2: Spies and Scholars: Hong Kong and the Study of Contemporary China

"Collusion with foreign powers" was one of the key justifications for the new national security law in Hong Kong, but the Chinese Communist Party's fear of interference and infiltration is not new. As the gateway to Mainland China, the former British colony has long been a center of China watching. Bridging intellectual history and intelligence history, this paper examines the unique role of Hong Kong in the making of contemporary Chinese studies. Challenging party propaganda that the city was a "den of spies", I explore Hong Kong as a dynamic contact zone: just as the CCP used the city as a launching pad its own clandestine operations during the Cold War, the British authorities were wary of American activities in the colony. I focus on quotidian flows of people, materials, and information to and from Hong Kong. Reading Chinese, British and American diplomatic archives alongside records of private organizations such as the Ford Foundation, I show the synergies and tensions between intelligence work and area studies. From paper dealers that smuggled mainland publications to organizations such as the Union Research Institute, I explore how the city's informal economy shaped knowledge about contemporary China. At a time when the future of many of Hong Kong's knowledge institutions -- such as the Universities Service Centre -- hang in question, my study of the city's unique intellectual role during the Cold War raises urgent questions about the meaning of national security, the role of scholars, and the politics of historical knowledge production.