Hong Kong Media and Asia’s Cold War by Po-Shek Fu (review)

Hong Kong's status as a port city has placed it between worlds, in a sense, since the dawn of globalization.It became a British colony in the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to its strategic value following the Opium Wars and an experiment in laissez-faire economic policy from a colonial administration that did not desire to extend democracy to subjects there.Yet, it also served as a refuge for victims of Maoism, and more recently, an experiment in whether the Chinese Communist Party can maintain one open door for the rest of the world even as it exercises the complete political control it insists on.Amid the influx of mainland refugees escaping communism and the Cowperthwaite administration's insistence on classical liberal governance, one story that may be overlooked is that Hong Kong has long been an ideological battleground, particularly during the Cold War.Long-time observers know of the 1956 and 1967 riots, which, unlike the 1966 variety, had an element of communist