The Cultural Revolution and the British Chinese: Radicalization of a Transnational Community

This thesis bridges the bottom-up and top-down approaches favour of transnational history from the middle to understand the influence of the Leftist Riots and China’s Cultural Revolution provoked unrest in Britain’s Chinatowns in 1967. Concerned by the outburst of solidarity, the Hong Kong government sent Administrative Officer David (Kar-wah) Lai to survey why Britain’s ethnic Chinese community—often considered apolitical—demonstrated in support of the Hong Kong Leftists. Using recently released archival material from the National Archives, Hong Kong Public Records Office and the London Metropolitan Archives, this dissertation argues that, while the impetus for protest in Britain’s Chinatowns was the 1967 Leftist Riots, there were several other underlying causes that help to explain why the ethnic Chinese population of Britain demonstrated in support of the Hong Kong Leftists. The Hong Kong government survey initially believed that the ethnic Chinese community’s unrest was due to Maoist indoctrination by the Chinese Mission, its supporting pro-Beijing associations, and Leftist media. However, Lai’s survey revealed that the members of the ethnic Chinese community who gravitated towards Maoism did so for pragmatic reasons, not because of any strongly held ideological conviction. This dissertation contends that the Hong Kong Chinese and Britain’s ethnic Chinese who dabbled in left-wing politics were not true Communists or Maoists but were merely expressing their discontent with British colonial rule in Hong Kong and British society. Their lack of Communist conviction becomes increasingly clear by 1997 and the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC. By this time, Britain’s ethnic Chinese were thriving financially and many questioned returning to the “motherland” and whether Hong Kong would be able to maintain autonomy or remain insulated from the challenges within the PRC. Emigrant Chinese in Britain have held a complex relationship with the phenomenon of both British and Chinese “colonialism.” By studying the history of Hong Kong emigrants in Britain, this thesis contributes to the understanding of the decline of the British Empire and the rise of the PRC state, and how the emergence of a British Hong Kong and its diasporic citizens became central to the new Cold War Anglo-Chinese relationship.