Religion as Culture

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 476-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Ethical Dilemma ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
State Governance ◽  
Cultural Sphere

Today’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which came to power in 1949, continues to recognize religion and Christianity as part of the dominant Western culture, and as the means to establish relationships and promote religion and culture. When faced with a moral or ethical dilemma the CCP looks to a Confucian past for traditions just as the Canadian state draws on the Protestant and Catholic cultures of its so-called founding peoples. The Chinese state has additionally attempted to manage religious engagement by propping up select Buddhist temples and working through grassroots personal webs of connection to household religious altars, enshrined deities, and communal practices. In China and in Canada, states claim neutrality but in both cases and for different reasons religion is treated as culture. The paper’s ethno-historical approach draws on over 15 years of fieldwork and historical research throughout the Chinese cultural sphere (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Canada). Looking across histories and nations it traces state governance in China and Canada, webs of connections, and personal interactions that have shaped religious identities and the resurgence of Chinese temple life and select religious cults.

Textual Anxiety: Reading (and Misreading) the Draft Constitution in China, 1954

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-179
Author(s):  
Neil J. Diamant ◽  
Feng Xiaocai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Political Terror ◽  
Ordinary Citizens ◽  
Draft Constitution

This article uses comments, questions, and conversations about the PRC's draft constitution of 1954 to assess state legitimacy and how people felt more generally about the Communist regime. Taking advantage of untapped archival sources in Hong Kong and the mainland—including classified intraparty reports and transcripts from meetings in factories, police stations, universities, and villages—this article challenges the conventional view that the constitution bolstered support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Instead, the document generated a great deal of anxiety among ordinary citizens, as well as among CCP officials and the regime's favored classes. This “text-based” cause of emotional turmoil was a supplement to the classic forms of political terror that dominate the literature on Communist dictatorships. Despite widespread confusion, people's identification of problematic sections of the constitution turned out to be remarkably prescient in light of political disasters in the 1950s and 1960s and ongoing constitutional controversies in the era after Mao Zedong.

China and Southeast Asia: The Revolutionary Perspective, 1951

1988 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. B. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

Controversy still surrounds the question whether the communist-led uprisings which developed across Southeast Asia during the months from March to September 1948 were the outcome of a deliberate international communist strategy or merely the product of coincidental decisions by individual communist parties. Equally controversial, although less frequently discussed, is the suggestion that during the early months of 1950 the Chinese Communist Party took on direct responsibility for sustaining those revolutionary armed struggles which were still continuing in Southeast Asia — in Vietnam, Malaya and the Philippines — and even provided material assistance to allow them to expand. The present paper will examine yet a third period at which it is necessary to consider the possibility of coordinated international decision-making on the communist side in Southeast Asia: the second half of 1951.

scholarly journals British Views of the Legacy of the Colonial Administration of Hong Kong: A Preliminary Assessment

1997 ◽  
Vol 151 ◽  
pp. 553-566
Author(s):  
Brian Hook
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Preliminary Assessment ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Historical Significance

The legacy of the colonial administration of Hong Kong, viewed from the majority of constituencies in Britain, is chiefly formed from the characteristics of the territory on the eve of retrocession. This, it will be noted, is in sharp contrast to the views formed by both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and many Chinese observers. The British prefer to emphasize personal freedoms, the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the efficiency of government, the competitiveness of business, the preeminent status in international trade, the suppression of corruption, the quality of the engineering infrastructure, and the improving health and welfare provisions as essential characteristics of their legacy.Their Chinese counterparts are much more likely to hark back to the bad old days of national humiliation and imperialist exploitation, seeking to draw the attention of all compatriots to the historical significance of reunification.

Digitally Dismantling Asian Authoritarianism

Contention ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adam K. Dedman ◽  
Autumn Lai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

In April 2020, a Twitter war erupted under the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance. It united users from Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in a fight against Chinese techno-nationalists’ attempts to shame public figures into supporting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s framing of geopolitics. In the months that followed, Thai, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong activists continued to lend support to each other through their use of this and other hashtags. Why does the #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag resonate with so many? What political contexts preceded the consolidation of the #MilkTeaAlliance, and how may this alliance reshape geopolitical landscapes off-line? We approach these questions from our perspective as activists embedded in these movements. We argue that the formation of the #MilkTeaAlliance unites voices that are marginalized diplomatically, discursively, and affectively by the CCP, and—more crucially—generates valuable affective and physical forms of intra-Asian solidarity against authoritarianism in the region.

Deepening the State

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 136-154
Author(s):  
Samson Yuen ◽  
Edmund W. Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
State Power ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Multiple State ◽  
United Front ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
Original Event

United front work has long been an important tool through which the Chinese Communist Party exercises political influence in Hong Kong. While existing works have revealed the history, actors, and impact of united front work in this semiautonomous city, few studies have focused on its changing structure and objectives in the post-handover period. Using publicly available reports and an original event dataset, we show that united front work has involved a steady organizational proliferation of social organizations coupled with their increasingly frequent interaction with the mainland authorities and the Hong Kong government. We argue that united front work has become more decentralized and multilayered in its structure and that its objective has been shifting from elite co-optation to proactive countermobilization against pro-democracy threats. Our findings indicate that state power in post-handover Hong Kong does not solely belong to governmental institutions; it is increasingly exercised through an extensive network comprising multiple state and social actors.

The Perception of Chinese Communism in Hong Kong 1921–1934

2000 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 1044-1061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chan Lau Kit-ching
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Communist Movement ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

This article attempts to present the impression made by Chinese communism in Hong Kong during the germinal period of the Chinese Communist Movement from 1921, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded, to 1934, when the communist presence in Hong Kong and Guangdong had virtually disappeared and communist activities were not to be revived until shortly before the outbreak of China's war with Japan. The early perception of communism and its importance have to be understood in the context of the dual society of the colony, with the British as the ruler and the Chinese as the ruled in almost totally separate communities.

Hong Kong electoral reforms tighten mainland control

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Cost Of Living ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Electoral Reforms

Significance The goal is to ensure that Hong Kong’s formal political institutions are controlled by ‘patriots’ (meaning people who support the Chinese Communist Party) and end the obstruction (or threatened obstruction) seen in the city’s politics over the past decade. Impacts Beijing has lost faith in the current establishment, and is perhaps hoping for new, more competent pro-Beijing leaders to emerge. Hong Kong’s government may pursue a more active, interventionist economic policy to address cost-of-living issues. The next legislative elections, already postponed by a year to September 2021, may be postponed further. The reforms imply less tolerance of politicians who accept Hong Kong’s place within the Chinese state but favour political change in China.

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