications and the American network in Hong Kong have been thoroughly examined, but how the PRC used the colony as a base to disseminate printed propaganda to Chinese audiences in Southeast Asia remains underexplored.Footnote 14
Using a transnational approach, this article examines the ‘local dynamics of global forces’ in Hong Kong, an important Cold War pivot.Footnote 15 How Hong Kong's cultural domain was utilized by the CCP to solicit support from overseas Chinese deserves close examination as it has significant local, national, and international implications. First, Hong Kong's case offers valuable insights into how global Cold War politics interacted with specific local context. Since 1949, the CPG had imposed various regulatory measures to eliminate market-oriented operations in China's cultural industries and sought to ensure that only ‘good’ and ‘useful’ ideas which aligned with the regime's revolutionary cause were circulated.Footnote 16 However, the publishing industry in colonial Hong Kong operated in a capitalist market over which the CCP had no political control. The CCP therefore had to adapt its united-front strategies to Hong Kong's political and economic environment.
Second, the dissemination of left-wing propaganda to overseas Chinese through Hong Kong sheds light on the PRC's foreign and domestic policies. In the immediate post-war period, the CCP's vigorous appeals towards the overseas Chinese were considered suspicious by the governments in Southeast Asia.Footnote 17 However, in response to the United States’ strategy of containing the spread of communism and with Sino-Soviet tensions rising, the PRC saw the need to mobilize support within what was then called the Third World. After the Bandung Conference of 1955, it changed its foreign policy to peaceful co-existence, which led agencies of the CCP to seek to disseminate propaganda in Southeast Asia that was less overtly political and subversive.Footnote 18 This new propaganda policy also reflected domestic concerns.Footnote 19 Overseas Chinese remained important targets of Chinese communist propaganda in the 1950s because China relied on their foreign remittances for national reconstruction and modernization.Footnote 20 Simultaneously, there were increased concerns that the treatment of overseas Chinese should not deviate greatly from the ideologies propagated in China during the socialist transformation.Footnote 21 This case study can therefore help us to understand how the CCP manoeuvred between ideological and pragmatic concerns when formulating the propaganda.
Lastly, the surge of communist literature exported through Hong Kong posed security problems to the capitalist bloc and led to Anglo-American tensions. While the United States attempted to contain communism by isolating the PRC, Britain recognized the newly formed regime in 1950, owing to the need to preserve British interests in China and Asia.Footnote 22 Hong Kong's reluctance to curb left-wing literature led to further Anglo-American divides and drove the Southeast Asian governments to take initiatives to control the dissemination of communist propaganda. By exploring how various governments countered the surge of communist literature, the article reveals how Hong Kong served as a transregional outpost that connected the PRC, Britain, the United States, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.
This article builds on the existing literature, which has explored how agencies of the colonial administration sought to limit the effectiveness of pro-communist propaganda in Hong Kong. It focuses on the period from 1949 to 1960 and asks four inter-related questions: did the CCP have the capacity to exploit Hong Kong's capitalist publishing market and use it as a base for disseminating printed propaganda? What strategies did the Chinese Communists use to produce and disseminate communist propaganda which targeted people of Chinese origin living in Southeast Asia? How were left-wing literature and magazines tailored to meet the needs of overseas Chinese and align with the PRC's changing foreign and domestic policies? And how did Hong Kong's colonial government, the United States, and Southeast Asian territories react in the late 1950s?Footnote 23
With reduced resources and extensive overseas commitments, Britain began to scale down its garrison in Hong Kong in the 1950s.Footnote 24 The British colony was militarily indefensible. To minimize the possibility of a communist attack, the British and colonial governments sought to avoid actions which might trigger CCP activism. They also sought to draw the United States into a commitment to defend Hong Kong. Influenced by these geopolitical dynamics, Hong Kong tolerated agencies of China and the United States using the colony for ‘propaganda operations’.Footnote 25 The colonial administration monitored communist propaganda but did not necessarily prosecute publishers and bookstores which printed and disseminated them. In this period, the PRC practised peaceful co-existence and intensified its domestic transformation, launching Land Reform, the Three Antis Movement, the Hundred Flowers, and the Anti-Rightist Campaign.Footnote 26 These developments inevitably influenced communist literature for overseas audiences.Footnote 27
This article uses archival records in the National Archives in London and a few surviving Chinese Communist publications that circulated among Chinese people living in Southeast Asia. British government records – namely CO 1030, CO 537, and FCO 141 – which were released between 2008 and 2014, contain substantial amounts of intelligence on communist publishing.Footnote 28 The CO 1030 series comprises reports and correspondences of the Far Eastern Department relating to British colonial possessions in East Asia. It covers insurgencies and social, economic, and constitutional development between 1941 and 1967. The CO 537 series contains classified secret dispatches and telegrams by the Colonial Office up to 1955, which were previously withheld from the colonies. FCO 141, formerly stored in the Foreign Office Migrated Archives, contains information on the administration of colonies which was not passed to successive governments after independence.
These sources are important and can complement the existing studies by providing more nuanced insights into how to contextualize communist activities in Hong Kong during the Cold War in a transnational framework. Although the sources can be problematic, mainly reflecting the assessments of colonial bureaucrats regarding the extent and forms of communist activities in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, they were based on covert monitoring of communist activists which involved a large amount of manpower and resources, and they were archived in confidential government files. The situation reports also directly influenced how governments co-ordinated and responded to the spread of communism. Although this account is provisional, the likelihood of new intelligence and policy files being released into the public domain by either the British or the Chinese government in the near future is low. To extend and corroborate analysis based on the records of the British state, Chinese published records and speeches, Chinese publications printed in and exported through Hong Kong, and memoirs of leading left-wing publishers have also been used.
I
Decolonization and national independence posed difficult questions about national identities for regimes in Southeast Asia, making them more susceptible to radical ideologies. The surge of anti-colonial Chinese communist literature threatened colonial regimes in Southeast Asia because, as a British official acknowledged, the ‘insidious effect of such propaganda’ created ‘one of the principal subversive threats’ that were particularly acute among ‘the younger generation of overseas Chinese’.Footnote 29 These overseas Chinese were a key target audience for the CCP.Footnote 30 When the PRC was first founded, it promoted ‘national liberation struggles’ and advocated the ‘complete elimination of all Western influence’ in Southeast Asia.Footnote 31 The overseas Chinese were incorporated in the Party's New Democracy concept, which argued that the establishment of a ‘united front democratic alliance based on the overwhelming majority of the people, under the leadership of the working class’ was the prerequisite for setting up a socialist system.Footnote 32 Under this concept, the overseas Chinese were co-opted into the political system; they formed one of the constituencies in the planned democratic coalition and subsequently participated in the Chinese People's Consultative Conference.Footnote 33 The inclusion of the overseas Chinese also aided China's reconstruction and modernization.Footnote 34 After years of political turmoil, China's economy was ‘at the edge of total collapse’.Footnote 35 Overseas Chinese became an important ‘economic utility’ as their remittances could be utilized to save China's economy.Footnote 36
Understanding the importance of the Chinese diaspora, the CCP utilized Hong Kong as a Cold War pivot. It established a New China News Agency (NCNA) to co-ordinate the expansion of communist propaganda. As the Hong Kong Police Special Branch noted, the CCP's propaganda in the colony ‘steadily increased’.Footnote 37 In particular, printed materials such as books and periodicals were generated ‘in large quantities for distribution to other Southeast Asian countries’.Footnote 38 In October 1949, Leslie C. Smith, a Kemsley Press correspondent in China, commented that the communist propaganda machine in Hong Kong was ‘extremely powerful’.Footnote 39 Colonial officials observed that the importation of communist literature and magazines through Hong Kong soon became a ‘large problem’.Footnote 40 Hong Kong became ‘a base for the distribution of Chinese Communist publicity material to other colonies’ where ‘Chinese communities exist’.Footnote 41
II
The CCP's policy towards Hong Kong discouraged its activists from promoting unrest due to the colony's special status. According to Premier Zhou Enlai, the recovery of Hong Kong should ‘not be measured by the narrow principle of territorial sovereignty’ but viewed as ‘part of the overall strategic arrangements for the East–West struggle’.Footnote 42 As leaving Hong Kong temporarily in the British hands was advantageous, China's Hong Kong policy discouraged direct confrontation and focused on ‘long-term planning and full utilization’.Footnote 43 Hong Kong therefore provided the CCP with a stable environment to produce materials for the propagation of communism.
By the late 1940s, the Hong Kong government had the legal authority to suppress subversive publications using local ordinances, such as the Sedition Ordinance and the Sedition Amendment Ordinance passed in 1938, and a wide range of emergency regulations. However, understanding the vulnerability of Hong Kong and the delicacy of Sino-British relations, Britain adhered to the guiding principle of ‘firmness without provocation’ and was reluctant to enforce these ordinances.Footnote 44 This created a permissive environment for communist propaganda agencies. By June 1949, the CCP owned eight printers and nine publishing houses in Hong Kong. These printers and publishers, supervised by the NCNA, were orchestrated by the Propaganda Section under the Hong Kong Municipal Committee, which received ‘general guidance and directives from over the border’.Footnote 45 It was managed by the regional control, the South China Bureau, under the CCP Politburo (see Figure 1 for the chain of command).
Figure 1. Chain of command of the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong in 1949.
Source: Hong Kong Police Special Branch, ‘The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong’, 30 June 1949, attached to A. G. Grantham to Arthur Creech Jones, 27 July 1949, TNA, FCO 141/4419.
Realizing that the overseas Chinese were far from a homogeneous group, but spoke a range of different dialects and held various beliefs, these communist-controlled printers and publishers produced specific materials tailored for particular Southeast Asian countries: for example, the Sinminchu Publishing Company, which was ‘in touch with Moscow’, disseminated Soviet literature; the China Publishing Company produced propaganda materials for Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies; and the Cultural Provider was connected to Chinese Democratic League writers and promoted political literature written by them. Books and journals on economic subjects were also produced and disseminated. For example, the Economic Information Service issued a monthly publication titled Economic Correspondence; and the Southern Tribune printed books on industrial subjects concerning liberated areas.Footnote 46 Many of these publishers simultaneously owned bookshops in Hong Kong, with the Life, Reader, Sinzh Joint Publishing Company comprising the Life Bookshop, the Sinzh Bookshop, and the Reader Publishing Company.Footnote 47 By mid-1949, the CCP controlled at least seventeen bookshops which were responsible for wholesaling and retailing communist literature.Footnote 48
III
In the 1950s, the CCP altered its policy towards overseas Chinese peoples. In 1951, it declared that ‘overseas Chinese affairs must be strictly distinguished from the local revolution’ and ‘under no circumstance [should they] take part in the local civil struggle’.Footnote 49 Liao Chengzhi even asserted that ‘overseas Chinese shall not make revolution’ and ‘they would not succeed’.Footnote 50 In 1955, the PRC announced its peaceful co-existence policy at the Bandung Conference. The following year, it declared that overseas Chinese were free to acquire the nationality of their country of residence. People who obtained a new nationality were no longer considered Chinese nationals nor subject to the PRC's jurisdiction.Footnote 51 In December 1957, Beijing ordered overseas Chinese who remained Chinese citizens not to instigate revolutionary activities.Footnote 52 Indeed, by the mid-1950s, overseas Chinese were no longer perceived by the CCP as political assets.Footnote 53 Instead, they became ‘a major strain’ in China's relations with the Southeast Asian countries, as their radicalization only exacerbated hostilities towards the Chinese, which sometimes ‘had nothing to do with communism’.Footnote 54
Despite changes in its formal outreach, the CCP continued to maintain ties with overseas Chinese because their resources were essential to China's modernization.Footnote 55 Their foreign remittance had become even more important because the Korean War had increased national expenditure and reduced foreign investment substantially, and the United States had imposed economic sanctions on China.Footnote 56 This overseas Chinese policy had an underlying utilitarian purpose: to focus on consolidating the revolution at home.Footnote 57 To pursue this agenda, the CCP continued to utilize Hong Kong to produce left-wing literature for overseas circulation. A. M. MacDonald made the following observation in 1956: ‘I have just been out to Singapore, Hong Kong, Sarawak and North Borneo and there can be no doubt that Chinese Communist literature sent from Hong Kong is one of the main spearheads of propaganda directed at the overseas Chinese communities.’Footnote 58 This could also be attributed to Taiwan's escalating anti-communist efforts through the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League. After Bandung, the Nationalists actively forged alliances with South Korea and the Philippines and disseminated propaganda, preaching the notion that anti-communism was ‘the sole legitimate route to post-imperial emancipation’.Footnote 59 CCP propaganda therefore had to contest that of the Nationalists, competing for the support of the overseas Chinese.Footnote 60
In 1958, the CCP activists ‘intensified their activities’ in Hong Kong's publishing domain, which they believed could ‘strengthen their position and extend their influence in Southeast Asia’.Footnote 61 Contrasting strategies were adopted in Hong Kong and China. Since 1949, the CPG had attempted to establish a new state–market relationship with the publishing industries.Footnote 62 As Hu Yuzhi, the director of the Publication Bureau and deputy minister of culture, declared, the publishing industry did not sell ordinary commodities but ‘intellectual foods’ for people and ‘cultural weapons’ that could advance China's revolutionary course.Footnote 63 Publishers and bookshops were therefore required to spread communism, rather than seeking profits by selling the most popular texts.Footnote 64 To eliminate the commercial orientation of the pre-existing print market, the state closely regulated publishers. For example, formal permission from the Publishing Committee was needed if publishers intended to reprint books.Footnote 65 Private reprints were banned.Footnote 66 As the case of the Chunming Bookstore in 1951 illustrated, publishers with profit-seeking mentalities were penalized; a public forum was held to criticize the bookstore's representatives, after which they were fined and pirate copies were destroyed.Footnote 67 In addition, a new remuneration system was introduced and became widely practised, with rewards being based on labour input and the works’ genre, quality, print run, and word count; once a print run was exceeded, the financial returns to the author decreased progressively.Footnote 68
In Hong Kong, the CCP had to deploy alternative strategies which worked with the colony's capitalist system. Financial inducements were given to publishers to print communist texts. Matrices of books in popular science, history, and literature were provided to communist and left-inclined independent publishers at low prices, which, as a Colonial Office report noted, were also attractive to non-aligned and right-wing bookstores because the books were ‘popular’, often selling 1,000 copies of each title per month; if a shop obtained the right to sell three, it could cover all its monthly expenses.Footnote 69 Moreover, sellers were allowed to circulate these books without restriction in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia as long as they printed them in local communist-owned printing houses and paid royalties to the writers.Footnote 70 Furthermore, by printing texts in Hong Kong, the burden on China's already strained publishing industry was eased; since 1950, the PRC had launched a campaign to combat illiteracy, which required a ‘large amount of books and stationery’, and shortage of books became acute – especially after 1954, when the system of planned circulation of periodicals was adopted to restrict the amount of printing.Footnote 71
The CCP also extended long-term credit to publishers and bookshops which were willing to print and disseminate left-wing literature. The credit terms generally ranged from three to six months. For new items, the credit period could be further extended until all products were sold. General books, such as Chinese and Western literature and textbooks on social and natural sciences, were offered at wholesale price, approximately 40–50 per cent lower than the average retail price. Commodities, such as toys, stationery, and music instruments made in China, were also made available to these bookshops ‘cheaply’.Footnote 72 This was an attractive package, as the average credit period offered by right-wing publishers ranged from just one to three months, and they could only provide a discount of less than 30 per cent to bookshops. When bookshops purchased literature from Taiwan, they had to pay in cash; credit was not extended.Footnote 73 Right-wing publishers therefore struggled to compete with left-wing publishers, and non-aligned and even right-wing bookshops started disseminating left-wing literature. This indicates that the CCP not only utilized Hong Kong's capitalist environment to its advantage but ironically did so better than the ‘capitalist’ Nationalists whom they opposed.
Pro-communist bookshops had a further advantage because they could republish and sell old classics, with about 90 per cent of the books published before 1949 now under the regime's control. Such books were bestsellers. Classics of Chinese literature, translations of Western literature and philosophy, and Chinese novels written in the Ming and Qing dynasties were ‘popular and profitable’. They were initially withheld from circulation for fear that they would spread ‘capitalist and feudal ideas’ but, in the 1950s, the CCP published new, edited versions for circulation overseas. It was estimated that, on average, left-wing bookshops in Hong Kong had over 10,000 different titles, more than thirty periodicals, numerous art reproductions, and many Chinese cartoon books which contained communist propaganda. These publications were ‘well printed’ and at least 30 per cent cheaper than books of similar genres issued by the right-wing publishers.Footnote 74 The right-wing bookshops, by contrast, possessed no more than 1,200 titles; few of the authors of these were well known, their prices were relatively high, and the quality of printing and binding was poor.Footnote 75 Pro-communist bookshops thus held many commercial advantages, and probably increased their market share in 1950s Hong Kong.Footnote 76
In addition, the CCP set up new bookstores and publishing companies in Hong Kong. For example, in 1958, ‘to comply with anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism propagated in China’, the Peace Book Company Ltd, which was ‘responsible for disseminating books and political propaganda overseas’, was established. Utilizing Hong Kong's laxly regulated postal service, these publishers and bookshops forged ties with bookshops in Southeast Asia and exported left-wing literature through airmail.Footnote 77 For example, the New Nanyang Publishing Company in Singapore, which ‘had close relationships’ with the Shanghai Book Company and the Sinminchu Publishing Company in Hong Kong, would place orders on behalf of readers for politically ‘progressive’ literature which was then to be delivered to Singapore from Hong Kong.Footnote 78
By the late 1950s, these commercial strategies were proving highly effective. Between 1949 and 1958, the number of left-wing publishing houses and bookshops increased more than twofold, from twenty-six to sixty-six.Footnote 79 By February 1959, at least thirty-three bookshops were known to be selling communist literature, and fourteen publishers and nine printing houses were even ‘deal[ing] almost exclusively in communist materials’.Footnote 80 Many non-aligned and right-wing bookshops and publishers also disseminated left-wing work for commercial reasons. For example, the Commercial Press Limited considered ‘revising textbooks along leftist lines for Southeast Asia’ after receiving $800,000 from the CCP. Likewise, after obtaining $100,000 credit, the Academy Press Company started distributing communist books in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.Footnote 81 The owner of a Nationalist bookshop accepted credit of about $60,000 from the communist-controlled Life, Reader, Sinzh Joint Publishing Company, because, although he opposed communism, he reported that ‘I cannot help it, I have to eat.’Footnote 82
As Southeast Asian countries prohibited the importation of communist literature, some of these Hong Kong publishers and bookstores owned multiple companies, or published under different names. The Hsueh Wen Book Company, for example, also operated the Light Publishing Company, which helped ‘facilitate entry of its books into Malaya’; the Tsu Hsueh Publishing Company published books under the name of the Sun Fung Publishing Company to evade bans in Singapore, Malaya, and Sarawak; and the Rih Sin Book Company produced books by the Youth and Children Publishing Company, which had been banned in Malaya.Footnote 83 In sum, commercial acumen, cheap credit, and opaque ownership structures enabled the CCP to disseminate propaganda to Southeast Asia. Chinese communist literature was therefore readily available in overseas markets.
IV
The CCP produced a wide range of literature genres in Hong Kong. Unlike the typical literature printed in China, the books and magazines produced were ‘less coloured by obvious radical ideologies’ but they still contained core concepts such as ‘the courage to struggle and change’ and ‘sympathizing with the suppressed masses’, which were similar to ideologies in communist literature produced in China.Footnote 84 By the late 1950s, most literature printed in and exported through Hong Kong promoted the PRC – asserting that the PRC was the sole legitimate government – and patriotism by showcasing Chinese culture.Footnote 85 References to Marxism-Leninism had largely been removed. This development could be explained by changes to Chinese foreign policy. In 1956, under Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union commenced de-Stalinization, a shift which in theory posed problems for Mao Zedong, who had long applied Marxism-Leninism and adopted Stalin's style of autocratic rule. As Sino-Soviet tensions rose, the ‘learnings of Lenin’ and ‘revisionism’ were removed from Chinese left-wing literature.Footnote 86 The PRC also sought to improve its relations with countries in the so-called Third World through advocating local assimilation and discouraging the instigation of revolutions.
The CCP's overseas Chinese policy had a utilitarian dimension, which was to attract foreign exchange to aid China's modernization. To incentivize overseas Chinese to send remittances back to China, from the early to mid-1950s the CCP imposed a ‘favourable treatment’, also known as youdai, on returned overseas Chinese.Footnote 87 This policy was vigorously asserted in the mid-1950s.Footnote 88 In February 1955, the State Council issued a decree to declare foreign remittances, which were often associated with the bourgeoisie, legal.Footnote 89 Giving overseas Chinese this degree of ‘specialness’ was problematic, as it emphasized the individual rights of those receiving remittances and thus ran contrary to Mao Zedong's vision of socialist transformation, which called for collectivization and the end of capitalist ownership.Footnote 90 After the Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist movements, to enforce ideological conformity, the CCP ordered that returned overseas Chinese had to participate in national reconstruction and physical labour; in 1958, youdai was formally repealed, laying the foundation for China's second five-year plan.Footnote 91
Socialist transformation in China subtly altered propaganda intended for overseas audiences. According to Xiao Zi, who worked in the communist-controlled Peace Book Company Ltd from 1958 to 1963, to adjust to China's internal political development and the Sino-Soviet split, the company's Chinese-language books – plus those translated into English, Malay, Indonesian, Thai, and many other languages, targeting Chinese in Southeast Asia – became infused with ‘propaganda of anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism’, although they did not advocate the overthrow of existing governments.Footnote 92
Three publications provide further insights into these changes. The revolutionary history of modern China handout: first draft (中國現代革命史講義:初稿), written by He Ganzhi, was first printed in Beijing in 1954. The book focused on the CCP's activities and documented its ‘revolutionary history’ in chronological order. Having been approved by the Higher Education Bureau, it served as teaching material in secondary education in China.Footnote 93 There were various versions of the text, which was translated into more than seven different languages, including English and Vietnamese. More than 2 million copies were printed in total. It was extremely influential.Footnote 94 The book's first edition discussed Maoism and Leninism extensively, and presented Mao as having had a central role in the Chinese Communist revolution. Chapters 3–8, accounting for 20 per cent of the book's content, were devoted to introducing Mao's political works, among them Analysis of Chinese society at all levels (中國社會各階層分析), Hunan agricultural national movement investigation report (湖南農民運動考察報告), and The strategy on opposing Japanese imperialism (論反對日本帝國主義的策略), which accounted for 20 per cent of the book's content.Footnote 95 The struggle between ‘left’ and ‘right’ within the Party was discussed, and the conclusion asserted that Mao represented the CCP's ‘correct path’.Footnote 96
However, in the edition named The revolutionary history of modern China (中國現代革命史), printed by Life, Reader, Sinzh Joint Publishing Company in Hong Kong in 1958, He removed the content on Maoist and Leninist ideologies and made substantial revisions. Mao and Stalin were mentioned less and Mao's role in the early CCP history was given less emphasis. Seven of his major speeches and narratives were also taken out of this edition; instead, new narratives which focused on China's ‘enemies, allies, and masses’ were added.Footnote 97 Although the book remained propagandistic, promoting the CCP, communism, and Maoism, this version printed for overseas Chinese consumption was less doctrinal compared to the 1954 edition, which was intended for domestic consumption. This book thus demonstrates the tensions that existed in the CCP's overseas Chinese propaganda policy: to accommodate deteriorating Sino-Soviet relations and the peaceful co-existence policy, revolutionary ideologies, in particular Soviet-related ones, were increasingly removed; but to align with China's internal socialist transformation, communism was still propagated. This highlights how the CCP juggled multiple external and internal concerns when formulating propaganda for overseas Chinese in the late 1950s.
The China Pictorial (人民畫報), a popular colour magazine read by overseas Chinese and disseminated through Hong Kong, was first published in 1950. Rather than propagating political ideologies, it focused on reporting China's internal achievement, people's lives, arts, and natural landscapes, cultivating a sense of patriotism among overseas Chinese. Internal news in China was not mentioned to any great extent. Although the magazine still propagated the legitimacy of the CCP, glorified communism, and denounced imperialism, it was often done subtly through stories and reports, without heavy-handed indoctrination.Footnote 98 For example, the issue in July 1958 included a memoir of a former Tsinghua student during the Chinese Civil War. The student described how the Nationalist ‘reactionary’ authorities and armies, which colluded with the United States, suppressed the ‘law-abiding’ Chinese students. After denouncing the ‘imperialists’, the student claimed that he was saved by the People's Liberation Army in December 1948. Only with the rescue of the CCP did students feel more ‘settled and calm’ and achieve ‘materialistic security’.Footnote 99 The emphasis on the CCP's social and economic achievement was another constant feature of the magazine. For instance, in the March 1958 issue, new technologies that had been introduced to different regions in China, such as an electricity generator in Heilongjiang and productive agricultural techniques in Qinghai, were shown to demonstrate how developed the CPG was, promoting a sense of Chinese national pride.Footnote 100 Influenced by the peaceful co-existence policy, a relatively soft approach was used, with propaganda attacking the Nationalists and the United States rather than the colonial and post-colonial governments in Southeast Asia.
Communist propaganda was also found in other publishing genres. The leading pro-communist Sinminchu Publishing Company in Hong Kong published volumes of poems written by different poets and leaders, including Mao Zedong's nineteen poems (毛澤東詩詞十九首) printed in 1958. The poems in this volume evidently glorified communism and the CCP. For example, the first two lines in ‘Qi Lu Chang Zheng’ (七律長征) described the Red Army's struggles during the Long March from Jiangxi in 1934–5, praising their courage: ‘The Red Army was not afraid of difficult expeditions, thousands of waters and mountains were just ordinary’ (紅軍不怕遠征難,萬水千山只等閒). The hardship which the Red Army had to undergo to obtain victory in the Chinese Civil War was similarly described in ‘Shi Liu Zi Ling San Shou’ (十六字令三首).Footnote 101 Although these poems had literary artistic values and were far from subversive, they had pro-CCP meanings. These genres were commonly used to promote the CCP against the Nationalists and cultivate patriotism among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia after 1955.
By the late 1950s, the dissemination of Chinese communist propaganda through Hong Kong was alarming British colonial officials and Southeast Asian governments.Footnote 102 Singapore's Annual report of 1958 pointed out that there was a ‘growing problem of the flow of a million and more Communist-impregnated books each month from mainland China or from Hong Kong’, which was worsened by the expansion of Chinese education and increased literacy.Footnote 103 In the first nine months of 1958, more than 14 million copies of 36,291 publications were imported to Singapore, of which 794 publications were classified as ‘objectionable’.Footnote 104 With only 2 per cent of the publication titles deemed ‘objectionable’, the vast majority of Chinese Communist literature was soft propaganda – that is, texts which did not advocate subversion; but the subtle propagandistic effects of left-wing publications ‘tainted with communist ideology’ remained a concern for administrators.Footnote 105 During the 1950s, Singapore experienced labour and communal riots that threatened its stability, including the National Service riots of 1954, which were triggered by clashes between the police and students from Chinese middle schools.Footnote 106 Chinese nationalists in Singapore also became ‘increasingly radical and militant’.Footnote 107
In this context, the circulation of pro-Chinese communist publications from Hong Kong ‘on a large scale’ was highly problematic, with a published Legislative Council report stating that ‘the influence of that Party [CCP] on material imported into the Federation of Malaya is of considerable significance’.Footnote 108 In May 1958 alone, 7,266 copies of publications that were banned under the Undesirable Publications Ordinance were imported into Malaya from Hong Kong.Footnote 109 The authorities had to contend with the commercial prowess of the communist press, with non-communist suppliers unable to ‘compete in price with those from communist-controlled sources’.Footnote 110 In this situation, the supply of communist literature to schools ‘seemed inexhaustible’.Footnote 111 Local Special Branch officers ‘caught ethnic Chinese students red-handed with Malayan Communist Party and CCP literature’.Footnote 112 Easy access to Chinese communist propaganda threatened the British policy of ‘Malayanization’ and de-Sinicization that encouraged Sinocentric identities to be replaced by ‘Malaya-oriented’ ones.Footnote 113 How did agencies seeking to counter the spread of communist propaganda contend with Hong Kong's pivotal role in this supply chain?
V
In 1949, the United States established the USIS in Hong Kong to obtain Chinese intelligence and conduct anti-communist operations targeting overseas Chinese audiences.Footnote 114 It maintained close contact with Hong Kong's Public Relations Office and the Hong Kong representatives in the Regional Information Office at Singapore – part of Anglo-American ‘intelligence communities’, with the Anglo-American working relationship ‘generally close’.Footnote 115 In 1952, the USIS launched the Chinese book-translation programme on a ‘full-scale basis’. Its pamphlet programme generated 7,000 copies of pamphlets on various political topics, such as labour and the Thought Reform scheme, targeting Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities.Footnote 116 The Hong Kong government also tolerated the Nationalist propaganda funded by the United States as this tended to criticize the undemocratic nature of Chinese communism but rarely touched upon colonialism.Footnote 117 In particular, Neo-Confucian scholars hosted by the New Asia College explored how Confucian philosophies could be modified to fit in with a Western way of life to harmonize with the Cold War context.Footnote 118 This ‘Cold War turn of collaborative colonialism’ benefited the Hong Kong government, which seldom sought to limit such propaganda.Footnote 119 Incidents such as the suppression of Kwok Man Yat Po in 1946 and the suspension of the Voice of America radio broadcasts in 1951 were rare.Footnote 120 However, the United States and the British government agencies had different approaches to communist propaganda.
The colonial government adopted an approach of ‘pragmatism’ and ‘non-provocative firmness’ towards communist propaganda.Footnote 121 This stemmed from the decision of a British government to recognize the PRC in January 1950; thereafter, British governments were conscious that the suppression of the production and distribution of CCP propaganda might jeopardize colonial rule.Footnote 122 The United States, by contrast, sought to contain communism, including assisting non-communist Southeast Asian countries in their modernization process, to ‘deny the overseas Chinese to the Chinese Communists’.Footnote 123 This Anglo-American divide persisted into the late 1950s.
In response to the rise of a communist-aligned print industry in and distribution network through Hong Kong, in 1958 the United States requested the Hong Kong government to ‘take some action to impede the production in the colony of Chinese Communist films, books, periodicals etc.’.Footnote 124 The colonial government had the legal authority to suppress political propaganda using a range of local ordinances. For example, the Sedition Ordinance and the Sedition Amendment Ordinance passed in 1938 outlawed the printing of seditious publications and could result in two years’ imprisonment for the first offence and three years for repeated offences.Footnote 125 The Control of Publications (Consolidation) Ordinance enacted in 1951 provided the government with the power to prosecute printers and publishers who produced any publications which ‘persuade[d] or induce[d] any person’ to ‘adhere to any unlawful society within the meaning of the Societies Ordinance’, including the CCP.Footnote 126
In practice, the colonial administration was reluctant to enforce these laws. As P. G. F. Dalton, Hong Kong's political adviser, had suggested, the colony was ‘a show window in the Far East for the free life’ and that ‘the rule of law’ was ‘one of our main [lines of] defence against complaints against colonialism’.Footnote 127 The colonial government therefore had to observe ‘the same principles of freedom and justice as apply in this country’ and could not ‘prohibit the posting of “communist literature” in general’ or set itself up ‘as judges of what may or may not be considered subversive in other territories’.Footnote 128 In other words, ‘they could not clamp down on communist literature simply because it was communist’.Footnote 129 British officials were also minded that suppression would ‘raise a storm’ in the British parliament and provoke the PRC.Footnote 130 The introduction of ‘authoritarian regulations or methods for the suppression of freedom of publication’ was therefore deemed ‘not necessarily possible or desirable’.Footnote 131 Although the Hong Kong government had tried preventing the exportation of communist propaganda from Hong Kong through ‘postal routes’ since the mid-1950s, left-wing materials still reached Southeast Asia in large quantities.Footnote 132 With the colonial government taking a relatively hands-off approach, Hong Kong remained ‘a battleground of ideas’ which was ‘used as a base for the production and dissemination of CPG propaganda to other colonial territories’.Footnote 133
The ambivalent British control over Chinese communist literature in Hong Kong led the decolonizing Southeast Asian governments to strengthen their colonial-era laws to prohibit pro-CCP imported materials. In Singapore, additional power was granted to the government under the Undesirable Publications Ordinance to ban importation of foreign publications that were ‘subversive and undesirable’.Footnote 134 A blanket ban on publishers based in the PRC and Hong Kong was introduced.Footnote 135 Under the Control of Imported Publications Ordinance enacted in late 1958, Malaya banned the importation of books issued by twenty-nine publishing houses in Hong Kong and China.Footnote 136 Thailand prohibited the circulation of 229 Chinese-language papers and books. British North Borneo likewise made it illegal to disseminate sixty Chinese publications in its territory;Footnote 137 a blanket ban was later imposed specifically on the products of Chinese publishing houses in Hong Kong.Footnote 138 As the Local Intelligence Committee had pointed out, within a year these measures were ‘having some effect’, although pro-communist materials were still circulating in large volumes. For example, the circulation of the Red Flag in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia had dropped from 5,000 to 3,000, and that of China Pictorial Fortnightly from 8,000 to 5,000.Footnote 139 Meanwhile, the Shanghai Book Company in Hong Kong had to return a consignment of four cases of books to Beijing because it was unable to market them through its branches in Singapore and Malaya.Footnote 140
VI
Hong Kong was a Cold War pivot, from which the CCP disseminated printed propaganda to overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The existing scholarship has underplayed the colony's strategic vulnerability to such CCP activities. From 1949, the CCP gained a stronghold in the publishing and book retail industries in Hong Kong and created a distribution network reaching across Southeast Asia. In contrast to the ideological and regulatory approach used in China, the CCP utilized Hong Kong's capitalist environment to its advantage to expand its cultural influence – and ironically did so better than the ‘capitalists’ they opposed. Intelligence gathered by British agencies shows that Chinese psychological warfare using print media was perceived as a real threat to colonial and post-colonial states in Southeast Asia; not only did the number of left-wing printers, publishers, and bookshops in Hong Kong increase, but Chinese communist literature imported to Southeast Asia via Hong Kong also surged in the late 1950s.
Left-wing work disseminated through Hong Kong ranged from magazines cultivating Chinese patriotism and asserting the legitimacy of the CCP to a small number of books which detailed revolutionary and communist ideologies. When a surviving sample of these texts are re-read, they reveal shifts in Chinese statecraft, and highlight tensions between different concerns at work within the CCP: between domestic and foreign policies, and between the promotion of radical ideologies versus the dictates of pragmatism. Most left-wing propaganda adopted a soft approach; it was de-ideologized and was not subversive. This reflected a peaceful co-existence policy and the practical need to attract foreign remittances. However, the CCP also had to inform overseas Chinese of the socialist transformation of China.
Lastly, this article has illuminated the tensions between agencies of the United States and the colonial administration of Hong Kong over how to contain the influx of Chinese communist literature. While the United States expected Chinese communist printed propaganda to be stringently controlled, including via censorship, the colonial government refused to comply with such demands for a hard-line stance against communist-aligned agencies and businesses. The colonial administration argued that it was upholding basic legal freedoms. The Hong Kong government was also motivated by pragmatic concerns. It feared that a hard-line approach would risk internal unrest in the colony and cause a further deterioration in Sino-British relations. Hong Kong's ambivalent hands-off approach led the decolonizing Southeast Asian countries to take initiatives to strengthen their controls on imported communist books and periodicals, showing how Hong Kong had become a pivot in a propaganda war waging across Southeast Asia in the 1950s.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to David Clayton for encouraging me to pursue this research project and offering invaluable advice on the original manuscript. I would also like to thank Oleg Benesch, Yiyun Ding, Allan Pang, Taomo Zhou, and Victor Zhuang for reading previous drafts of this article; it would not have been published without their constructive feedback and support. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the two anonymous referees and to the members of the Hong Kong Studies Study Group, whose insightful suggestions vastly improved the article. It was presented as a paper at the annual conference of the Society for Hong Kong Studies and in a research seminar organized by the History Department of the University of Bristol in 2021. I would like to thank all participants for their comments. Any remaining errors are my own.
Funding Statement
The research for this article was funded by the Association for Asian Studies’ China and Inner Asia Council Small Grant Award. Open access to this article has been made possible by an NAP-SUG grant (research account number 03INS001207C420), provided by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
