Richard Haass wrote in War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars in 2009 that most modern wars would be fought three times. First is an intense political struggle among rival factions over the decision to go to war; second is the physical war and third is the war of interpretations of what was accomplished and what mistakes were made.
His conceptual insights are also true for historical controversies that have polarized and embittered public opinion in Hong Kong.
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the pro-Beijing leftist riots of 1967 and the 20th anniversary of the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China in 1997.
The Hong Kong government commemorates and reframes these two separate events as interconnected components of rising Chinese patriotic sentiment against British colonialism. The purpose is to reinvent and publicize a new nationalistic discourse that celebrated the end of the colonial era from 1841 to 1997.
However, a careful study of the official archives and oral history shows that the 1967 riots originated from pre-existing socioeconomic grievances and class conflicts in an industrializing Hong Kong society, and underground communist cells seized the moment to mobilize discontented workers and students against the colonialists.
Several labor disputes took place in March 1967. Most of the local trade unions were controlled by the communists or people with close ties to Beijing. The unions tapped into the mass discontent with the “status quo” and the genuine desire for a better alternative, organizing workers and students to oppose the colonial establishment.
The participants came from all walks of life and they joined the anticolonial protests for various reasons, such as unemployment, poor housing and absence of welfare.
Meanwhile, external factors like the Vietnam War and the spillover effects of China’s Cultural Revolution from 1967 to 1976 exacerbated internal tensions.
The British colonial authorities adopted a dual strategy of covert negotiation with China and severe crackdown on protesters. During the peak of the violence, there were gunfights along the China-Hong Kong border in early July, killing a few Hong Kong police constables. The British retaliated by attacking the strongholds of major leftist organizations in the territory, arresting their leaders and sympathizers, and isolating them in high-security prison camps.
Some communist activists became more radicalized and switched to the tactics of urban terrorism, planting homemade bombs in crowded streets, disrupting everyday life and destabilizing the territory. The violent confrontations did not subside until the end of the year, and the culture of fear prompted many well-to-do families to migrate to the West.
At one point, communist cells in Hong Kong attempted to smuggle weapons from Shenzhen to stage an urban uprising and prepare for a Chinese military invasion. Worrying about US intervention in the territory, Beijing disapproved of the escalation tactics by local communists and called off any attempt to overthrow the colonial system.
Assured of no military intervention by China, Britain quickly regained control and restored law and order. It brutally crushed many communist covert organizations and then propagated a political narrative that praised the colonial government as the guardian of peace and stability. It condemned the 1967 activists as communist insurgents seeking to seize power and terrorizing ordinary people. This colonial perspective continues to shape Hong Kongers’ understanding of their recent history.
Since 1997, many former rioters appealed to Beijing and the post-colonial authorities for recognition of their courageous resistance in 1967. They sought compensation for the pain and suffering that they endured under the British.
To a certain extent, their tragedy is similar to that of countless victims of the 228 Incident in Taiwan.
China now rejects the Maoist ideology of revolutionary uprising and perceives the 1967 riots as a historical liability rather than a political asset to win the hearts and minds of Hong Kongers, including the civil servants and business tycoons who bitterly opposed the rioters.
The Hong Kong government offers no assistance to the aging rioters and refuses to file lawsuits against Britain on their behalf.
Instead, both Hong Kong and China deliberately withhold archival material and visual records from the public domain, and discourage civil society from learning the truth and revisiting this controversial event.
From this perspective, Taiwan’s embrace of transitional justice is a great lesson for Hong Kong. By implementing policies to confront the dark history of widespread human rights violations throughout the White Terror era from 1947 to 1987, Taiwan is prepared to restore the rights and reputation of the victims, pursue social healing and leave polarized ideologies out of the reconciliation process.
In Hong Kong, acknowledging the historical complexity of the 1967 riots should be the first step toward discovering the truth and building a new post-colonial consensus.
Even though most Hong Kongers still disapprove the ideological and political reasons for the communist-instigated riots, they should not overlook the problem of intensifying class divisions and inequality, which provided a breeding ground for radical organizations to flourish.
Joseph Tse-hei Lee is professor of history at Pace University in New York City.
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