Crisis and Opportunity
This chapter confirms the findings of previous scholarship concerning the complicated international politics that surrounded the Chinese refugee problem in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s volatile political status-as a British colony on the doorstep of Maoist China-led Hong Kong’s British rulers to impose strict limits on the degree to which the US was allowed to exploit the propaganda value of the refugee crisis in Hong Kong. Given these constraints as well as ARCI’s limited success in achieving its other major goal-that of resettling large numbers of Chinese refugee intellectuals in places and occupations where they could play a politically useful role-one is left to ponder whether ARCI had any lasting significance beyond its impact on the lives of the individuals and families who were resettled overseas under its auspices, which was significant and often dramatic.