Socialism in Hong Kong
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Socialism in Hong Kong is a political trend taking root from
1920s labour movements in Hong Kong
Marxism was imported to China in the early 1900s and its literature was translated from German, Russian and Japanese into Cantonese and Mandarin. Following the Russian October Revolution led by the Bolsheviks in 1917, a number of Chinese intellectuals emerged from the May Fourth Movement, which saw communism as the solution to rescue China from its present plight. The first social organisation in Hong Kong was the Marxist Research Group in 1920, formed by Lin Junwei, a school inspector of the Education Department, Zhang Rendao, a graduate from the Queen's College, and Li Yibao, a primary school teacher.[1]
In July 1921, the
1922 Seamen's strike
The 1922 seamen's strike became the most important episode of the labour movement in China and Hong Kong. On 13 January 1922, against the backdrop of skyrocketing prices, seamen in Hong Kong launched a well-organised strike which lasted 56 days and involved 120,000 seamen at its peak.[4] Having received organisational and financial support from Sun Yat-sen's left-leaning Kuomintang government in Guangzhou, the Chinese Seamen's Union led the Hong Kong strikers to victory.
Although the Communists played no leadership role in the strike, some Communists in Hong Kong participated and others in the neighbouring Guangzhou made supportive speeches and published the strikers' manifesto. Su Zhaozheng and Lin Weimin, the two leaders of the seamen's strike, would later join the Communist Party. Henk Sneevliet, representative of the Comintern in China who was greatly impressed by the strike's success, concluded that the strike was "undoubtedly the most important event in the young history of the Chinese labour movement."[4] He also held talks with Sun Yat-sen from 23 to 25 December 1921 in Guilin about possible cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists. Sneevliet became more actively involved in organising the First United Front between the two parties after he saw the support given by the Kuomintang in the Hong Kong seamen's strike.
1925–26 Guangzhou–Hong Kong strike
The
Various unions representing Hong Kong and mainland workers convened a conference in Guangzhou and formed the Guangzhou–Hong Kong Strike Committee chaired by Su Zhaozheng, under the direction of the CCP. The Strike Committee called for a boycott of all British goods and a ban on foreign ships utilising Hong Kong's ports. The strike paralysed the Hong Kong economy, as food prices began to soar, tax revenue began to drop sharply and the banking system started collapsing.[5]
The strike began to fall apart after Sun Yat-sen died in March 1925 and Liao Zhongkai, a left-wing leader within the Kuomintang, was assassinated in August. After commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army Chiang Kai-shek seized power, he confiscated the arms of the Strike Committee. The strike received less support as Chiang began his Northern Expedition in the middle of 1926. On 10 October 1926, the boycott was formally lifted after a compromise settlement was reached with the British, which signified the end of the 16-month strike.[5] Several leftist labour unions including the Chinese Seamen's Union were prosecuted and their leaders arrested. New legislation to ban unions from being affiliated with organisations outside the colony and to outlaw strikes with political causes were also enacted.[5]
1930s to 40s: From the anti-communist purge to the anti-Japanese resistance
Colonial suppression
The
The Communists experienced a period of
Anti-Japanese guerilla warfare
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Communist Party set up the Office of the Eighth Route Army which engaged works for United front in Hong Kong and raising funds disguised as the Yue Hwa Company. The Chinese Seamen's Union also organised a resistance movement by recruiting volunteers to cross over to Guangdong and wage a guerrilla war behind Japanese lines led by Zeng Sheng. There were also the Huizhou-Bao'an People's Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Force and the Dongguan-Bao'an-Huizhou People's Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Force militias which were formed in 1938.[6] Commanded by Cai Guoliang, the guerrillas began operations in 1941 before the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. On 2 December 1943, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party regrouped the five guerrilla fighting units within the Pearl River Delta into the East River Column directly under Communist command. By 1943, the East River guerrillas had the total strength of about 5,000 full-time soldiers, who were divided into six detachments.[6]
By the time of the Japanese surrender, the Communist Hong Kong-Kowloon Independence Brigade was the only military force left within the territory. The guerrillas took control of
Chinese Civil War
A Hong Kong Central Branch Bureau headed by Fang Fang was set up in June 1947 to spearhead propaganda campaigns against Chiang Kai-shek and his ally, the United States of America, as well as help facilitate guerrilla warfare in mainland China. A Hong Kong Works Committee was also set up to organise
Communism in Hong Kong after 1949
In 1950, the United Kingdom became the first western nation to officially recognise the communist government of the
1 March Incident of 1952
The 1 March Incident of 1952 was the first major clash between the colonial authorities and the local communists. A huge crowd organised by the local communist party gathered around
Mok Ying-kwai, the leader of the sympathetic delegate, was deported to the mainland and left the Hong Kong Chinese Reform Association (HKCRA), a leaderless organisation first set up in 1949 to demand constitutional reform. Percy Chen, the son of Eugene Chen and another leader of the delegation would later take charge of the association. The association became one of the three pillars of the pro-Communist faction, next to the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU) and the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce (CGCC).[9][10]
1967 Leftist riots in Hong Kong
The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), which was established in 1948, has functioned as "friendly societies" based in industry and craft-based fraternities, and provided benefits and other supplementary aids to the veteran members who was under threat of unemployment and low wages during the 1950s and 1960s. It had a fierce contest with the pro-Kuomintang Hong Kong and Kowloon Trades Union Council (TUC) in industries, trades, and workplaces as part of the "left-right" ideological divide in that period.[11]
The
The committee organised and coordinated a series of large-scale demonstrations. Hundreds of supporters from various leftist organisations demonstrated outside the
Five policemen were killed when pro-Chinese militias exchanged fire with the
1960s movement for autonomy and sovereignty
Asides from the left-right polarisation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, there were also calls for liberalisation and
In addition, the Hong Kong Socialist Democratic Party was founded by Sun Pao-kang, who was a member of the Chinese Democratic Socialist Party, along with the Labour Party of Hong Kong, which was founded by Tang Hon-tsai and K. Hopkin-Jenkins, who directly professed socialist ideology by promoting a welfare state and common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. However, after failing to obtain any meaningful concessions from the colonial government of Hong Kong, all of the parties advocating sovereignty and autonomy ceased to exist by the mid-1970s.[14]
1970s youth movements
The 1970s saw a wave of youth movements, which emerged from events like the
1980s to 90s: The sweep of neoliberalism
After
Pro-Beijing leftists
To counter the growing influence of liberalism, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), which was the largest grassroots organisation in the traditional pro-Communist bloc, assumed a vanguard role to resist the pre-1997 democratisation. It joined hands with the conservative pro-business elites to oppose the direct Legislative Council election of 1988, using the slogan: "Hong Kong workers want meal tickets, not electoral ballots."[12] However, during the Hong Kong Basic Law drafting process from 1985 to 1990, the HKFTU had to repudiate its demands on the rights and recognition of trade unions and collective bargaining in the Consultative and Drafting Committees, which were dominated by business tycoons. The HKFTU's devotion to Beijing and its collaboration with the conservative business interests of Hong Kong was criticised and challenged by several leftist union members.[12]
In 1992, a pro-Beijing party named the
Pro-democrats
Some leftists, such as Tsang Shu-ki, saw a chance for Hong Kong to transform into a reformed capitalist mixed economy, a welfare state, and a democratic society, which would integrate into a democratic socialist China. In 1983, Tsang co-founded the Meeting Point, which became one of the first groups to welcome the transfer of Hong Kong to mainland China. However, Trotskyists such as Leung Kwok-hung harshly criticised Tsang's reformist ideas, instead calling for an uprising against the capitalist-colonial regime in Hong Kong and the bureaucratic regime in mainland China under the banner of social democracy.[18]
The
The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), which emerged from the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), became the major pro-democratic labour union in 1990. At the same year, the United Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK), which was later transformed into the Democratic Party, was established as a grand alliance of pro-democratic politicians, professionals, activists and trade unionists. The pro-democratic camp won a landslide victory in the 1991 Hong Kong legislative election, and received an even larger majority in the 1995 Legislative Council election in the aftermath of the liberal 1994 Hong Kong electoral reform.
Since 1997
The Young Turks
In the first years of the post-handover period, the Democratic Party, which was the largest pro-democratic party, suffered severe intra-party struggles, as the left-wing Young Turks faction led by Andrew To challenged the conservative centrist leadership. During the Democratic Party's leadership election, the Young Turks nominated Lau Chin-shek, the General Secretary of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), to run for the position of Vice-Chairman against Anthony Cheung. In a general meeting held in September 1999, the Young Turks also proposed to put minimum wage legislation on the 2000 LegCo election platform of the party, which led to the backlash from the party's leadership. After failing to exert sufficient influence upon the party, the Young Turks formed another political group called the Social Democratic Forum, and later defected to the more radical Frontier.[19]
League of Social Democrats
In October 2006, Andrew To, legislator Leung Kwok-hung of the April Fifth Action, legislator and former Democratic Party member Albert Chan and the radical radio host named Wong Yuk-man founded the League of Social Democrats (LSD), the first self-proclaimed leftist and social democratic party in Hong Kong. The League managed to win three seats in the 2008 Legislative Council election, receiving 10 percent of the popular vote.[20]
In 2010, the League launched the "
In 2011, the party was heavily devastated from intra-party struggles as former chairman Wong Yuk-man disagreed with the policies of the incumbent chairman Andrew To, including his diplomacy with the Democratic Party, which reached an agreement with the Chinese Communist authorities over the electoral reform proposals. On 24 January 2011, two of the three legislators of the party, Wong Yuk-man and Albert Chan, quit the LSD along with many of the League's leading figures, citing disagreement with leader Andrew To and his faction as their reasons for their departure. About 200 of their supporters joined them, leaving the LSD in complete disarray. Wong and Chan formed the People Power with other defected members and radical groups which left the League only one seat in the legislature, occupied by Leung Kwok-hung.[21][22]
In the
In the
Left 21
A small socialist group by the name of Left 21 emerged after the failure of the massive anti-
Labour Party
In 2011, four incumbent legislators,
, the veteran Labour legislators Lee Cheuk-yan and Cyd Ho were surprisingly unseated, which caused the Labour Party's seats to drop from four to one.See also
- Democratic development in Hong Kong
- Pro-democracy camp
Other ideologies in Hong Kong
References
- ^ Loh, Christine (2010). Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. Hong Kong University Press. p. 43.
- ^ Dirlik, Arif (1989). Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919-1937. University of California Press. p. 58.
- ISBN 0520910877.
- ^ a b Smith, Stephen Anthony (2000). A Road Is Made: Communism in Shanghai, 1920-1927. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 37–8.
- ^ a b c d Loh, Christine (2010). Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. Hong Kong University Press. pp. 48–52.
- ^ a b c d e Loh, Christine (2010). Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. Hong Kong University Press. pp. 56–64.
- ^ Loh, Christine (2010). Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. Hong Kong University Press. p. 70.
- ^ Chan, Ming K.; Young, John D. (2015). Precarious Balance: Hong Kong Between China and Britain, 1842-1992. Routledge. p. 138.
- ^ Cheung, Gary Ka-wai (2009). Hong Kong's Watershed: The 1967 Riots. Hong Kong University Press. pp. 212–213.
- ^ Irwin, Lewis G. (2003). The Policy Analyst's Handbook: Rational Problem Solving in a Political World. M.E. Sharpe. p. 69.
- ^ Kuah, Khun Eng; Guiheux, Gille, eds. (2009). Social Movements in China and Hong Kong: The Expansion of Protest Space. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 207–8.
- ^ a b c d e f g Felber, Roland; Grigoriev, A.M.; Leutner, Mechthild; et al., eds. (2013). The Chinese Revolution in the 1920s: Between Triumph and Disaster. Routledge. pp. 213–5.
- ^ 貝加爾 (2014). "馬文輝與香港自治運動" (PDF). 思想香港 (3).
- ^ Hong Kong Standard. Labour in confusion?. 9 August 1964.
- ^ Butenhoff, Linda (1999). Social Movements and Political Reform in Hong Kong. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 25–6.
- ^ Chiu, Stephen Wing Kai; Lui, Tai Lok (2000). The Dynamics of Social Movements in Hong Kong: Real and Financial Linkages and the Prospects for Currency Union. Hong Kong University Press. p. 215.
- ^ 思想編輯委員會 (2010). 文化研究:游與疑(思想15). 聯經出版事業公司. p. 38.
- ^ 羅永生 (2005). "民主回歸論的萌芽與夭折:從曾澍基早年的幾篇文章說起". Thinking Hong Kong (8).
- ^ Leung, Ambrose (3 December 2002). "Albert Chan quits day after Democrat leadership change". South China Morning Post.
- ^ a b c Lee, Francis L. F.; Chan, Joseph M. (2010). Media, Social Mobilisation and Mass Protests in Post-colonial Hong Kong: The Power of a Critical Event. Routledge.
- ^ 黃毓民倒戈 社民連分裂伙陳偉業牽頭退黨 長毛未有決定. Mingpao (in Chinese). 24 January 2011.
- ^ "League on verge of collapse as heavyweights lead party exodus". South China Morning Post. 24 January 2011.