Hong Kong Identity at (Cold) War: The Chinese Cultural Revolution Discourse in Ming Pao

Abstract

<p>Recent studies marked the 1967 riots as a watershed in Hong Kong’s subsequent identity formation, which was based on a dichotomy between a benevolent British colonial administration and a hostile socialist China. However, this prevailing view overlooks the complexity of Chinese nationalism and the role of the Cultural Revolution (CR) in forming a local consciousness. In the process of structuring its local/national identity discourse, <em>Ming Pao</em>, a neutral newspaper, took a strategically ambiguous approach, rather than a definite political position involving factional leftism, Communist nationalism, Trotskyism, cultural nationalism, and pro-KMT ultra-rightism. The aim of this investigation of <em>Ming Pao</em>’s CR discourse is to reveal how its intellectual tropes—“stability and prosperity,” “three-in-one combination” (i.e., socialist equality, capitalist economy’s freedom, and Confucian benevolence), and “the concepts of everyday and labor”—helped to cultivate a local identity for the Chinese during the CR. <em>Ming Pao</em>’s nationalist discourse demonstrated an alternative way to understand the formation of the popular identity discourse of Hong Kong, which transcended the traditional Cold War dichotomy between communism and capitalism and the pro-colonial identity discourse.<br></p>