The conventional story of Hong Kong celebrates the people who fled the mainland in the wake of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. In this telling, migrants thrived under British colonial rule, transforming Hong Kong into a cosmopolitan city and an industrial and financial hub. Unsettling Exiles recasts identity formation in Hong Kong, demonstrating that the complexities of crossing borders shaped the city's uneasy place in the Sinophone world.
Angelina Y. Chin foregrounds the experiences of the many people who passed through Hong Kong without settling down or finding a sense of belonging, including refugees, deportees, "undesirable" residents, and members of sea communities. She emphasizes that flows of people did not stop at Hong Kong's borders but also bled into neighboring territories such as Taiwan and Macau. Chin develops the concept of the "Southern Periphery"-the region along the southern frontier of the PRC, outside its administrative control yet closely tied to its political space. Both the PRC and governments in the Southern Periphery implemented strict migration and deportation policies in pursuit of border control, with profound consequences for people in transit. Chin argues that Hong Kong identity emerged from the collective trauma of exile and dislocation, as well as a sense of being on the margins of both the Communist and Nationalist Chinese regimes during the Cold War. Drawing on wide-ranging research, Unsettling Exiles sheds new light on Hong Kong's ambivalent relationship to the mainland, its role in the global Cold War, and the origins of today's political currents.
The conventional story of Hong Kong celebrates the people who fled the mainland in the wake of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. In this telling, migrants thrived under British colonial rule, transforming Hong Kong into a cosmopolitan city and an industrial and financial hub. Unsettling Exiles recasts identity formation in Hong Kong, demonstrating that the complexities of crossing borders shaped the city's uneasy place in the Sinophone world.
Angelina Y. Chin foregrounds the experiences of the many people who passed through Hong Kong without settling down or finding a sense of belonging, including refugees, deportees, "undesirable" residents, and members of sea communities. She emphasizes that flows of people did not stop at Hong Kong's borders but also bled into neighboring territories such as Taiwan and Macau. Chin develops the concept of the "Southern Periphery"-the region along the southern frontier of the PRC, outside its administrative control yet closely tied to its political space. Both the PRC and governments in the Southern Periphery implemented strict migration and deportation policies in pursuit of border control, with profound consequences for people in transit. Chin argues that Hong Kong identity emerged from the collective trauma of exile and dislocation, as well as a sense of being on the margins of both the Communist and Nationalist Chinese regimes during the Cold War. Drawing on wide-ranging research, Unsettling Exiles sheds new light on Hong Kong's ambivalent relationship to the mainland, its role in the global Cold War, and the origins of today's political currents.
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1. “Refugees” or “Undesirables”: The Fate of Chinese Escapees in
the 1950s and 1960s
2. The Third Force and the Culture of Dissent in Hong Kong
3. Cultural Revolution at Sea: Dead Bodies and Kidnapping in the
Hong Kong Sea Territories
4. The Unwanted in Limbo: Was Hong Kong a Refuge or a Dumping
Ground?
5. The Three Escapees
6. Commemorating the Big Escape: The Question of Memories
Epilogue
Glossary of Chinese Characters
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Angelina Y. Chin is associate professor of history at Pomona College. She is the author of Bound to Emancipate: Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century China and Hong Kong (2012).
In Unsettling Exiles, the story of postwar Hong Kong is not simply
one of socioeconomic perseverance but must also be understood in
the contexts of the trauma and sense of dislocation experienced by
many who had, for a variety of reasons, left China for the British
colony. In so telling the story, Chin offers not only to place the
experiences of many in Hong Kong in the broader context of what she
refers to as the “Southern Periphery” but also to connect the
challenges Hong Kong has faced since the 1997 handover to a longer
history of fear, despair, and disillusionment.
*Leo K. Shin, founding convenor of the Hong Kong Studies
Initiative, University of British Columbia*
Bold and exquisite, this book exhumes from history a “Southern
Periphery” at the doorstep of the People’s Republic of China.
Nurtured by the visions and voices of forgotten exiles, refugees,
and deportees falling through the cracks of conventional analytical
categories—nations, borders, citizenship, and diaspora—the legacies
of this unique political landscape still reverberate today.
*Ching Kwan Lee, author of Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive
Frontier*
Does geography shape destiny? How have the borders of land and sea
that bind Hong Kong to China shaped the fates of Hong Kongers, many
of whom fled CCP authoritarianism and found no other home amid the
racist legacies of decolonization and the Cold War’s political
divides, which fueled Hong Kong’s insecure sovereignty. Published
in the aftermath of China’s sweeping National Security Law, Chin’s
nuanced study of Hong Kongers’ limited mobility and precarious
immobility throbs with poignant hindsight.
*Madeline Y. Hsu, author of The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow
Peril Became the Model Minority*
Unsettling Exiles introduces the Southern Periphery of the PRC: a
place of permeable borders, political exiles, unwelcome migrants,
unidentified corpses, idealists, grifters, and wary state
apparatuses. Chin gives close and compassionate attention to people
creating lives in circumstances they did not choose, all the while
imagining a future China they could call home. A powerful argument
that understanding the center requires acknowledging the loyalties,
longings, and traumatic memories of those on the periphery.
*Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz*
In this pioneering and captivating book, Angelina Chin shows how
Cold War Hong Kong became a dumping ground for Chinese refugees,
deportees, and a host of other “undesirables.” Instead of finding
cosmopolitanism and success, as the triumphal “Hong Kong story”
goes, these exiles often faced despair and marginality. Unsettling
indeed!
*John M. Carroll, author of The Hong Kong-China Nexus: A Brief
History*
Stimulating and provocative.
*China Quarterly*
Scholars of Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, will find this book
extremely valuable, as will scholars of borders, migration, and the
global Cold War...this book is a thoughtful and significant
addition to
Hong Kong history, one that is sure to shape the field in years to
come.
*Journal of Chinese History*
Captivating...Unsettling Exiles vividly portrays the intimate
experience of Chinese exiles... [and] paves the way for further
dialogues and exploration concerning the Southern Periphery
*China Perspectives*
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