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Reviewed by:
  • Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War by Laura Madokoro
  • Gordon Houlden
Laura Madokoro. Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War. Harvard University Press. x, 331. US $45.00

The movement of people from the Middle East and Africa to Europe has been a high-profile dimension of international affairs over the early twentyfirst century. Less well understood is the Asian dimension of human migration in the latter half of the twentieth century, specifically the outflow of persons fleeing the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the then British colony of Hong Kong and the subsequent flight of migrants from Vietnam from the failed French and American wars in Vietnam.

Laura Madokoro's 2016 book, Elusive Refuge, responds to this notable gap in the literature with in-depth research into the Hong Kong, British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand archives in order to lay bare behind-the-scenes policy debates within national governments and within the humanitarian agencies on the ground in Hong Kong. The rapid outflow of Chinese migrants and refugees, following the creation of the PRC in 1949, took place against a backdrop of discriminatory immigration policies in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. These polices were characterized by both a clear preference for white immigrants or refugees, underlined by the far more comprehensive response of the United Nations and national governments to the refugee crisis in Europe following World War II than to crises in Asia. Madokoro also unpacks the ways by which national governments and non-governmental organizations alike use and abuse the terms "migrant" and "refugee" to achieve particular policy goals or to rally public support.

Madokoro outlines how the reluctance of leading immigrant-receiving states to accord the status of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees to Asians arose from long-standing resistance of North American and Oceanian states to open their borders to significant in-flows of Asians. These racist and exclusionary policies and societal attitudes has their basis, Madokoro explains, in the colonial history of these states wherein European immigrants, principally from Great Britain, were preferenced over other immigrants, on the basis of political and racial homogeneity, to populate these colonies. [End Page 420]

In reality, there are two books within Elusive Refugee: the first is the fascinating story of the Hong Kong colony's role as a safe haven for the outflow of Chinese escaping the Chinese civil war and the post-1949 role of Hong Kong as a recipient of outflows of Chinese fleeing the evolving circumstances within the PRC, with surges of migrants triggered by the economic disaster of the "Great Leap Forward" and the chaotic "Cultural Revolution." The second book, interspersed with the first, is the evolving policy responses in Washington, Ottawa, Canberra, and Wellington to the situation in Hong Kong. The back-and-forth transitions between these related phenomena is handled well by Madokoro.

A separate chapter of Elusive Refugee addresses the outflow of refugees generated by the Vietnam War, a large portion of whom were of Chinese ethnic origin. The generosity of Hong Kong in receiving Vietnamese fleeing Vietnam is contrasted with the more grudging acceptance of Indo-Chinese refugees in North America and Australia/New Zealand. However, Madokoro also notes that the Indochinese experience in the 1970s was a precedent-setting example that broke with previous resistance and half measures: "On no other occasion did white settler societies respond so convincingly to the plight of refugees in the region. The crisis was unique in terms of the scale and size of the response."

The research by Madokoro could have been strengthened if the archives of the PRC had been open to her, but that gap is not her failure as Western scholars lack ready access to the PRC archives, particularly with regard to sensitive issues such as the Hong Kong policies of the Beijing central government. Of particular significance are the interviews conducted by the author with former immigration officials, particularly those involved in the 1970s and 1980s flow of Indochinese migrants to Hong Kong. These interviews add a human dimension to the archival records and one that will now be available to future researchers...

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