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Hong Kong Media and Asia's Cold War discusses the cultural battle between Communist China, Nationalist Taiwan, and the United States to mobilize Hong Kong cinema and print media to sway ethnic Chinese across the world. Through untapped archival materials, contemporary sources, and numerous interviews with filmmakers, magazine editors, and student activists, Po-Shek Fu explores how global conflicts were localized and intertwined with myriad local historical experiences and cultural formation.
List of contents
- Preface
- Chapter One
- East Meets West: Crossroads in The Cold War
- Chapter Two
- Third Force in Exile: Chinese Student Weekly and Cultural Cold War, 1952-1960
- Chapter Three
- American Cinematic Intervention: Asia Pictures and The Asia Foundation
- Chapter Four
- Making "China" in Hong Kong: The Shaw Brothers Movietown
- Chapter Five
- Epilogue: "My City" In Flux
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
About the author
Po-Shek Fu is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His work focuses on US-China cultural relations, Chinese-language cinemas, and war and culture interactions. He is the author of China Forever: Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema and Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas, and co-editor of The Cold War and Asian Cinemas.
Summary
Hong Kong was a key battlefield in Asia's cultural cold war. After 1948-1949, an influx of filmmakers, writers, and intellectuals from mainland China transformed British Hong Kong into a hub for mass entertainment and popular publications. While there was no organized movement for independence, largely because of its location directly next to Mao's China, Hong Kong was central in the cultural contest between Communist China, Nationalist Taiwan, and the United States.
Hong Kong Media and Asia's Cold War discusses how China, Taiwan, and the U.S. fought to mobilize Hong Kong cinema and print media to sway ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia and across the world. Central to this propaganda and psychological warfare was the emigre media industry. This period was the “golden age” of Mandarin cinema and popular culture. Throughout the 1967 Riots and the 1970s, the emergence of a new, local-born generation challenged and reshaped the Cold War networks of émigré cultural production, contributing to the gradual decline of Hong Kong's cultural Cold War. Through untapped archival materials, contemporary sources, and numerous interviews with filmmakers, magazine editors, and student activists, Po-Shek Fu explores how global conflicts were localized and intertwined with myriad local historical experiences and cultural formation.
Additional text
Po-Shek Fu, one of the foremost scholars of Chinese-language cinema, has written an engrossing book that deepens immeasurably our understanding of how the cultural Cold War was waged in Asia. Impeccably researched, it paints a vivid picture of "cinematic warfare" between Communist China, Nationalist Taiwan, and the US as it played out in the film studios and theaters of Hong Kong. The history he uncovers reads like an espionage thriller, replete with undercover agents, opportunistic entrepreneurs, émigré intellectuals, glamorous stars who switch ideological sides, and "gray" propaganda camouflaged as entertainment. Essential reading for scholars of the Cold War and fans of Hong Kong cinema alike.
