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Christine Loh, "Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong" (Hong Kong UP, 2018)
00:59:37
There can be little doubt that Hong Kong has stood out as a particularly intense East Asian news hotspot in recent years...
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Ed Pulford
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hi everyone, and welcome back to New Books Network. I'm Ed Pulford, one of the hosts of the channel. On the podcast today, we have Christine Lowe, who, among many other things, is currently chief development strategist at the Institute for the Environment and Division of Environment and Sustainability at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She'll be talking about her book, Underground the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, an updated second edition of which was published last year, 2018 by Hong Kong University Press. Now, of all the East Asian news hotspots of the past several years, Hong Kong stands out as a particularly telling barometer for regional developments. From the large scale pro democracy Protests of the 2014 Umbrella Movement to the 2015 disappearance of dissident booksellers, and the very recently announced plans for a greater bay area encompassing Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong Province, the city has rarely been out of the news lately. A key undercurrent, or perhaps quite a bit more than an undercurrent, uniting all these stories have been discussions of the influence of Beijing and the mainland's Chinese Communist Party over how Hong Kong is run and whether or not the one country, two systems principle is being upheld. And finally, what kind of a place Hong Kongers can expect to live in as the 2047 end of that arrangement starts to seem less and less distant. On this background, Christine Lowe's book Underground Front offers a whole trove of vital insights into how the Party approaches Hong Kong now and how it has in the past. A former lawmaker in the city's Legislative Council and founder of the think tank and charity Civic Exchange, Low has long had a unique vantage point from which to observe the CCP's contemporary affairs, as well as a host of invaluable contacts and resources through which to delve into the approaches taken by the Party during Hong Kong's colonial past. Low lays all this out in compelling detail, bringing her historical trajectory right from the 1920s all the way up to 2017 in this new edition. Balanced and fair minded throughout, and written, I should say in a very lively fashion, her account offers a rare perspective on a political, economic and social situation which sheds light on issues of power and influence which are pivotal to the present and future of the whole East Asian region. But to talk about all of these matters and many others, I'm sure I'll say Christine Low, welcome to the podcast.
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Christine Lowe
Thank you.
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Ed Pulford
Well, thank you very much for appearing. It's a wonderful book. I learned a huge amount from it and I'm looking forward a lot to talking about it. But before we do, perhaps I could just begin by asking you about your own background, how you became interested in the Communist Party in Hong Kong more generally and more about your kind of career to date.
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Christine Lowe
Right. Well, I see myself as a product of two different Chinese culture, one from the south, which is Cantonese, and the other one from Shanghai. My parents were, of course, the generation. My father came from Shanghai, he came to Hong Kong, my mother having been born and grew up in Hong Kong very much, you could say, a Hong Kong colonial experience. Actually, her first trip visiting China was very much later in the 1980s. So I was always interested in the vast difference between my father's Shanghainese family and my mother's Cantonese family. But both families, you know, all the uncles and the aunties and so on, that I remember vividly. It was only when I was older that somehow I managed to fit them into a picture of the history of modern China. And of course, you know, the Shanghainese that in the late 40s and early 50s that went to Hong Kong, I mean, you could see them as refugees. They left because Shanghai became communist. They didn't think they could survive there. And then of course, they were never able to go back for many, many years and Many people didn't think they could ever go back because they didn't think they could live under communism. And this living about communism is of course, through the 50s with the land reform and then the 60s with the cultural Revolution, China seemed to be in turmoil. China had went through a period where landowners and business people were not allowed Right. And they suffered greatly. Many families were broken up. I mean, you know, the tragedy was tremendous. And for us sitting in Hong Kong, we kind of knew a lot of that and we felt very grateful that we didn't have to go through that. And we experienced colonialism, a kind of late form of British colonialism. But that was kind of, I guess by the 70s, when I became somewhat conscious of the world being in my, I guess in my 20s, I kind of realized that Hong Kong is connected to the history of China, particularly of modern China. The colonial period was very unusual. I myself was a product of the British colonial system. And people started talking about Hong Kong becoming a part of China again. 1997, because it was a 99 year leased that Britain and China signed and it would end on 30 June 1997, whilst that date was still a bit further away. But it was coming closer and closer all the time. So that's how I got riveted by the past few decades in Hong Kong and living through it myself. And of course, I spent. My first real job was in Beijing in 1980. It was a fabulous time for a young person in the early twenties to be there. And the only reason I was hired to go there to be kind of a Girl Friday to an American company was because I spoke relatively bad Mandarin, but I was willing to go. And of course that was my first real personal immersion in the Chinese political system. It was fabulous. I mean, I loved it, I learned so much. And so of course, when you're in China talking about Chinese politics, the Chinese Communist Party, that was quite natural. People talked about it. But once you cross the border back into Hong Kong, it was like people don't want to talk about it. People were greatly fearful of it. And I always thought, well, are we going to be a part of China one of these days? How. How should we look at it? And that's really.
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Ed Pulford
I was going to ask.
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Christine Lowe
Yeah, that's really my interest. But also, I have to say, when I was at university and I went to the university in England, Marxism was not so unfashionable. People talked about socialism, what you should do and so on. And whilst the Reagan and Thatcher era in the 80s made socialism and Marxism a kind of, again, a kind of bad thing. I loved reading Marx, you know, I thought, wow, this guy's really perspective. So, so, so I was always interested in what's a Marxist country. I mean, what do you do and how are you structured? And it wasn't until, of course, I had a chance to go to China and think about it and look into the Chinese system that I kind of think, okay, here is a real system. And for the last 40 years I've kind of watched it relatively closely in terms of a system with certain of its own principles and ideologies. And of course, if we are coming right to this very moment, there is a contest in the world of different political systems. Now, of course, I've grown up in a more liberal democratic kind of tradition. And yet looking at China, in 40 years or so, it's pulled 700 million people out of the most dire poverty. So it is a system worth looking at. And I think today in terms of people trying to understand China, don't look at it as just know, bad or good, but really try to understand how China works. And then you've got to go into
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Ed Pulford
the political system and that, well, that kind of comes out really clearly in the book. It's very fair, as I said, and balanced. And I guess the Hong Kong lens, you know, as a way of looking at that kind of broader Chinese political system is incredibly revealing because precisely as you laid out, it is a part of China and it's within China's contemporary history. But it's also, of course, a quite particular sort of situation and one that gives certain, I think, privileged vantage points when it comes to looking at what Beijing is doing, what the Communist Party is doing. But the book itself, you outline very well there, all of that background interest. At what point did you decide that you would write the book? The first edition, I should say, came out in 2010, I believe. So what was it that led you to actually decide to, to put the book together and how did you conduct most of the research for it?
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Christine Lowe
Well, it goes back to the time when I was a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. I became an appointed member in 1992. I stepped off in 1997, and then in 1998 I fought an election and it was a two year term and I decided not to stand for re election in the year 2000. So. So I had those amazing five years just before the transition, kind of with a ringside seat on the transition itself. And I did something that at the time, maybe I was naive to even raise it. And people certainly challenged me to say, you're naive to even ask the question in the Legislative Council, meaning I asked it in a formal fashion. How will the party operate after 1997? I asked it twice because the first, I mean, nobody really gave an answer. And in the book, I quoted from Hansard, which is the parliamentary records in Hong Kong, the kind of discussion that other legislators brought up at the time. They thought, well, well, Christine Lowe, you're just trying to frighten people by asking this question. But what was interesting was people acknowledged that, okay, it's a thing that we never talk about. You know, we know the Communist Party is here, and we know kind of where. Where it is, and it was under the umbrella of the Xinhua News Agency, but that was where the Chinese Communist Party parked itself. We know it's there, and we know it's the ruling party in China, but we don't want to talk about it. And for you to bring it up, you're just stirring things up. You're kind of bringing fear into the people of Hong Kong. So that in itself tells you how people preferred just not to talk about it. And the British didn't want to talk about it because I guess after 1997, it wasn't their business.
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Ed Pulford
I see. Yeah. Yeah. So it's something that. This is the underground component, I guess, in the sense of.
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Christine Lowe
That's right. But I did think, personally, the Communist Party after 1997, it is the ruling party, and it is the central authority in China. And when Hong Kong becomes a part of China, why would it demean itself by kind of pretending it's not there and nobody really wants to address it? And I use the word demean in the book. Why would the Communist Party, the powerful Communist Party, demean itself that after 1997, it has to continue with pretending it's not there? So this question does interest me, and I wanted to see if I could write the book. And the other thing that is interesting was after the book was published, because one of the things in the preface that I said was, well, why should I be the person to write the book? I mean, I am fascinated by the subject, but there were, and there are many, many people in Hong Kong who understood the Party much, much better than I. I'm the ultimate outsider. I mean, I'm not a party member. I'm not particularly familiar with everything about the Communist Party. So the book is written, really, with published sources, and I kind of strung a story together which I personally find interesting and compelling. But why Also has all these years, people who know so much more than I. Not written. Maybe again, it's part of this pretense that the less we talk about it, the better. But after 1997, why should that still be the case? I do discuss this problem as to why in the book, but again, I thought, okay, let me see if I could write something, which is again, why I've really gone to publish sources to string this story together.
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Ed Pulford
Well, it's a really rich story that comes out as a result of, I think, the combination of both those sources and the insight that they give onto the history of the Party and its activities in Hong Kong, but also your position and your perspective as a legislator and a public figure in Hong Kong. Clearly you bring a lot as a result of that to your analysis and your understanding of the book. So perhaps we'll jump right in to the book itself. And as I mentioned, you do open us up with a couple of chapters on the sort of operations of that Communist Party in Hong Kong in the present, really, and some key principles that guide a lot of the narrative of the book as a whole, notably party supremacy and the idea that the party is sort of number one. And also how it ensures it has that position, in a sense, by co opting and persuading local elites in particular, but local people in Hong Kong in order to retain its position. But given that these are themes that will sort of pervade the book as a whole, I thought we'd move on to a sort of historical narrative which forms the bulk of the book. And so perhaps we can start in the 1920s. It's a fair way back. But in these early chapters of the historical section or the historically oriented main body of the book, you outline some really key events which I think shed a lot of light on how the Communist Party established a presence in Hong Kong and how it sought to operate in the colonial era. So could you begin sort of from the 1920s? What were the early sort of rumblings of communist and leftist activity in the colonial city that kind of built up a bit of a presence of communism there?
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Christine Lowe
Yes, of course, the Communist Party itself was only formed in 1921 in Shanghai. The story in the book really starts a little bit before that, in 1920. And most people don't realize at the time it started with three relatively young guys who were interested. We must try and go back to the time in the 1920s, because Europe was boiling. The rest of the world was also asking questions about. About labor, about capitalism. And that's why Marxism was so attractive to many people. And for the Chinese, having gone through what they've gone through, also with the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, it was a time to kind of look for a new system. And in Hong Kong, of course, I can just see that young people would be interested in. In some alternative system to colonialism in Hong Kong. And through that period into the mid-1920s, Hong Kong actually was a very busy port, was a very important commercial center. And the labor strikes in Hong Kong at the time truly inspired workers across the border in China. It was here that these strikes became big scale because they wanted better terms. So actually you could see even today, this sense of workers feeling hard done by. How do they get their employers? How do you get the government to pay more attention to social equity? I mean, of course, in the 1920s, we have the iteration of the time, but the issue of social justice, fairness, labor rights, very much a part of the time. And Hong Kong really was an inspiration to workers in China.
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Ed Pulford
So, yes, I think that's a really interesting story you tell there of how these overall global forces, if you like, these big questions that much of the world was asking itself was. Were affecting this very particular political and social context in, in Hong Kong itself. And you also highlight how much cooperation or communication, at least there was from the colonial territory into. Into the mainland. As the narrative moves forward, you also point out another particularly interesting dimension of this, I think, which is that although it's a colonial situation, which of course nationalists and Communists in China are opposed to, overall, as the Communist Party became established in the mainland, it was actually quite useful to have Hong Kong as a separate territory, as a separate political space, whilst communist activities were developing during the civil war in China and so on. Could you say something a little bit about that? What were the uses that Hong Kong had for the Communist Party in the mainland over the early decades of its development?
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Christine Lowe
Yes, absolutely. Hong Kong was a very important place for both the Communist Party and for the Chinese authorities at the time. In terms of the Chinese Communist Party, if we go back to the 20s, the 30s, and really up until 1949 when it won the civil war and became the government of China, that it was playing second fiddle to others. China went through many periods of gyration. It had to fight the Japanese in the Second World War. Then it fought a civil war between the Communist Party and the Kwame Dang. So, you know, these were very major political events that lasted a long time. The Communist Party needed friends, it needed supporters, it needed money. And Hong Kong was a convenient Place for them to, you know, to meet friends. Because they were quite friendly with the Americans, they had connections with the British. Because the west was also watching events in China. Hong Kong was sort of the place where they could come to their friends, could come to solicit help. They created a kind of tea company here as a front to conduct activities because if you had to fight the kmt, you needed to raise money. So you wanted to also outreach to the overseas Chinese to support you. And Hong Kong really was the place where people gathered to do all these things.
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Ed Pulford
So it was, yeah, it was a kind of gathering point in this state of exception, if you like, this little hiding place away from mainland politics and the mainland political environment that on, oddly enough, I guess, in this colonial environment, everyone could come together. You mentioned the tea company there. How did the Communist Party establish itself or what kind of formal mechanisms did it actually end up establishing in Hong Kong itself? You also referred a little earlier to the Xinhua News Agency office. So what form did these take? And how did Hong Kong become a place where the Communist Party had a presence of some kind?
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Christine Lowe
Well, the Xinhua is very interesting because of course the Communist Party knew it needed to, you know, to do public relations. And, you know, for years and years the Chinese used the word propaganda and they needed to do a lot of propaganda. The propaganda, of course, in the English language has a pejorative meaning, whereas I think another term is just doing a lot of pr. So it was important to set up a kind of news agency to support and report on whatever you were doing. So the Tsinghua Agency is very important and you know, you have one in Hong Kong. And that eventually really also became the party office here. You could kind of see that progression because they couldn't set up the Chinese Communist Party office in Hong Kong whilst the British were here. The British actually had a very interesting policy towards Hong Kong in terms of Chinese politics. It was very careful in making sure that it didn't upset the Chinese two main parties, the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party, but it didn't want either of them to be using Hong Kong as their explicit battleground. So Hong Kong was also a place where there were these quiet accommodations as to what you could and couldn't do. But the British did not ban or stop all of these people from both parties sort of coming and going. In terms of the Tea Party, a tea trading company, the Communist Party just needed to set up vehicles where it could do business, and the front of the Tea Company was a convenient way for business to be done.
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Ed Pulford
I see. So, yeah, this kind of almost improvisational approach to how you actually have a presence in a place where you're not quite allowed to is a really interesting, I think, dimension of this and clearly is the general Trend throughout the 20s, 30s, 40s, and even beyond 1949, when the party takes power in Beijing. And there's an awful lot more in this earlier part of the book that we won't have time to get into now, including the role of the Communist guerrillas in the New Territories, northern part of Hong Kong, and how they interacted with the British at the end of the Japanese occupation in the 40s, and so on. But as I say, listeners should come by the book to. No, that's right. Juicy details there.
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Christine Lowe
Yes. I mean, those are very fascinating times. What they did to fight the Japanese, how they had villagers on site to help them. I mean, as I said, we don't have time to go into that. But those. Those are really interesting nuggets about Chinese history and about Hong Kong history. And also it's relevant to a bit of British history.
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Ed Pulford
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and I should add, as a manifestly British person, one of many chapters of British history that we don't learn about at all in school, more or less. But that's a very different subject, I think, the blind spots of Britain's colonial past. But perhaps if we move forward into the era when the Chinese Communist Party was the ruling party in China as a whole post1949, they maintain this presence sort of underground, as you say, and the Xinhua Office News Office remains their sort of focal point of activity in Hong Kong as time wears on and as Britain's attitude, I suppose, remains relatively stable, that they don't want much Communist activity there. You, of course, run into a very extreme period in China which has spillover effect into Hong Kong, namely the Cultural revolution. From the mid-60s to the mid-70s. There were an episode in Hong Kong itself, the 1967 riots, which particularly interests me here. Could you say something about them and what role the Communists played there and how this shifted the picture of Chinese Communist presence in Hong Kong.
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Christine Lowe
Right. I think to understand the riots, it was also interesting. I mean, it's also important to appreciate how the Chinese Communist Party really thought about their strategic, you know, their strategy for Hong Kong. Now, of course, after 1949, the British and the rest of the world was very interested to know what the Communists were going to do. Were they going to recover Hong Kong right there and then? And the Party decided very clearly not to recover Hong Kong because it was to their advantage not to do so. China was a political basket case at the time. It was poor. There's been long periods of war and civil war. The Communists decided that it was better to leave Hong Kong in British hands. So the British were also very interested to always kind of get a sense of what the Chinese would do. And they came to many accommodation. Now with the Cultural Revolution, you could say that this was an aberration in Chinese thinking. It was a product of Mao Zedong's what he wanted to do. He wanted continuous revolution and he felt he needed to go outside the government to get things done. And he created the Red Guards and they caused a lot of damage and suffering in China. And that spilled over to Hong Kong in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. Now, let's not forget the Cultural Revolution in China started in 1966 and went on for 10 years. Whereas in Hong Kong, it was in 1966 and 67 that were the diciest period. And during that time, what was China going to do? The British decided that they would resist. The party members in Hong Kong created a lot of havoc. There were bombs and schools, so called leftist schools. Young people were involved in all of this and basically the people of Hong Kong remembered that period and they didn't want to relive that period. They turned away from the Chinese Communist Party. There was a very distinct departure after 1967. And that was also the period of time where whatever the Chinese Communist Party had managed to build in Hong Kong after 1949, that it was completely destroyed because of the violence. So during that time, the British then also had to think about how to go forward. And of course, people rose up during that time, not only to support the Communists, but there were genuine grievances amongst young people and ordinary workers. So one of the things that was very important in Hong Kong's history was that the colonial authorities decided after 1967 that they would pay more attention to social issues. And that kind of took them on a trajectory as well as at the time in the mid-60s, with the rise of the economies in the US and in Europe that the bulk of Hong Kong people wanted to focus on turning away from China, but they had to turn towards somebody and they turned towards the west because of the economic rise. Hong Kong then became the sort of factory to the world. They started to produce T shirts and plastic flowers and things like that. And there were good markets in the west to buy Hong Kong's product. So that, as I said, the 60s and the 70s took Hong Kong to a different level of economic development, but one that was decidedly away from mainland China.
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Ed Pulford
Oh, this. I mean, there's almost a kind of irony there in that it was the activities of the. The strikes and the. And so the riots in, in 67 and the. I guess what looks to the colonial authorities like a turn towards extremism of that kind that actually forced them to start caring a bit more about people who lived in Hong Kong. I think this is always something that, that comes up. Hong Kong in 97 or in a very late stage of the colonial era looks fantastic and looks like the kind of thing that I think some British people would suggest you could be proud of. But of course, from so many decades, the colonial authorities didn't treat it in any kind of way that resembled that and actually needed their, perhaps shaking to their senses a bit more by events such as this. But then as the Cultural Revolution sort of further subsided in China, of course that had its own effect on the entire global picture as China started itself to emerge as more of a presence in the international community and ultimately, I guess, start treading the path from the mid to late 1970s that it's trodden up until this point as a manufacturer and so on. So in the Deng Xiaoping era, which kind of you cover from Chapter 7 onwards in the book, and the reform era that followed the Cultural Revolution, how did the Communist Party change its approach to Hong Kong at that time? And how did its presence in the territory change in the wake of the extremes of Maoism?
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Christine Lowe
Well, we look at timing actually it was incredibly fast paced because after Mao passed away, Deng Xiaoping became the. The leader in China. He was extremely pragmatic. He wanted China to develop economically because China was so backward. And he didn't want to go anywhere near too much political ideology again. And he definitely didn't want to carry on with Maoist cultural revolutionary ideas. And he set forth to, to see how Hong Kong could be useful. Let us not forget that it was in the early 1980s that they started to think about creating special economic zones just across the border from Hong Kong, that perhaps the Hong Kong people, the Hong Kong investments, they could build factories for export production in China. But during that whole period of the 80s, from 1979, 1980, 81, 82, 83, that was also a time when Britain kept asking China, are you going to take back Hong Kong in 1997? And it kind of provoked a whole realm of thinking to say, what are we going to do? And they decided, we will take Hong Kong back. Because all this while, from 1949, when they took power, they decided to leave Hong Kong in British hands. And it seems from historical documents that are coming through the archives now, that Britain, if possible, would have welcomed some kind of arrangement where they could continue to administer Hong Kong. But since they asked the Chinese, the Chinese decided, okay, well, we'll take them back. And then that put Hong Kong and Chinese thinking, the Communist Party's thinking about how to take Hong Kong back in a peaceful manner that didn't rock the boat, that didn't kill the goose, that lady golden egg. They had to think of all these things. And they came up with the idea of one country, two systems, that we will have a different system in one part of our country. This is going to be a special region in Hong Kong, and we'll do the same thing for Macau because we would also take back Macau from the Portuguese in 1999. So this created a whole different trajectory of how a Communist party had to ask itself, and how are we going to manage this strange thing called Hong Kong? And the whole realm of thinking through from the 1980s, early 80s, when they decided they would take Hong Kong back to 1997, what is it that they need to put in place? How do they bring Hong Kong people on side? And their deepest fear was, well, what if Britain never really wanted to give Hong Kong up because they want so much to hang on to it? Would they leave the seeds of trouble for the Chinese? This was always one of the great fears that they had.
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- [39:13]
Ed Pulford
Well, and it's really fascinating the way that these inflection points, both all the way back in the 20s and indeed up to the 1970s and 80s, Hong Kong has played this very totemic role, I guess, in the direction that China has taken as a whole, as you suggest. But yeah, on the subject of fear that the perfidious British imperialists will leave the seeds of something very unpleasant for the Communist Party to germinate longer term in Hong Kong, that these were the fears of the CCP in the 80s. What did they do to try and counter that? I think this actually is one of the themes of the entire book which is most fascinating. This united front work that the Communist Party has long carried out in Hong Kong to try to co opt and bring people onside. What kind of form did these activities take? How did the Communist Party try to lay the groundwork during the 80s for the handover in Hong Kong itself?
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Christine Lowe
Right now this is truly fascinating because throughout the two or three years when the British and the Chinese negotiated on the transfer of sovereignty, the idea that after 1997 that Hong Kong would have elections came relatively late in the day. And again from archival material and from Mrs. Thatcher's own memoirs, we now see that it was felt to be critical for the British when they disengaged from Hong Kong to show the world that they'd done as much as they could to discharge their responsibility towards the people of Hong Kong, that they were able to agree with the Chinese that there would be elections. So the very important word elections were inserted into the Sino British joint declaration. So this also means that the Chinese accepted that there would be some kind of election after 1997. So they decided, they considered what it is that they would do. Now, if there are going to be elections in Hong Kong, then they need to win. And the whole United Front plan, or you could just call it a strategic plan for the Communist Party to be able to govern Hong Kong was that they would ensure first of all that they would bring on side the elites in Hong Kong, the political elites, the economic elites, the social elites, so that they wouldn't always hanker after a British presence, that they would sort of come over and be willing to be a part of China's Hong Kong, secondly is elections. They've got to prepare themselves. They've got to make sure that their supporters are going to be able to win enough seats. They made sure also that the progress, the process and the progress of elections wasn't going to be too fast because they needed to build up their supporters to be able to run in elections. So this whole period of time. Defined a period where Chinese understanding of elections and what Hong Kong people sort of believe to be open elections, that they butted heads and they're still butting heads today.
- [42:45]
Ed Pulford
And I think one of the really intriguing aspects of the book as a whole is the light you shed on this, attempting to maneuver around the concept like elections, including by sort of trying to seduce local elites. And you provide these really tremendously revealing and helpful appendices. It's a really unique approach, I think, which detail the lists of VIP is invited to certain events, including Sino, British Declaration, and even right up to more recent events, including the Olympic torch ceremony. Your insight there into who is being sort of wooed by Beijing, I think is really fascinating. But another way that I also was completely unaware of that, that Beijing started to bring Hong Kong people or Hong Kong elites on side, even well before the handover, was by actual incorporation into mainland politics, including by inviting Hong Kong figures to participate in the National People's Congress and also the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. That rolling off the tongue name for the two parliamentary sessions that that Beijing holds on an annual basis.
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Christine Lowe
Yes. Well, actually, if you think about it, it made perfect sense because the Chinese, of course, never truly acknowledged that Hong Kong was under British control. Therefore, you have to have some representatives on these national bodies. So they always had a number of appointees on these bodies. This is a sign that this is a part of my country.
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Ed Pulford
And what kind of people did they bring onside to actually come and represent Hong Kong in Beijing?
- [44:37]
Christine Lowe
Well, if we go back to what we just talked about in terms of the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution, I mean, in Hong Kong, there were always a number of leftist organization that had long associations with the Chinese Communist Party. So those were the people who, they were very committed to the People's Republic of China. They were called leftists. And these were the people in the past that they nominated to sit on these national bodies. Over time they've used these appointments to invite more of other elites. So these were not traditional leftists, so to speak. These were professionals, these were business people, these were community leaders to be on these bodies. Now, I mean, if we look at it today, let us not forget that to be a member of the National People's Congress or to be a member of the CPPCC under the Chinese political system, these are rather important. So, for example, after 1997, we have, for example, right now we have two people, two past chief executives who are vice chairman of the CPPCC now outside China, you might say, well, aren't these just appointees? They're not very useful and influential. Actually, if you look at it from the Chinese political structure, they're not unimportant. And in a way, Hong Kong's extremely privileged to have that number of important people within the Chinese political structure.
- [46:30]
Ed Pulford
And I guess the question is, to what extent does it value that privilege? Or at least to what extent do the people appreciate the honors that the CCP is offering within its. Within its own value system?
- [46:44]
Christine Lowe
This isn't so much my book, because I'm seeking to tell the story of the Communist Party, but I have written another book called no Third Person, with a co author, Professor Richard Cullen, where I think actually, now that we are more than 21 years into being a part of China, we should think about these appointments and be more strategic about it because they are important on the mainland, that these are substantial appointments. So if we don't try to use these appointments to claim our place in the sun on the mainland, it seems a bit of a waste to me.
- [47:28]
Ed Pulford
Well, I guess, yeah, that's an argument that you make quite strongly, I think, in this book, too, in that Hong Kong's position is as a part of the PRC in whatever special status it has, and it should make the most of it. But I guess clearly you also do very good justice to the diversity of opinions that exist in Hong Kong today. Bringing in chapter 10, the narrative right up to the present and the most recent developments, including those that I mentioned in the introduction. So how do you think the Party, or do you think the party, has changed its approach in light of the status of Hong Kong, as you term it at one point, a city of protest, kind of locus for all of these discontents expressing themselves? Is the Party adapting to these sorts of changes that are going on in Hong Kong today?
- [48:19]
Christine Lowe
Well, I would say that. I mean, the party was an underground party in the past and it didn't want to talk about itself. The officials of the Xinhua News Agency and then subsequently the liaison office, sometime after 1997, they used to keep a pretty low profile, but I think today Chinese officials in Hong Kong take up a much higher profile. So you can't really say that these people are now underground. They're very much above ground. Now, of course, the Chinese Communist Party itself does not play a role in Hong Kong, so to speak, and therefore it is still the liaison offers. But I do think in many ways the Party has sort of come out because you do see China talk a lot more. You see the top leaders coming to Hong Kong. They have published white papers and other statements about how they see Hong Kong. Chinese officials based in Hong Kong very often go to many, many public events. They speak to the media. They talk about their vision and their hopes for Hong Kong So there's much more direct dialogue, really. Some people would say one way of the mainland, the Chinese authorities promoting its views, persuading Hong Kong people to its way of looking at things. So I would say that it's no longer so underground, but officially, of course, it is still not an organization in Hong Kong.
- [50:22]
Ed Pulford
No, that's, I think again an intriguing part of the overall picture here, that that's a consistent dimension that has played out really throughout the history of communist activity in Hong Kong. But as we move towards a close, I guess I would just ask you sort of one final thing because you also include a survey in your appendix of public opinion of the Communist Party. You say that you think Hong Kong people, or it might be wise for Hong Kong people to make the most, a bit more of some of the political access it has to Beijing. How do you see public opinion shifting in the present? As a resident and as a close observer of Hong Kong affairs, vis a vision, the Communist Party, of course, some, some younger people are very not keen on it at all. Do you think the variety of views is shifting at all?
- [51:17]
Christine Lowe
I think at this moment in Hong Kong, there are people, maybe particularly the younger generations, that they haven't quite reconciled that Hong Kong is fully a part of China. And one of the reasons that I think they are very uncomfortable or unhappy with the People's Republic is also how political speak and political culture is in mainland China. You know, every, every country has its political cultural expression and official Chinese speak is really quite difficult for other Chinese people because it's a more formalized way of talking about politics that is infused with language and imagery of Marxism, Leninism and Chinese culture. Hong Kong people tend to be very direct and very straightforward and the way they speak Cantonese is more like perhaps in the West. And therefore I think a lot of people, even if you're reading translated works, I mean if you were British, for example, and you're reading Chinese official documents in translation in English, a lot of the times the translation comes across as kind of weird, using language that are quite off putting for people coming from the liberal democratic tradition. I think my sense is see what they're really trying to say, cut out how they see it, because there is a. I mean the Chinese experience of Marxism and Communism has created a whole language and style that is just difficult. But if we look at what China is actually saying and its ideas. So for example, we talked about the greater Bay Area, whether this is something to be embraced by Hong Kong or whether this is something Hong Kong should fear because we're going to be absorbed by the much bigger Guangdong. This is precisely it. So in terms of Chinese thinking, they're saying, well, Hong Kong, you're actually quite small. You've been able to punch way above your weight when China was very small and had a very small economy. But today, China is the number two economic power and it's growing gangbusters. And for Hong Kong, if you had a bigger platform, if you could join forces with Guangdong, then isn't this going to be better for you? And I think there's an argument to say, yeah, this could be a new force of. Of development for Hong Kong, but yet the underlying currents of concern about whether we are going to be swallowed by something big is something that Hong Kong people have to work through.
- [54:29]
Ed Pulford
And I think you paint a very clear picture of why some of those fears exist in terms of the difficulty in communication. And I think actually globally, China's sort of. I mean, whether we call it soft power or whatever, whether we just call it PR or, or indeed propaganda, there are perhaps work that China could still be doing in terms of softening and its approach and understanding a little more the audiences that it's addressing and their perspectives. But equally, as you say, I think and argue quite forcefully, there's work to be done on both sides. And this is a really brilliant aspect of the book as a whole because it's a picture of a cultural situation, a political situation, and also, yeah, as you mentioned a little earlier there, a portrait of a Communist Party that continues to operate through language and modes of action, which is crucial to understand the history in order to be able to understand. And I think that's the really valuable contribution of the book. But in any case, Christine, we've taken up a fair old bit of your time with some various technical issues that hopefully listeners won't be privy to as well. But before you go, I thought I'd just ask, what is it that you're working on currently? I mean, you mentioned another book you published a while back there, but what are your current activities?
- [55:51]
Christine Lowe
Well, I'm doing a bit of teaching. I'm associated with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and I'm also teaching as a visiting professor at the Business School at the University of California at Los Angeles. So I've been doing quite a lot of reading, doing quite a lot of writing, and for me, at this stage in my life, I am trying to sort out what it means, the rise of China, being in Hong Kong, having had the privilege for living through the last 40 years witnessing the rise of China in its perspective in relations to Hong Kong. But now China is, you know, is a dominant force in the world. The experience and the insights that we've gained in Hong Kong, how might that be useful? And how might the rise of China also be pushing Hong Kong to have to deal and face really difficult issues? China's punch up with the United States. It looks like this is going to continue for a while, not just through the trade war, but also through now technology. The Americans are very upfront about it. So there's plenty, plenty to think about. So I think that I'd probably be thinking and writing more.
- [57:12]
Ed Pulford
Well, I think your contributions will be absolutely invaluable if this book is anything to go by. It's such a unique point of view you have and Hong Kong, in a way, is such a telling barometer for all of these developments that you, that you described there. But in any case, that all sounds brilliant and I want to say thank you very much for appearing today. It's been a great privilege to have you on. Thank you, listeners. Thank you, too, for listening. And we will speak to you next time on the New Books Network. Thanks. Goodbye,
- [57:49]
Christine Lowe
Sam.