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  • Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945–1997 by Mark Hampton
  • Chi-kwan Mark
Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945–1997. By Mark Hampton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017. xii plus 248 pp. £18.99).

Mark Hampton’s Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945–1997 examines the British cultural engagement with Hong Kong between the end of the Second World War and China’s resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong. Embracing the “cultural turn” in the study of British colonialism and drawing on a wide range of archival and private sources, it details how British expatriates, novelists, journalists, social reformers, and so forth imagined and constructed Hong Kong as “a site of an unbridled capitalism,” as “the recipient of modernisation projects,” as “the focus of good governance,” and as “a place of masculine leisure” (10–11). Highly illuminating and meticulously researched, the book shows that British commentators were either fascinated with Hong Kong’s transformation from a “barren rock” into a dynamic city, or critical of Hong Kong’s money-making and non-white character. By exploring the complex interplay between metropolitan and colonial cultures, Hampton has not only addressed a neglected aspect of Hong Kong history, but also provided valuable insights into postwar British society and culture.

The book begins with an account of the international and local context of Hong Kong’s transformation since 1945—the Chinese Civil War culminating in the Communist victory in 1949, the Cold War, Britain’s decolonisation, and Hong Kong’s demographic explosion and economic miracle. Chapter 2 focuses on Hong Kong as a site of unbridled capitalism. After engaging with the recent scholarship on the colonial government’s laissez-faire policy (which was more political expediency than a matter of principle), Hampton reveals two competing British discourses of Hong Kong. On the one hand, some commentators celebrated Hong Kong’s limited government and economic freedom, which were reminiscent of the values of Victorian Britain. The Hong Kong government’s non-intervention (or indeed selective intervention) in the economy stood in stark contrast to the post-1945 welfare state consensus in Britain. Consequently, Hong Kong’s economy was “more British than Britain” itself (46), and was more successful than the declining metropolitan economy. In the late 1970s, Keith Joseph, founder of an anti-Keynesian think tank which advised Margaret Thatcher on her bid for the premiership, went so far as to argue [End Page 325] that “Hong Kong offered a clear model for Britain itself” (62). On the other hand, Elsie Elliott, an English-born social activist in Hong Kong, criticised the “sweatshop” conditions and inadequate social security that made Hong Kong an economic miracle. She and other British advocates of social reform supported “managed” capitalism as championed by the Labour government in the United Kingdom.

Hong Kong was a site for the reproduction of British cultural practices, such as clubs and sport, which retained much of the late Victorian character. In Chapter 3, Hampton vividly illustrates how Hong Kong was imagined, in novels, memoirs and letters, as a sexual playground for the British man. The World of Suzie Wong, a 1957 novel by British writer Richard Mason (which was made into a popular film with the same title), featured the British discourses of masculinity and sexual opportunity. Hong Kong was not just about pleasure and leisure. Rather, as Hampton discusses in Chapters 4 and 5, British commentators and especially colonial officials portrayed Hong Kong as the success story of modernisation projects and good governance. The British culture of “planning” brought order and modernisation to the New Territories, where new towns were built to provide accommodation (if not sufficient jobs) for the growing population of Hong Kong. Progressive colonial governors like Murray MacLehose talked of British good governance, or accountability without democracy, in Hong Kong. The last governor, Chris Patten, introduced democracy at the eleventh hour by increasing the number of directly elected seats in the Legislative Council. But his efforts were too little and too late for the democratic culture of Westminster to take root in Hong Kong before the end of British rule in 1997.

The British cultural engagement with Hong Kong was not a one-way street. Hampton has...

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