Hong Kong and Communist Guerrilla Resistance in South China, 1937–1945

Hong Kong and Communist Guerrilla Resistance in South China, 1937-1945 By Gordon Y. M. Chan Throughout its history as a British colony, Hong Kong's politico-economic uniqueness had always been regarded. as a valuable asset by revolutionaries and political dissidents in modem China. For instance, it is well known that Sun Yatsen and his followers had actively exploited the colony's differences with the mainland to try to overthrow the rule of the. Qing Dynasty. They used Hong Kong as their important operational base and organized there no less than eight revolutionary attempts during the years between 1895 and 1911.1 However, a far less recognized and analyzed fact is that Hong Kong had also performed quite a substantial role in the Chinese Communist revolution. Indeed, for a long time before 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had made Hong Kong its headquarters for directing revolutionary activities in Guangdong and sometimes even the whole of South China. Surprisingly, despite Hong Kong's significant involvement in the Communist movement, which can be dated back to the movement's inception in 1921, it has so far attracted little scholarly attention.2 Therefore, it is the objective of the present paper to shed light on this underexplored topic by examining Hong Kong's relationship with the Communists' guerrilla resistance in the province of Guangdong during the Anti-J apanese War (1937-1945). China's war with Japan is generally believed to be a pivotal period for the rise of the CCP, which succeeded in seizing rural control by launching largescale guerrilla activities behind the enemy lines. Although the main arena for thjs guerrilla warfare was in North China, the Communists were far from absent in the south even after Chiang Kai-shek's repeated "encirclement campaigns" to expunge them. In particular, the Party3 was able to develop its guerrilla forces in Guangdong and established there its only two wartime bases in South China, one in the East River valley and the other on Hainan Island.4 It is normal for many scholars, who are obsessed with explaining the Communists' wartime success , to belittle these two small Communisthases. Unfortunately, such endeavor obscures the fact that in the last years of the war their existence actually gave rise to Mao Zedong's ambitious plan for a rapid expansion of Communist power in South C.hina. This plan would very likely have come to realization had it not been thwarted by the Japanese surrender in August 1945.5 Twentieth-Century China, Vol. 29, No.1 (November,2003): 39-63 40 Twentieth-Century China Nevertheless, it is true that the Communist bases in Guangdong were less consolidated than their northern counterparts, and precisely for that reason, as this paper will argue, their survival depended considerably on their connections with Hong Kong. While Hong Kong possessed many advantages, its real importance to wartime Communism in South China cannot be fully appreciated unless they are viewed in light of the Party's position in Guangdong during the AntiJapanese War. The relationship between these two issues will therefore be taken up in the first part of this paper, while the second part focuses on elucidating Hong Kong's contributions to the Communists' guerrilla resistance. These contributions can be divided into four areas: providing manpower to the guerrilla forces, supplying them with funding and other material aid, acting as a communication link between the local Communist bases and the Party Center inYan' an and serving as an arena for the Party's pursuit of the anti-Japanese united-front propaganda. A~ REASONS FOR HONG KONG'S IMPORTANCE Hong Kong's politico-economic advantages. Originally a small fishing village, Hong Kong emerged rapidly into a commercial city after its cession to the British in 1842. With its good harbor and well-established commercial facilities , Hong Kong prospered tremendously from its entrepot trade and, by the end of the nineteenth century, had already become an economic hub of Southeast China.6 Due to this development, Hong Kong possessed an efficient system of communication, which also conveniently linked Guangdong with other parts of the world. For instance, many migrants from Guangdong, the province which probably boasts the largest number of Chinese abroad...