Reception as Resistance: Representations of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in Kuomintang’s Publications in Hong Kong, Popular Magazine, 1966–1977

Abstract

<p>Studies on CR in Hong Kong have focused on the 1967 riots while largely overlooking the CR’s catalysation of local ideological conflicts between the Left and pro-Kuomintang (KMT) media, which were expressed through the discursive representations of CR to promote different national identities to different audiences. Situated in the tradition of studies on modern Chinese newspapers, especially as a structure of meaning that accesses historical and ideological values, this project is the first historical examination of the changing ideas about national/local identity through the interpretation of CR in pro-KMT publications. I discuss how<em> PM</em> coalesced anti-CR representations in city-building and nation-building. <em>PM </em>viewed CR as a crisis of freedom in local Chinese identity and criticized the KMT’s timidity, while embracing KMT nationalism to build a local home hospitable to Chinese refugees. I document the salient events, e.g., the outbreak of CR, the 1967 riots, Baodiao movement, China as a United Nations member, the Leftist campaign “Learning about China; Caring about Hong Kong”, and Mao’s death – and examine representations of CR with the aim of exploring how KMT ideological sources became comprehensible in light of <em>PM</em>’s own priorities as counterattacks to the local Left, the consolidation of local Chinese identification, and improvements to colonial injustices. This paper reassesses the prevailing view that acknowledged MacLehose’s policies as the main contributory factor in the emergence of a local identity in the 1970s by demonizing the role of CR in the identity formation, which will add to studies on the Cold War and global Maoism. My investigation on <em>PM</em>’s identity discourse demonstrates an alternative way to understand the offormation of the identity discourse of Hong Kong that transcended the Cold War dichotomy and the pro-colonial identity discourse.</p>