Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong

"As the Chinese Communist Party takes ever more control over Hong Kong, Christine Loh’s history of the CCP in Hong Kong is essential reading. Long before it was fashionable to talk about the CCP’s United Front work, Loh was meticulously documenting how the Party made friends and influenced people in Hong Kong. Before the Second World War, the CCP saw British-controlled Hong Kong as a base to gather support, obtain funding and spread its ideas throughout China. Later, as the handover from British control came into sight, it switched focus to obtaining control over key groups in society and smoothing the transfer of power. Loh, a former legislator and senior government official, explains that the CCP never intended the ‘one country, two systems’ arrangement to provide a path to true democracy and autonomy for Hong Kong. Rather, like other United Front activities, it was a means to an end: full CCP control over the city and the unity of China. The Party was remarkably successful before the handover in winning the support of the city’s influential tycoons by promising to leave their businesses well alone. But Loh argues that this led to over-confidence and an over-reliance on Hong Kong businesspeople and officials who were seen by many people as United Front mouthpieces. This “inhibiting and debilitating legacy” is one of the major reasons for the widespread loss of trust in the Hong Kong authorities over the last few years. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Loh also describes how the city has always been a source of idealistic young radicals. In the mid-1920s, students from Hong Kong’s elite Queen’s College went on strike and travelled to mainland China to support the nascent CCP in its early revolutionary activities. Nearly a century later, during last year’s protests, pupils from Queen’s College staged another class boycott, this time in opposition to the CCP as they chanted “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times”, a protest slogan the authorities recently outlawed because it “incites secession”. What makes Loh’s work so interesting is that while she casts a critical eye on the CCP’s historical record in Hong Kong, she is far from the usual CCP critic. In fact, she has argued elsewhere that Hong Kongers need to embrace the People’s Republic of China, abandon their hopes for Western-style liberal democracy, and work for the betterment of the nation. It is not a view that many young Hong Kongers will share. But they will learn much from her writing about the CCP."