Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, C. 1966-97 - Paperback

by Florence Mok (Author)

This book fills the long-standing void in the existing scholarship by constructing an empirical study of colonial governance and political culture in Hong Kong from 1966 to 1997.Using under-exploited archival and unofficial data in London and Hong Kong, it overcomes the limitations in the existing literature which has been written mainly by political scientists and sociologists, and has been primarily theoretically driven. It addresses a highly contested and timely agenda, one in which colonial historians have made major interventions: the nature of colonial governance and autonomy of the colonial polity. This book focusing on colonialism and the Chinese society in Hong Kong in a pivotal period will generate meaningful discussions and heated debates on comparisons between 'colonialism' in different space and time: between Hong Kong and other former British colonies; and between colonial and post-colonial Hong Kong.

Back Jacket

This book examines state-society relations in one of Britain's last strategically important colonial dependencies - Hong Kong. Using under-exploited archival evidence, it explores how a reformist colonial administration investigated Chinese political culture, and how activism by social movements in Hong Kong impacted on policymaking.
Covert colonialism is framed around the organisational capacity of the colonial state to monitor public opinion, notably through covert polling exercises Town Talk and MOOD. People in Hong Kong had extremely limited democratic rights, but polling exercises constructed 'public opinions' which were used by unelected officials to respond to public needs and minimise social conflict. There were two implications of this shift in colonial governance. On one hand, Town Talk and MOOD provided the colonial government with the organisational capacity to conduct surveillance, monitoring the Chinese society closely: a manifestation of 'covert colonialism' - a strategy to strengthen British control of Hong Kong. On the other hand, these mechanisms indicated that the mentalities of colonial bureaucrats were changing, moving towards a new form of 'decolonisation'. Significantly, covert colonialism allowed ordinary people to take part in the policy formulation process in a state-controlled manner without provoking a hostile response from China.
This effort by the colonial government to manage public opinion interacted in complex ways with a diverse variety of Chinese communities engaging with new political movements and generating pro-democratic discourses, leading to changes in political culture. This book provides an innovative long-term perspective of the constitutional crisis in Hong Kong today.

Author Biography

Florence Mok is a Nanyang Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore