“Bat lau dung laai”: Shifting Hong Kong Perspectives Toward the Vietnamese Boatpeople

Abstract

Hong Kong people’s encounter with the Vietnamese boatpeople lasted for over a decade. Early arrivals from Vietnam, following the 1975 communist takeover of the south of the country, were perceived as Cold War victims. They moved on relatively rapidly from Hong Kong to Western Capitalist Bloc countries. The massive influx of ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam, especially after the PRC’s incursion into Northern Vietnam in 1979, forced Hong Kong to develop strategies to cope with far larger numbers of such arrivals. Social discontent over Hong Kong’s role as a holding port for these refugees escalated and popular sympathy for them declined, with new arrivals perceived as economic migrants battening on Hong Kong—an attitude that hardened even further as ethnic Vietnamese refugees began to predominate in the 1980s. As the PRC introduced market reforms, Cold War alignments shifted, and the city’s future appeared uncertain, broader geopolitical factors were reflected in pervasive public attitudes toward these boatpeople in Hong Kong.