Covert Colonialism: A Conversation with Florence Mok
Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966–97 (Manchester University Press, 2023) examines state–society relations in one of the United Kingdom’s last strategically important colonial dependencies, Hong Kong. Using underexploited archival evidence, it explores how a reformist colonial administration investigated Chinese political culture, and how activism by social movements in Hong Kong impacted on policymaking. This book is framed by the organisational capacity of the colonial state to monitor public opinion—notably, through covert opinion-polling exercises. People in Hong Kong had extremely limited democratic rights, but these exercises constructed ‘public opinion’, which was used by unelected officials to respond to public needs and minimise social conflict. There were two implications of this shift in colonial governance. On the one hand, the covert polling exercises provided the colonial government with the organisational capacity to conduct surveillance, monitoring Chinese society closely: this was a manifestation of ‘covert colonialism’—a strategy to strengthen British control of Hong Kong. On the other hand, the presence of these exercises indicated that the mentality of the colonial bureaucrats was changing. This was an acknowledgement that Hong Kong, an atypical colony that was expected to retrocede to China rather than gain independence, was moving towards a new form of ‘decolonisation’. Significantly, covert colonialism allowed ordinary people to take part in the policymaking process in a state-controlled manner that would not provoke a hostile response from China. This effort by the colonial government to manage public opinion interacted in complex ways with a diverse variety of Chinese communities engaging with new political movements.
Anna Ting: The archival materials you present illuminate the social and political changes that took place in Hong Kong between 1966 and 1997, especially the development of the city’s political culture. As you note, Hong Kong was an anomaly in the decolonisation processes that took place from the 1950s, remaining a colony until 1997. Can you explain why you decided to title your book ‘Covert Colonialism’ and how this relates to the changes in governance in colonial Hong Kong as the rest of the world was busy decolonising?
Florence Mok: While most colonial territories were experiencing decolonisation, Hong Kong had no prospects of becoming independent. The colonial government also could not introduce any democratic reforms, primarily because the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had always believed that the treaties that governed Hong Kong’s status were unequal and invalid, and asserted that Hong Kong was part of its territory; it perceived British administration in the colony to be only temporary. However, after the 1966 riots, when peaceful demonstrations turned violent after the Transport Advisory Committee approved the Star Ferry Company’s request to increase fares, and the 1967 riots, when industrial disputes evolved into serious confrontations between pro-Beijing local leftists and the colonial government, political culture in Hong Kong was evidently changing, especially with the younger generation beginning to consider Hong Kong as their home and questioning their relationships with the colonial government. In this context, the colonial government’s failure to understand changing public opinion was dangerous, potentially undermining its legitimacy. To restore confidence after the riots, enhance the legitimacy of the colonial bureaucracy, and improve state–society communications, they had to reform their governing strategies. This gave rise to the Town Talk and Movement of Opinion Direction (MOOD) covert polling exercises, which were embedded in the City District Officer Scheme, the first direct state–society communication channel introduced by the colonial government in the hopes of increasing political participation without implementing democratic reforms or enhancing the power of the Urban Council. The exercises were a key innovation that was developed to counter the criticism of the lack of constitutional development in Hong Kong, gauge public opinion, and mitigate popular grievances. To some extent, these mechanisms could be viewed as a substitute for representative democracy. It enabled the undemocratic colonial government to widen the channels of political participation for ordinary people in a state-controlled manner without provoking China’s resistance or politicising the Hong Kong Chinese. It shows how the mentalities of bureaucrats were changing, moving towards ‘decolonisation’.
This sounds very positive superficially, so why would I call it ‘covert colonialism’? First, it is because these changes were contingency responses to crises (the 1966 and 1967 riots). They were not initiated by the colonial government with the sole intention of ‘public participation’. Instead, they provided the colonial government with the organisational capacity to conduct surveillance and monitor local society closely. Most importantly, with Town Talk and MOOD’s existence being concealed from the public, the colonial government had the leeway to decide when to follow public opinion (unlike in a democracy). This technique in fact both enhanced and limited the ability of the public to influence the policymaking process. As we can see from the book’s case studies, the mechanism’s function as an intelligence device was prioritised over the aim to increase popular political participation. This is why I named this book ‘Covert Colonialism’.
AT: The colonial administration reports reveal fascinating insights into the development of the political culture in Hong Kong in the latter decades of colonial rule. For the book, you utilised an inductive method in exploring the archival sources. How did you approach these sources and what methods did you use to organise the material and piece together your selected cases for illuminating Hong Kong’s political development and culture?
FM: My evidence comes primarily from archives in Hong Kong and London. These underexploited files are useful as they provide a novel understanding of how social movements were organised and how the state responded to political activism—the focus of this book. In these official records, the way officials and activists described social movements in private correspondences and petitions illustrates participants’ political orientations and how activists and organisations were mobilised. Official surveys and observations also record how ordinary Hong Kong Chinese viewed political activism, which can be used to analyse the political culture of different groups in the colony. Correspondences between policymakers shed light on the mood and explain reasons behind administrative, legislative, and institutional changes. These were the things that I looked for when examining official records.
However, no archival records are perfect. It is inevitable that some of these records could be biased, reflecting the thoughts of colonial bureaucrats rather than capturing the viewpoints of the public accurately. For this reason, I also collected and consulted unofficial records, such as newspapers (both Chinese and English), pamphlets, and student newsletters. The mass media played a significant role in constructing the collective sense of the Hong Kong community. Some of the campaigns, such as the China Mail anticorruption campaign—which advocated the separation of the anticorruption branch from the Hong Kong Police—were centred on the media. Therefore, using these unofficial voices to corroborate and contest the official narratives has been helpful.
I based the selection of my case studies—the Chinese as the Official Language Movement, the Anticorruption Movement, the campaign against the telephone rate increases, the campaign to reopen the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Secondary School, the changing immigration discourse and policy, and the British Nationality Act controversy—on five criteria. First, they had to involve significant and controversial issues, which can be used to reveal the main tensions in state–society relations in Hong Kong. All the cases involved political activism and/or extensive discursive exchanges at all levels of society. Second, these cases include both positive and negative responses from the authorities, which makes it possible to identify under what circumstances it was more likely for social movement and public opinion to exert pressure on the colonial government and successfully influence its policies. Third, these events and issues covered most of the late colonial era, which allowed me to assess the shifting political culture and ruling strategies. Fourth, these campaigns are either inadequately covered by the existing scholarship or at least have some aspects that are under-investigated. And, finally, for all cases there are abundant state records in archives in both London and Hong Kong, which makes it feasible to gauge both popular reactions to these events and the government’s responses.
AT: I am curious about the officers who were conducting public monitoring in the colonial government’s Town Talk and MOOD schemes. In general, who were they and how were they recruited? Can you explain their role and the extent to which they were involved in policymaking processes? Were there tensions between them and the public?
FM: Town Talk was prepared mainly by Liaison Assistants, Liaison Officers, and City District Officers (CDOs). Most of them were Chinese rather than expats. They were not ‘recruited’ specifically for these exercises, but they were existing civil servants in the City District Offices or the Home Affairs Department. They were not exactly involved in the policymaking process, yet they were the ‘bridge’ between the public and the policymakers. These officers were responsible for collecting opinions independently—that is, without a uniform or standardised set of methods—from these 10 city districts. CDOs also attended routine staff meetings with field staff in different departments to gather the comments they picked up. This information they solicited would be analysed and included in the Town Talk and MOOD reports, which would be read by policymakers, such as heads of departments, the governor, and officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.
Yes, there were tensions between CDOs and the public, and the latter were not even informed that their opinions were considered by policymakers. Many speculated about the intentions of the government and CDOs in newspapers in the 1970s (they probably could see CDOs were trying to make note of people’s comments, sending out questionnaires, making observations, but did not know what these were for!). And, according to MOOD’s observations in 1975, the Chinese communities felt that their demands were not always met despite public consultation:
There is still a feeling that, where the government has consulted the public, and in the end takes a decision rejecting some of the suggestions or recommendations from them, more effort should be made to explain why. These critics maintain that the government is, in their view, more interested in finding out public reactions after confronting them with a fait accompli than in consulting them sincerely. (Hong Kong Public Records Office 1975)
These negative remarks suggested that the communication barrier between the colonial state and the Chinese society persisted.
AT: Across the case studies you present, the shifting and at times contradictory dynamics in the political culture appear to have played a role in informing the varying levels of radicalism and support for confrontational political activism among different groups. In particular, you note that support often depended on ideological and instrumental concerns, and that political conservatism was often a symptom of the desire for political stability, especially among older generations and blue-collar workers. To what extent would you say that the political conservatism and pragmatism among these groups contributed to the relative lack of anticolonial movements and uprisings compared with other places experiencing decolonisation processes? Or were relatively low levels of resistance against the colonial state a result of Hong Kong as an anomaly in the contemporary move towards decolonisation?
FM: The ‘political conservatism’ of the working class to some extent was also related to Cold War politics and internal developments in China. As Benjamin Leung (1991: 202) has pointed out, the scale and frequency of industrial actions taken by the working class in Hong Kong were determined by ‘the strength of labour organisations and the development of major political events locally and in mainland China’. In the early postwar period, trade unions were aligned either to the PRC or to Taiwan. Workers were therefore only mobilised by the politics of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. The level of industrial action was relatively high during the period from 1946 to 1949, as the Chinese Engineers’ Institute—an independent trade union that counted many skilled workers in its ranks—was able to create cohesions among workers, making effective mobilisation possible. The leadership of the Chinese Engineers’ Institute was replaced with politically oriented trade unions, which were established in the late 1940s. However, during the period from 1950 to 1959, the level of industrial strikes remained low as trade unions focused on providing welfare benefits to workers and recruiting more members. With a lack of financial and ideological support from big trade unions, industrial strikes in the 1950s were minimal. The labour movement only started to be more active again in 1967, when rising costs of living coincided with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in China. After the 1967 riots, and especially in the 1970s, the working class was stabilised due to the PRC’s improved relations with the West and adoption of the peaceful coexistence policy.
I would say the older generations and working class were conservative compared with, for example, the younger generation. However, as the book has suggested, it does not mean that anticolonial movements were entirely absent. The 1967 riots, which were influenced by politics in China, were a perfect example that workers could be anticolonial and radical. I would say Hong Kong still witnessed a lot of political activism and social movements during the colonial era, but people’s previous experiences as refugees and the influence of the Cold War probably constricted these movements in terms of their scale and level of radicality. The tensions between political activism and the culture of de-politicisation in turn gave rise to ‘gradualism and reformism within a framework of stability and prosperity’ (Lam 2004: 180), which in turn benefited the colonial government. Activists therefore adopted a reformist attitude towards social changes rather than trying to overthrow the colonial government.
AT: Following on from the previous question, what role did the younger generation born and raised locally in the postwar period play in buttressing the development of Hong Kong’s political culture, especially the emergence of political radicalism? Did they experience tensions in balancing civic pride, nationalism, and self-determination?
FM: Yes, definitely. The younger generation, particularly those with higher education, had a completely different political outlook and were the main political actors in the late 1960s and 1970s, when the political culture in Hong Kong was first changing. One of the MOOD reports in the 1970s captures their role quite well:
Even discounting radical elements and those with political affiliations, students and youths generally hold significantly different, and largely less favourable views of the government than their elders … Their idealistic outlook on life results in their distrust of compromise and impatience in their wait for an egalitarian society. Although on the whole, the younger generation in Hong Kong is much less revolutionist than their counterparts in many other countries, their move towards greater social consciousness and their demand for greater participation in the evolution of society will certainly continue to increase. (Hong Kong Public Records Office 1975)
With the rise of the PRC, the younger generation started asking a lot of questions about their relationship with their ‘motherland’. Their political allegiance towards the PRC could be observed from the rhetoric they employed in various movements—notably, the Chinese as the Official Language Movement in the early 1970s, which was a significant campaign that led to the legalisation of Chinese as the official language of Hong Kong in 1974 and removed the communication barrier between the colonial regime and Chinese society. Western-educated elites in Hong Kong society were inclined to find the concept of nationalism appealing when they challenged the status quo. After the 1967 riots, there was an ‘identity crisis’. These intellectual youths were looking for political ideologies that could offer them new identities. As the notion of nationalism placed cultural identity at the centre of its concern, the young generation could construct a new political identity from the concept of nationalism. On the one hand, nationalism legitimated their claims to political self-determination; on the other hand, the concept also allowed them to refer to their indigenous identity.
AT: Since the handover in 1997, the political climate in Hong Kong has changed significantly and there has been widescale political participation among the population. The events of the latter decades of the twentieth century clearly set the scene for the political activism that has occurred in recent years. In 2019, we saw protestors appeal to the UK Government for support for the anti–Extradition Amendment Bill movement. How can we trace these appeals, and the demands made in the post-handover period for universal suffrage more generally, back to the emergence of a local political culture in the late 1960s? And how can we understand the paradox of appealing to a former colonial power for help in this political context?
FM: I guess the book cannot address this very broad question fully. However, I hope it at least offers some insights into some leftover issues from the colonial era (such as the British Nationality Act, which stripped two and a half million Hong Kong Chinese of their rights of abode in the United Kingdom and provoked a sense of betrayal at that time) and the core values that people still hold on to in today’s Hong Kong (such as the use of traditional Chinese and Cantonese and the freedom to protest). It also provides a snapshot of how the colonial government tackled various political and social problems in the late colonial era, which were precursors to many important changes in postcolonial Hong Kong. And the way the colonial government handled these issues in the 1960s and 1970s also forms a strong contrast with the approaches taken by the Hong Kong Government today.
In all societies—not just Hong Kong—memories are employed to sustain a sense of legitimacy, suppression, or injustice and to solicit popular support for social movements and political campaigns. In Hong Kong’s case, memories are also highly selective and sometimes inaccurate. Since the 2010s, there has been a growing sense of colonial nostalgia. In particular, the narrative that rule of law is a British legacy and contributed to Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity is widely propagated by different pro-democracy activists. Some individuals also believe that the British still have moral obligations to Hong Kong, which explains why some activists would appeal to the United Kingdom for help in 2019.
AT: On a final note, you mention that the archival records you examined for your book have only recently been made available to the public, and thus have been underexploited. Do you think increasing scholarship and public dissemination of knowledge on these archives could influence perceptions of coloniality among Hong Kong people today?
FM: Definitely. Misuse of history is still common in today’s Hong Kong, especially with increased political polarisation. If we look at recent public discourse, it is not easy to spot different categories of ‘falsification of history’, such as factual inaccuracies, misinterpretation, anachronism, neglect of context, and selective bias. This could be simply caused by false memories. However, sometimes people’s current priorities might lead them to highlight some aspects of the past and exclude others. Having increasing scholarship and public dissemination of knowledge would help to mitigate this and provide people with a more accurate understanding of Hong Kong’s colonial past.
References
Hong Kong Public Records Office. 1975. ‘Changes in Public Attitude towards the Hong Kong Government.’ HKRS 394–26–12, MOOD, 18 September.
Lam, Wai-man. 2004. Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong: The Paradox of Activism and Depoliticization. London: Routledge.
Leung, Benjamin. 1991. ‘Political Process and Industrial Strikes and the Labour Movement in Hong Kong, 1946–1989.’ Journal of Oriental Studies 29(2): 172–206.
