The story of the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong may be said to begin with three men who started the irregular Zhenshanmei Magazine in 1920. Lin Junwei (alias Lin Changchi) was a school inspector with the Education Department, Zhang Rendao was a graduate of the well-known high school, Queen’s College, and Li Yibao was a primary school teacher. They wanted to report on labour issues and introduce basic Marxist principles to a wider audience. Some time at the end of 1920, they made a special effort to meet Chen Duxiu on the boat Chen was travelling on from Shanghai to Guangzhou as it passed through Hong Kong. Inspired and encouraged by Chen, the three men established the Marxism Research Group at Mengyang Primary School in Happy Valley where Li Yibao was teaching.1
Chen Duxiu went on to become the CCP’s first party secretary after founding the party in Shanghai together with Li Dazhao. They also created the Socialist Youth League. Other party branches sprung up in Beijing, Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, Jinan, and Japan. The First Party Congress was held in Shanghai on 23 July 1921 with 13 delegates (including Mao Zedong) representing 59 party members. The early party branches were highly energetic and quickly became organised to propagate Marxism, especially among youth, workers and peasants, and expanded their network to more provinces. Marxism’s appeal was that it seemed to offer coherent theses on the accumulation of capital and the exploitation of workers. It was unsurprising that intellectuals and students should be attracted by the new ideology.
Lin Junwei, Zhang Rendao, and Li Yibao formed links with the CCP’s Guangdong-based organisation. Being teachers, they were able to attract a number of students to the study group. Their activities were carried out in the name of the New China Students Club Hong Kong Sub-branch,2 which by 1923 became the Chinese Socialist Youth League, Hong Kong Special Branch, coming under the Guangdong Socialist Youth League.3 As the Chinese Socialist Youth League was the only CCP-related organisation in Hong Kong in the early days, it represented both the party and the league in effect.4 Achievements were modest since members lacked resources and expertise.5 This state of affairs continued up until mid-1924 when the CCP Central Committee decided to set up a party structure in Hong Kong. In November 1924, when the reorganisation took effect, seven local league members were considered eligible to join the CCP and they made up the party in the colony.6
The earliest days of the CCP presence in Hong Kong was a part of the story of the party getting established and surviving as a political organisation. Naturally, Hong Kong, a small colonial outpost, was never the party’s main focus. Its eyes were always firmly on Mainland China. Not surprisingly, the CCP’s activities in the colony were ad hoc in nature and dictated by the fast-changing environment on the Mainland. Nevertheless, Hong Kong provided an extremely useful base for the party to organise support for the communist cause.
Hong Kong, an Inspiration
Hong Kong was in fact an inspiration for the emergent socialist movement on the Mainland. The most extensive labour strike in the history of modern China was sparked in the British colony of Hong Kong. The 1920s was a time of worldwide labour dissatisfaction. Workers in Hong Kong and the Mainland were not unaware of labour strikes in other parts of the world, which were a direct result of worker discontent aggravated by the economic dislocations brought on by World War I.7 The nineteen-day strike from March to April 1920 by the Chinese Mechanics Institute was a momentous occasion. Many of its members were skilled workers, who were not easy to replace. They asked repeatedly for a 40 percent pay rise to offset inflation and resorted finally to a strike with 9,000 of them leaving Hong Kong for Guangzhou, where the cost of living was lower. Their withdrawal brought life to a standstill in Hong Kong. The employers had no choice and agreed to a 32 percent pay increase, whereupon the mechanics returned to resume work. The successful strike was the first coordinated industrial protest in Hong Kong’s history and caught the attention of the early Chinese Marxists.8
The mechanics strike pre-dated the founding of the CCP on the Mainland. The strike showed the interconnected socio-economic dynamics between Hong Kong and Guangdong, as well as their connectedness to ideas and events overseas. Hong Kong was already globally linked. Its longstanding trading and seafaring activities had brought its people into contact with activities and conditions elsewhere in the world. There were to be more and larger strikes to come in Hong Kong marking important milestones in the history of the CCP.
Guangdong and Hong Kong have always been close and inseparable, and thus the work of the communists in Guangdong and Hong Kong was likewise intimately linked. With only a handful of CCP members in the colony and a limited capacity to act, the Hong Kong communist structure in the early days “was essentially an offshoot of the Guangdong structure”9 and most of the CCP’s impact on Hong Kong originated from Guangdong. The importance of that closeness during the various labour protests in the 1920s will be seen later in this chapter. Indeed, the interwar years in Hong Kong saw many strikes and boycotts—workers had genuine grievances that the Chinese compradors and European taipans, as well as the colonial authorities, chose to ignore for too long. On the whole, the wealthy Chinese merchants were conservative in outlook, easily alarmed by social changes and reform movements. Yet, the obvious injustice at the time of the relative social positions of the British and the Chinese, and of employers and workers, did not turn the people of Hong Kong against colonialism altogether despite their strong sense of Chinese nationalism. The politics of the Mainland was just too divided and volatile. For all its imperfections, Hong Kong was a safe haven for people of all types and shades to pursue their dreams and beliefs.
However, the pragmatism of the Hong Kong Chinese to get on with life in Hong Kong was not enough to win the trust of either colonial authorities or the British hongs. The British knew they were imperial trespassers and thus suffered from a constant “siege mentality”.10 Indeed, to survive in Hong Kong, they needed to separate themselves from the Chinese. The Chinese were barred from living on the Peak for example by the Peak District Reservation Ordinance 1904 and Peak District (Residence) Ordinance 1918; the Chinese were kept out of the Hong Kong Club and other recreational establishments frequented by the Europeans. There was naturally no thought of giving the Chinese any kind of political representation. Not only were the Hong Kong Chinese barred from involvement in policy-making, they were mostly also excluded from carrying out policies. Up until the 1950s, the cadets who held all the most senior jobs in the Hong Kong civil service were recruited in Britain; and even the lower-ranking jobs in many government departments were held by Europeans.11
In Hong Kong’s colonial society, the British could never be completely relaxed that they had local Chinese support, and the Hong Kong Chinese could never quite depend upon the British to fight for their interests. The British and the Mainland authorities dealt with each other as sovereign powers. When British power was in ascendant, the British behaved as conquering imperialists and China had to reluctantly accommodate but remained unhappy and disgruntled. To the Chinese, Hong Kong was Chinese territory and its people were compatriots. To the Hong Kong Chinese, they had managed to carve out a reasonable life in Hong Kong but who could speak for them? This is a question that resonates still today. Just as the British did not then feel they could fully trust the people of Hong Kong, Beijing’s distrust today arises not from ethnic differences but from a vast ideological divide. The history of Hong Kong is one with multiple currents and complex nuances, which the CCP probably still has difficulty understanding.
The Hong Kong Seamen’s Strike 1922
During the first major labour event, the Seamen’s Strike of 1922, the CCP had no formal structure in Hong Kong so it could not claim credit for it, but the strike became a notable milestone in party history nevertheless because the key labour organisers did subsequently join the party.
Chinese seamen banded together in 1921 to fight for better wages and working conditions from shipping companies. They were particularly unhappy with the very large gap between their pay and that of non-Chinese seamen, which was very much higher. They asked for pay rises of between 15 percent and 35 percent, which employers twice turned down.12 The seamen were also held hostage to an extremely unfair contract hiring system that took a large chunk of their already low wages. Eventually, they formed a new Chinese Seamen’s Union13 and began a strike on 13 January 1922 when a third pay rise demand was ignored by the hongs Butterfield and Swire and Jardine Matheson.14 It started with 1,500 deck hands and stokers stopping work. A week later, the number of strikers rose to 6,500 and by the end of the month some 30,000 workers, including pilots, tallymen, lighter-men, carriers, stevedores, wharf coolies, cargo labourers and others, had joined the strike.15 The earlier strikers were almost all Cantonese, but as events escalated, seamen of Shanghai, Ningbo, and Zhejiang origins who had their own unions refused jobs vacated by the Cantonese. This was probably due to the communists in Shanghai helping to persuade workers to support the strike in Hong Kong.
The strike paralysed shipping, traffic, and production, and caused food prices to rise, when the price of rice was already high.16 The British colonial administration and the Chinese compradors tried to intervene to settle the dispute without success. By 16 January, the authorities deemed it necessary to declare martial law and armed guards were placed at strategic points to preserve order, although contemporaneous reports showed the strike was carried on in an orderly manner.17 By the end of the month, over 10,000 seamen had left Hong Kong for Guangzhou, where they were sympathetically received by both the head of the fledgling Guangdong military administration under Chen Jiongming, as well as his rival, Sun Yat-sen. Chen wanted to enhance his popularity as he anticipated there would soon be a political showdown with Sun.18 The union sent more and more workers across the border, partly to prevent disorder in Hong Kong and partly to reduce the financial burden of subsidising the striking workers since the cost of living was lower in Guangzhou.19
On 1 February, with the support of the Hong Kong Chinese business elites, the colonial authorities proscribed the union and sought to close it down on the ground that its activities caused widespread distress. Two other unions were also declared unlawful. Things quickly boiled over into a general strike involving more than 50,000 workers, including cooks, domestics, bakers, pastry chefs, office boys, delivery men, dairymen, tramway workers, rickshaw pullers and general coolies, bank clerks and other workers.20 The Chinese staff of Government House serving the governor also walked out.21 The government retaliated by issuing and rushing through in one day the Emergency Regulations Bill giving it powers to prohibit posters and public gatherings, censor mail, conduct body searches, and raid private premises, such as the union’s office. By the end of the month, some 120,000 workers had joined the strike. In order to prevent more workers leaving the colony, the Hong Kong administration suspended train services to Guangzhou. Political tension heightened on 4 March when 2,000 domestic workers decided to walk from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. When they tried to break through the guarded cordon at Shatin set up to prevent them from leaving Hong Kong, the British used Indian troops supporting the police to fire at the crowd attempting to depart.22 Government reports noted that five strikers were killed and several were wounded.23 This incident, referred to as the Shatin Massacre, aroused considerable public ill-feelings towards the colonial administration and resulted in more strikes and a paralysed Hong Kong.
An economic strike had been turned into a major political confrontation. The shipping companies and colonial administration had to back down following negotiations among the seamen, their employers, and the Guangzhou and Hong Kong authorities. An agreement with the union on pay was reached with wage increases averaging about 30 percent and the seamen returned to work on 6 March. Chen Jiongming and Sun Yat-sen were also keen to see the disruptions stopped as they hoped to gain financial assistance and diplomatic recognition for the military administration through Hong Kong and were thus anxious to avoid offending the British.24 The speed with which the workers went back to work showed the strike was much more of an economic rather than a political struggle. The ban against the Chinese Seamen’s Union was also lifted. Despite the seamen’s victory, inflation would erode their pay gains. While they were also promised money as partial compensation for lost wages, it was never in fact paid.25
The Seamen’s Strike was important for another reason beyond its large scale. The Chinese business elites were no longer able to play the role of mediator between Chinese workers and foreigners because they could not look beyond their own commercial interests. Moreover, the Seamen’s Strike was the first time the CCP intervened in Hong Kong affairs although it played a minimal role. While some of the union leaders, most notable Su Zhongzheng and Li Weimen, became CCP members by the time of the next strike, they were not party members at the time of the Seamen’s Strike.26 At the start of the strike in January 1922, the CCP Guangdong Branch was still in its infancy. It had only been set up after the CCP’s First Party Congress had been held in Shanghai in July 1921. The branch saw the strike as an opportunity to further party work in Guangdong, and organised various activities to support the Hong Kong strikers. For example, it mobilised public support for the strike in Guangzhou, issued 3,000 copies of the Manifesto to the Seamen, set up a support committee to receive the strikers and to provide for them, and dissuaded Ningbo seamen from going to Hong Kong to take up jobs left by the strikers. The CCP activists in Guangdong “were simply too few, too poor, too inexperienced and too unknown” to do very much more.27
Nevertheless, from the CCP’s perspective, the Seamen’s Strike is considered significant in party history. The truth may be that at the time the strike inspired party members more than communism inspired the strikers, and with the passage of time, the episode became hailed as a political struggle against imperialism and colonialism.28 It was also significant that it was the first time that the colonial administration and local business elites felt seriously threatened. Moreover, the success of the strike further emboldened workers and other labour disputes followed.29
To the last, Governor Reginald Stubbs (governor from 1919 to 1925) believed that the Seamen’s Strike was a conspiracy organised by Sun Yat-sen and the KMT in Guangzhou under Soviet influence to undermine the colonial regime in Hong Kong.30 While the KMT subsidised the strikers’ livelihood and provided accommodation when they relocated across the border, the strike in Hong Kong was a locally organised affair. Moreover, the right-wing within the KMT did not support further strikes, as they had close ties with local businessmen. Anti-communist sentiments were particularly strong among the Chinese merchants in Hong Kong, whose commercial interests were affected. They felt the unions “had strong Bolshevist support”, the “government could not retreat one inch” in negotiating with the strikers, and urged “the suppression of all labour guilds”.31 The colonial authorities regarded the Chinese businessmen as representing responsible local opinion, while the truth was they ignored the grievances of, and had little sympathy for, the plight of the seamen. From then on, the Chinese business elites and the colonial administration became staunchly anti-communist and anti-union.
Guangzhou–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott, 1925–1926
At the start of the Guangzhou–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott in 1925, there were not many CCP members in Hong Kong and they did not have much organisational capacity in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, with KMT funding and CCP orchestration, the impact was massive. It ended sixteen months later only because the KMT was ready to ease off. It was in fact a complex period of time with many things in flux. Sun Yat-sen’s death in March 1925 led to a jockeying for power within the KMT. The KMT’s and CCP’s interests on the Mainland soon diverged. In Hong Kong, while there was a strong sense of nationalism and social justice among the Chinese that needed to be aired, the people also wanted order so that they could get on with their lives. In a contested environment, the difficult choices people made were often seen as a contest between their loyalty to a foreign administration that did not understand or trust them, and their fear of fast-changing politics on the Mainland that were uncertain and violent.
The dramatic chain of events started in February 1925 in Shanghai when workers at the Japanese-owned Naigai No. 8 Cotton Mill went on strike because a Japanese overseer had beaten a female worker. The numbers of strikers swelled to more than 35,000, as workers from 20 other Japanese-owned mills joined in. On 15 May, a worker vs. management confrontation at the No. 7 mill resulted in the shooting and killing of worker Gu Zhenghong, who was a CCP member. The party seized the chance to organise a large-scale event. On 28 May, the party decided to mobilise workers and students to launch an anti-imperialist demonstration on 30 May in the British-controlled International Settlement, the day of Gu’s memorial service. On 30 May, protesters and Sikh policemen under the command of a British inspector came to blows on Nanjing Road. Shots were fired killing several people and wounding dozens more.32 The police also made many arrests. The incident provoked a massive outburst of anti-British sentiments and Chinese nationalism, which gave the CCP the opportunity to call an immediate general strike on 1 June. When the strike started, there were further shootings and deaths leading to many more workers joining the strike in the International Settlement over the next few days.
Indignation over the events in Shanghai reverberated throughout China. The CCP in Shanghai saw this incident as an opportunity to strengthen their political position and instructed the CCP branches in different cities to mobilise the public to support the strike in Shanghai. Against this background, the CCP in Guangdong began to agitate as news reached Guangzhou and Hong Kong. By then, Su Zhaozheng and Li Weimin had joined the CCP and became the chief agitators in the Strike-Boycott.33 The KMT backed calls for an immediate general strike and sponsored a joint operation between the KMT and CCP. Both parties could see political gains for them in exploiting anti-foreign themes. The CCP “worked as the hand inside the glove of the left wing of the KMT” and without KMT money the strike would have collapsed within a short time.34 Thus, unlike the Chinese Seamen’s Strike, this time the CCP Branch in Guangdong was deeply involved in every aspect of the Strike-Boycott.
The strike started in Hong Kong on 18 June, when 80 percent of the senior students from Queen’s College absented themselves. Most of the senior students in the Yaumati Government School did the same thing the following day.35 On 19 June seamen, tramway men and printers led the walk out and left for Guangzhou. The CCP formed a small party core to arrange food and accommodation for them.36 On 21 June, students from Queen’s College also left for Guangzhou. On 23 June, during a march through Shaji in the foreign concession of Shamian Island, in which Zhou Enlai participated, British and French troops opened fired killing 52 people and injuring over 170 demonstrators.37 Another veteran communist, Liu Shaoqi, was also in Guangzhou. Anger was at a fever-pitch in Guangzhou after the shootings. The incident referred to as the Shaiji Massacre, provoked many more workers in Hong Kong who were working for foreign firms in machine-building, telegraphing, catering and other jobs to join the strike.38 As anti-British anger swept through Hong Kong, many more workers and their families left for Guangzhou. Among the early strikers were servants working in the exclusive residences on the Peak, where Chinese could not live.
It is worth pausing here to emphasise one point. China’s most famous and able revolutionaries joined the CCP in the 1920s when they were young. Some of them, such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Ye Jianying, and Liao Chengzhi, remained in political life for a very considerable time and their views and assumptions influenced policies for many decades.
Through the arrangements of the KMT’s finance chief, Liao Zhongkai, a Hakka, the CCP received considerable funds to support the Hong Kong strikers in Guangzhou. Liao was a left-wing KMT leader and supported the strikers enthusiastically. The right-wing of the KMT had called unsuccessfully for limited strikes. Patriotic overseas Chinese also sent funds to support the strikers. The KMT seized casinos, opium dens and other unoccupied places and used them to accommodate the Hong Kong strikers. Liao’s son—Liao Chengzhi—became a member of the CCP and would play an important role in the war effort against the Japanese and in the resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong one day (Chapters 4 and 7).
In response to the rising anti-British sentiments and to show toughness to the nationalists, the Hong Kong government severed economic relations with Guangzhou. Under the direction of the CCP in Guangdong, the various unions representing Hong Kong and Mainland workers that were under its influence convened a conference in Guangzhou. The purpose was to form the Guangzhou–Hong Kong Strike Committee which would be under the CCP’s national organ in the labour movement, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. Su Zhaozheng became the chairman of the Strike Committee, which had numerous subcommittees in charge of armed defence, picketing and other activities.
It is noteworthy that the Hong Kong strikers, in addition to supporting the cause of other Chinese workers on the Mainland, also had their own demands. They called for freedom of expression, equality of treatment for Chinese and non-Chinese, universal suffrage to elect the legislature, improvement of working conditions, lower housing rents; and freedom to live anywhere in the colony.39 In other words, they had grievances over the privileges of foreigners and demanded equal treatment. These demands were probably the first time ever in Hong Kong history that the people of Hong Kong demanded liberalisation of the political system. Interestingly, at a later stage of the Strike-Boycott, the CCP leadership considered that these demands were unrealistic and should not to be further pursued at that time.40
The strike severely affected the daily life of Hong Kong. Economic activities ground to a halt. The city was paralysed. Food prices began to soar as markets closed. Refuse was not collected. Large scale withdrawal of capital from banks almost led to the collapse of the banking system, had the authorities in Hong Kong not stepped-in to arrange a special loan of HK$30 million to keep local businesses going until normal trade could resume.41 Within two days of the strike starting, the colonial authorities called on volunteers to keep essential services running. The call initially was made to Europeans because the authorities did not trust the Chinese, but a belated call for Chinese volunteers was made and over 2,000 men came forward, with another 1,000 ready to help.42 The success of the call for local volunteers surprised the British. The government also invoked emergency powers to counter communism and anti-British propaganda attacks. The Counter-Propaganda Bureau was set up to influence thinking locally and outside Hong Kong, including in Britain, that the problem was linked to the rising tide of Bolshevism and not due to any serious grievance in Hong Kong.43 In mid-1925, the Chinese newspaper Industrial and Commercial Daily was founded as an anti-propaganda tool with government subsidy. Its editorial aim was to show the chaos in Guangdong as the result of communist agitators. The paper was considered a highly successful tool to promote “anti-Red” sentiments.44
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce, merchant guilds and the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, representing local business interests in Hong Kong, threw their support behind the colonial administration and all blamed the “Bolsheviks”. By the end of July, the worst was considered over as workers begun to trickle back to the colony from Guangdong. By September 1925, most of the workers who stayed in Hong Kong had returned to work. After all, few could afford to have no income for an extended period of time.45
But just as a sense of normality was returning, events were about to enter a new intense phase—the Strike Committee in Guangdong called for a boycott of all British goods and a ban on ships using Hong Kong. It issued a set of regulations which only allowed ships belonging to countries other than Britain and Japan to enter the ports of Guangdong and the ships must not have visited Hong Kong first. The export of foodstuffs and raw materials to Hong Kong was also expressly prohibited by the regulations.46 The Strike Committee formed picket platoons at the ports to search all incoming ships to Guangdong for British goods and goods imported from Hong Kong, and ships from Hong Kong and Britain were not allowed to enter any of the ports in Guangdong. The Whampoa Academy arranged the supply of arms and ammunitions to the pickets and provided special training to them.47
The Strike-Boycott reduced Hong Kong’s two-way trade by about half in 1925 as compared to the previous year.48 There was also a sharp drop in tax revenue. Many businesses closed, which also affected the banking sector badly.49 There were reports of intimidation of workers to get them to strike and prevent them from returning to Hong Kong.50 This resulted in the formation of the secret Labour Protection Bureau by the colonial authorities. Its job was to protect workers from intimidators and launch counter-attacks on the intimidators. An ex-pirate called Liang Weichen, who had also been a former general in the ousted Chen Jiongming’s army, was found most suitable for the job. The band of 150 special policemen—thugs—put together for the secret mission apparently did “excellent work”.51
Governor Stubbs did not cope well with the crisis. He became increasingly frustrated with the troublesome regime in Guangdong and even tried to find ways to subvert it.52 By November, Stubbs had been replaced by Cecil Clementi (governor 1925–1930), a Cantonese speaker, who understood Chinese affairs better, although he also believed the authorities in Guangdong were out to ruin Hong Kong. Nevertheless, he was willing to engage the KMT leaders in dialogue through using local Chinese go-betweens in March 1926 when the opportunity arose.53 By then, the relationship between the KMT and CCP was running into trouble after Sun Yat-sen’s death. The boycott was costly to keep up and the KMT had other priorities as it was preparing to launch the Northern Expedition.54 Meanwhile, Clementi had worked hard to cultivate the loyalty of the local elites. Shrewdly, in 1926, he appointed the first ethnic Chinese person Chow Shouson to be one of two unofficial members of his advisory cabinet, the Executive Council, both to show a new relationship between the colonial administration and the Chinese population, as well as to reward Chow.55 Chow, together with Robert Kotewall, who was half Chinese and half Parsee, were two of the administration’s closest local advisers during the Strike-Boycott. They in effect orchestrated Hong Kong counter-propaganda campaign. When Chow stepped down from the Executive Council in 1936, Kotewall filled his place until the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941.56 Interestingly, Chow and Kotewall were vilified after World War II for allegedly cooperating with the Japanese. Both had been asked to work with the Japanese by the leading members of the former colonial administration within a week of Hong Kong’s surrender, so as to promote friendly relations between the Chinese and the conquerors. The primary concern then was to restore public order,57 and Hong Kong’s Chinese elites were used as go-betweens to minimise bloodshed and consolidate Japanese rule.58
With Sun Yat-sen gone by March 1925, a period of intense jockeying for position within the KMT followed to determine who would lead the party. After Liao Zhongkai was assassinated in August, power eventually fell to Chiang Kai-shek, who was the commander-in-chief of the KMT army. Chiang had observed at that time that: “British power in the Orient had passed its peak.”59 By March 1926, Chiang had ousted his competition. He curbed the power of the CCP within the united front and also disarmed the pickets of the Strike Committee, although he returned the arms thus confiscated to the CCP. After the Northern Expedition was launched in the summer of 1926, Chiang let the communists exhaust themselves from fighting, while he planned their demise using his longstanding association with the Shanghai gangsters. Many communists were killed over the next several months.60 The KMT-CCP alliance was no longer needed. It became politically desirable for Chiang to promote national reunification instead of anti-imperialism. The Soviet Union, now led by Josef Stalin (1878–1953), preferred to see the KMT succeed because it thought the nationalists had the better chance to unify China. So he asked the CCP not to keep up the boycott against Hong Kong to ensure the British would not be able to use that as an excuse to intervene with the Northern Expedition. Meanwhile, Clementi’s strategy was to show that he was both willing to negotiate with the KMT and show force, but in early September, just as negotiations were proving difficult, as the KMT was fighting at Wuchang, Clementi got Whitehall to send Royal Navy gunboats to clear pickets from the wharves in Guangzhou. There was in fact no fighting as pickets dispersed quickly.61 Negotiations resumed and a compromise settlement was reached.62 The boycott was formally lifted on 10 October 1926, the same day that Wuchang was taken by the KMT.
The Strike-Boycott is considered an important political achievement of the CCP’s early history as it significantly bolstered its influence in China. For the CCP branch in Guangdong, it used the Strike-Boycott as an opportunity to expand membership. The total membership of the CCP and Chinese Socialist Youth League in Guangdong had increased from about 700 just before the Strike-Boycott to more than 7,000 by the end of it, though the quality of the new recruits was considered questionable.63
From Hong Kong’s perspective, the Strike-Boycott involved a large number of workers. Some reports noted 250,000 of them had joined the strike during the period, which represented about a third of the colony’s population.64 The events undermined the business confidence and that affected Hong Kong’s prosperity for years afterwards.65 Politically, the Strike-Boycott made the ordinary people of Hong Kong painfully aware that radicalism could be costly. The public was punished by the Strike-Boycott as their normal living was seriously dislocated. Many Hong Kong strikers also suffered as they were not taken back by their former employers.66 The colonial government also thwarted unionism. Several leftist labour unions including the Chinese Seamen’s Union were proscribed and their leaders arrested. New legislation was enacted to prohibit unions from being affiliated with an organisation outside the colony, and to outlaw strikes with political causes. These anti-union measures were only relaxed after the Second World War.67 In sum, the Strike-Boycott made trade unions “impoverished and unpopular” and they were “little more than friendly societies concerned more with the provision of funeral expenses for the dead than the improvement of the condition of living”.68 The labour movement in Hong Kong was basically halted for the next two decades after the Strike-Boycott. The events of the 1920s did not secure for the workers’ concessions in response to their political demands. In the years following 1926, the British administration in Hong Kong took steps to prevent the insurgence of Mainland-inspired political activity.
From 1925 onward, the press in Hong Kong was subject to censorship, and in 1927 the authorities suppressed a dozen of the principal Chinese trade unions. Particular efforts were made to forestall any further annoyance from the CCP. Two of the banned unions, the General Labour Union of Hong Kong and the Chinese Seamen’s Union, were well known for their communist leanings. A special Anti-Communist Squad in the police devoted itself to the hunting down of Communist Party members. By 1935 the police felt able to report contentedly that the colony was free from organised Communism.69
1. Other early Hong Kong activists included four students and three workers, see Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing, pp. 29–30.
2. 楊少平，〈中共香港黨（團）組織的建立及其早期活動〉，《廣東黨史》，p. 28.
3. Chan Lau Kit-Ching, From Nothing to Nothing, p. 30.
4. The Chinese Socialist Youth League (changed into the Communist Youth League in 1959) was formed in 1922 in Guangzhou and it is “a mass organisation of advanced youth led by the CPC, a school for the broad masses of youth to study communism in practice and an assistant and reserve of the CPC.” See the official website of the Communist Youth League: http://www.cycnet.com/chinayouth/index.htm.
5. For detailed discussion of the works of the Chinese Socialist Youth League in its early days, see Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing, pp. 38–45.
6. Ibid., p. 47.
7. Chan Ming Kou, “Labor and Empire: The Chinese Labor Movement in the Canton Delta 1895–1927”, doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1975, quoted in Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing, p. 22.
8. For a longer discussion of the Mechanics’ Strike of 1920, see John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, pp. 96–97.
9. Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing, p. 48.
10. Leo F. Goodstadt noted that the expatriates’ closest relationships were confined to their own racial group. What united them was “the common desire to overcome the strains they felt while living in an alien environment”; Uneasy Partners, pp. 21–22.
11. Steve Tsang provides a detailed account of the cadets system, which morphed into the administrative officers system, in Governing Hong Kong.
12. The Chinese seamen were grossly underpaid (their wages were only about a quarter of that of European seamen) and they had to work 14 hours per day. They also suffered from the recruitment agency system through which they had to pay an initial bribe to the agents in order to be employed by the shipping companies. See Rosemarie Chung Lu Cee, “Study of the 1925–26 Canton-Hong Kong Strike-Boycott”, p. 41.
13. The Chinese Seamen’s Union had a strong historical connection with Sun Yat-sen. It originated from a secret organisation which had assisted Sun Yat-sen in passing news from port to port in his early revolutionary attempts. The name Chinese Seamen’s Union was given to the union by Sun Yat-sen. Sun also sent a personal representative to Hong Kong to attend the inauguration of the union in February 1921. Because of this close relationship, there were allegations that the Seamen’s’ Strike was in fact contrived by Sun, though he strongly denied it. See Rosemarie Chung Lu Cee, “Study of the 1925–26 Canton–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott”, pp. 32–33.
14. Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, p. 7.
15. Ta Chen, “Shipping Strike in Hong Kong”, Monthly Labour Review, May 1922, in David Faure, Society, pp. 160–62.
16. Fourteen different shipping companies suffered at least HK$5 million loss in total because of cargoes held up in the harbour. The cost of rice rose more than 100% during the strike. The cost of other foodstuffs like fish, beef, and pork also rose by 30% to 50%. See Rosemarie Chung Lu Cee, “Study of the 1925–26 Canton-Hong Kong Strike-Boycott”, p. 57.
17. Ta Chen, “Shipping Strike in Hong Kong”, Monthly Labour Review, May 1922, in David Faure, Society, pp. 162–66.
18. Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing, p. 26. Chen and Sun disagreed on the direction of reform.
19. Ta Chen, “Shipping Strike in Hong Kong”, Monthly Labour Review, May 1922, in David Faure, Society, p. 162.
20. Ibid., pp. 162–66.
21. John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, p. 98.
22. Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, pp. 370–71.
23. Colonial Office 129/474, Stubbs to Devonshire, 18 March 1922. Other reports, such as by Ta Chen in David Faure, Society, noted three people were killed and eight wounded; see pp. 162–66.
24. Kevin P. Lane, Sovereignty and the Status Quo, pp. 31–32.
25. Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, p. 89; and John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, p. 99. For another account, see Michael Share, Where Empires Collided, pp. 60–61.
26. Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing, pp. 23–26.
27. Ibid., p. 26. Chan Lau Kit-ching argued that while the Communists claimed that the Manifesto was instrumental in steering the strike, it was unlikely to have had much impact as most of the strikers were illiterate. Furthermore, given the nascent and limited CCP’s presence in Guangdong, the party could not have had that much of an impact, pp. 23–26.
28. For example, the FTU’s Cheng Yiu Tong, in his speech celebrating the 80th anniversary of Hong Kong Seamen’s Strike in March 2002, described the strike as “a national struggle against the deprivation and oppression by the foreign shipping capitalists and British-Hong Kong government”, “with clear patriotic and anti-colonialism nature” and “a significant patriotic and anti-imperialism victory of the Chinese working class”（香港海員爭取和維護權益的鬥爭，是中國海員反抗外國輪船資本家和港英的剝削壓迫的民族鬥爭，帶有鮮明的愛國反帝反殖的性質，罷工的勝利也就是中國工人階級愛國反帝的偉大勝利）。See http://www.ftu.org.hk/view.php?Tid=502. “People Net”《人民網》also described the strike as “a political struggle against imperialism” and the strikers “successfully assault the arrogant imperialists and advanced the labour movement in China”（罷工從要求增加工資的經濟鬥爭，發展成為反抗帝國主義壓迫的政治鬥爭罷工的勝利，有力地打擊了帝國主義者的氣焰，推動了中國工人運動的發展）。See http://politics.people.com.cn/BIG5/8198/65833/66255/4471229.html.
29. There was a wave of labour disputes after the Seamen’s Strike, involving a large number of workers such as bakers, motor bus drivers, Chinese restaurant employees, and Hong Kong Electric Company’s employees. See Rosemarie Chung Lu Cee, “Study of the 1925–26 Canton–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott”, p. 59.
30. Sun Yat-sen sought the assistance from the Soviets. Under Comintern influence, the manifesto of the First National Congress of the KMT of 26 January I924 declared an anti-imperialist policy, condemning foreign imperialism and blaming it for China’s plight and quasi-colonial status; Edmund Fung, “The Sino-British Rapprochement, 1927–1931”, Modern Asian Studies, p. 80. See also Michael Share, Where Empires Collided, pp. 62–71, for a long discussion on the Comintern’s activities in Hong Kong between 1921 and 1927.
31. During the Seamen’s Strike, Lau Chu Pak (劉鑄伯 1867–1922, a prominent Chinese leader and a member of the Legislative Council at the time) said in a Legislative Council meeting that the labour unions “had strong Bolshevist support”. Shouson Chow (周壽臣 1861–1956), also asked the governor not to make concession to the strikers and supported the suppression of all labour guilds. See Chan Lau Kit-Ching, “The Perception of Chinese Communism in Hong Kong 1921–1934”, The China Quarterly, pp. 1046–48.
32. The number of people reportedly killed and wounded vary; see Steve Tsang, quoted from Japanese sources and noted nine deaths and dozens injured, A Modern History of Hong Kong, p. 92; Stephen Uhalley Jr. noted ten deaths, A History of the Chinese Communist Party, p. 27, while Hu Sheng noted thirteen deaths, A Concise History of the Communist Party of China, p. 66.
33. 楊少平，〈中共香港黨（團）組織的建立及其早期活動〉，《廣東黨史》，p. 29.
34. Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, p. 93.
35. According to the South China Morning Post, “the trouble started with the Queen’s College strike”, 20 June 1925; Chan Lau Kit-Ching, “The Perception of Chinese Communism in Hong Kong 1921–1934”, The China Quarterly, pp. 1051–52.
36. 中共廣東省委黨史研究室，《中國共產黨廣東地方史（第一卷）》，p. 120.
37. Subsequent investigations failed to establish beyond doubt which side began the clash that led to the shootings, shots were fired by the British and French sentries as well as by Chinese demonstrators. Among the 52 deaths, 51 were Chinese and only one Frenchman, and among the injured were eight Europeans and one Japanese, see Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, p. 94, and Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, pp. 371–72.
38. Liu Shuyong, An Outline History of Hong Kong, pp. 94–95; and Hu Sheng, History of the Communist Party of China, pp. 67–68.
39. See 中共廣東省委黨史研究室，《中國共產黨廣東地方史（第一卷）》，p. 120. See also Ming K. Chan, Precarious Balance, p. 48. The demand that the Chinese should be able to live anywhere in Hong Kong was a response to the Chinese being barred from living on the Peak as a result of the Peak District Reservation Ordinance 1904, which provided that no Asiatic could rent property there, and by the Peak District (Residence) Ordinance 1918, which required that all applications to live on the Peak needed to be approved by the authorities. Philip Snow noted that “No Chinese could so much as visit the Peak unless they had been invited or were delivering goods”; The Fall of Hong Kong, p. 3.
40. Ming K. Chan, Precarious Balance, p. 48.
41. Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, p. 12.
42. Chan Lau Kit-Ching, “The Perception of Chinese Communism in Hong Kong 1921–1934”, The China Quarterly, pp. 1053–54.
43. John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, p. 143. See also John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, pp. 99–105. The Soviets were involved in supporting the strike-boycott, see Michael Share, Where Empires Collided, pp. 62–72.
44. John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, pp. 147–49; and Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, pp. 12–13.
45. Rosemarie Chung Lu Cee, “Study of the 1925–26 Canton–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott”, pp. 100–108; Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, pp. 372–73; Liu Shuyong, An Outline History of Hong Kong, pp. 96–97; Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, pp. 95–96; and Chan Lau Kit-ching, “The Perception of Chinese Communism in Hong Kong 1921–1934”, The China Quarterly, p. 1054.
46. Rosemarie Chung Lu Cee, “Study of the 1925–26 Canton–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott”, p. 125.
47. Ming K. Chan, Precarious Balance, p. 47.
48. See Hong Kong Annual Report 1924 and 1926.
49. For a detailed discussion of the economic impact of the boycott on Hong Kong, see Rosemarie Chung Lu Cee, “Study of the 1925–26 Canton–Hong Kong Strike-Boycott”, pp. 128–41.
50. Chan Lau Kit-Ching, “The Perception of Chinese Communism in Hong Kong 1921–1934”, The China Quarterly, pp. 1052–53.
51. John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, pp. 145–46, and John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, p. 102.
52. Governor Stubbs gave HK$100,000 to help Chen Jiongming stage a coup in Guangdong, which had not been authorised by London, and he also proposed a naval blockade of the Pearl River, which was rejected, see Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, p. 96; Liu Shuyong, An Overall History of Hong Kong, p. 97, noted that Stubbs paid Chen and another warlord, Deng Benyin (鄧本殷) to serve British interests. Although there were initial successes, they eventually failed. Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, p. 13, noted that Shouson Chow and Robert Kotewall raised HK$50,000 from the Tung Wah Hospital Committee to pay yet another warlord, Wei Bangping (魏邦平), to lead a coup against the KMT-CCP regime in Guangzhou that failed.
53. John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, pp. 149–52.
54. The Northern Expedition (1925–1926) was a military campaign which brought the KMT to power in 1927. It began in Guangzhou. Halfway through the expedition, the KMT and CCP pact fell apart.
55. Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, pp. 96–97.
56. John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, pp. 153–56. Chow and Kotewall were both appointed members of the Legislative Council.
57. John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, pp. 182–86, and Oliver Lindsay, The Battle for Hong Kong, p. 222.
58. Two councils were created—the Chinese Representative Council and the Chinese Cooperative Council consisting of Hong Kong’s leading business and professional elites, including Chow and Kotewall, see John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires, pp. 183–86. Carroll notes that by 1944, when it appeared that the war was not going well for Japan, local leaders began to avoid their duties on these councils, and Kotewall even withdrew for health reasons.
59. Paul Gillingham, At the Peak, pp. 33, 43–44.
60. Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, Zhou Enlai, pp. 34–39.
61. Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, pp. 98–100.
62. The settlement, in essence, was that the colonial government did not oppose the imposition of a tax of 2.5% on all imports and 5% on luxury goods from Hong Kong by the KMT and the revenues would be used to subsidise the strikers after the strikes.
63. Chan Lau Kit-ching, From Nothing to Nothing, p. 67.
64. 中共廣東省委黨史研究室，《中國共產黨廣東地方史（第一卷）》，pp. 119–20. At that time, Hong Kong had more than 130 labour unions in which seamen, printing and tram unions were already under the control of the CCP activists and CCP members tried to infiltrate the other unions. Eventually, those CCP controlled labour unions started the strike first and dozens of other labour unions joined the strike later, involving more than 250,000 workers during the entire period of the strike-boycott. Hong Kong had a population of about 750,000 then.
65. Norman Miners, Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, p. 19.
66. Chan Lau Kit-Ching, “The Perception of Chinese Communism in Hong Kong 1921–1934”, The China Quarterly, pp. 1054–55.
67. Norman Miners, Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, p. 20.
68. Butters, Report on Labour and Labour Conditions in Hong Kong, 1939, referred to in Ming K. Chan, Precarious Balance, p. 53.
69. For a useful discussion, see H. L. Fu and Richard Cullen, “Political Policing in Hong Kong”, Hong Kong Law Journal, 2003, pp. 199–230.