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6 Cultural Cold War and the Diasporic Nation Global politics after World War II included the decolonization of many former colonies; yet, at the same time, the global politics of this time ushered in the Cold War, which lasted for the next half century. Many former colonies fell into the categories of either developing nations or underdeveloped nations and found their independence in a world deeply divided. This state of affairs meant not so much that the former colonies would embark on autonomous development as a new kind of dependence that played into the hands of either one, or both, of the hegemonic powers. Culturally, national independence also posed, for the newly independent territories, difficult questions about national identities — questions that persist today. Interested parties ask questions about national identity and try to answer them by looking back on the alleged historical roots of the nation; however, in the wider reality of the Cold War, these efforts could not possibly divorce themselves from global hegemonic contestations. The Cold War divided some regions and nations, yet also helped to integrate others; it redrew boundaries in real and imaginary terms. In all cases, its influences ran much deeper than a polarization of the world into two political camps. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) gained control over mainland China in 1949 in a mood of exuberant anti-imperialism that resulted in the reclamation of all treaty ports and coastal concessions, with the only exception of Hong Kong. However, the Korean War (1950–1953) broke out soon thereafter and dragged China into a Cold War confrontation with the United States; Hong Kong’s decolonization was held in suspension, for China had to take advantage of Hong Kong’s free-port status to break the U.S.-imposed trade embargo and to acquire foreign exchange vital for the new regime’s survival. For the following three decades (until the 1980s), the issue of a decolonized Hong Kong largely escaped intense scrutiny in international politics, and strategists on all sides instead turned Hong Kong into a Cold War battle zone. Remnants of the defeated KMT military and other former Nationalist Government affiliates constituted ch.06(p.131-148).indd 131 3/5/09 12:41:41 PM Hong Kong In-Betweens 132 a sizeable part of the refugee population in Hong Kong; upon their arrival, they confronted pro-communist leftists, who enclosed themselves in separate enclaves. Hostility between the two communities abounded, and Hong Kong’s social stability was largely at their mercy as they respectively and repeatedly organized or instigated protests, strikes, and riots during the first two postwar decades. As the Cold War was a protracted economic, geopolitical, and ideological struggle between communism and capitalism, contestations on the cultural and ideological fronts were at least as important as arms races or regional military conflicts. In Hong Kong then, one would find the leftist-rightist divide among Chinese from all walks of life and in all settings: from newspaper establishments, bookstores, schools, and cinemas right down to soccer teams. In this chapter, I take the Cold War as the most important background against which there emerged a cultural and political imaginary about a diasporic Chinese nation. Manifested in notions such as Overseas China or in intellectual currents such as Neo-Confucianism, the connections of these currents of thought with the controversial Cold War cultural infrastructure are the subject of an analysis here that reveals how the latter pre-conditioned the materialization of a distinct type of Chinese nationalism in Hong Kong — one that has become a core element of Hong Kong identity, as it is now known. There is also a common belief that the rise of Hong Kong identity in the 1970s is attributable to the political awakening of Hong Kong’s postwar baby-boomer generation to colonial oppression. However, in this chapter, I take issue with this view. Analyzing the “return to China” discourse in terms of the complex discursive shifts that occurred between the left wing and the right wing in Hong Kong over the future of an imagined homeland, I bring to light certain overshadowed aspects of Hong Kong consciousness. I want to demonstrate, with examples, that underpinning Hong Kong’s emotional, intellectual, and political turbulence, which flashed with youthful impulses of radicalism and nationalism, were also instances in which colonial power was indigenized or localized. The chapter takes the indigenization of colonial power as the main motif informing and underlying the writings and the other practices of some...

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