Hong Kong Media and Asia's Cold War

Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI) - The City University of New York (CUNY)

Hong Kong was a key battlefield in Asia's cultural cold war. After 1948-1949, an influx of filmmakers, writers, and intellectuals from mainland China transformed British Hong Kong into a hub for mass entertainment and popular publications. Hong Kong Media and Asia's Cold War discusses how Communist China, Nationalist Taiwan, and the U.S. fought to mobilize Hong Kong cinema and print media to sway ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia and across the world. Central to this propaganda and psychological warfare was the emigre media industry. This period was the golden age of Mandarin cinema and popular culture. Throughout the 1967 Riots and the 1970s, the emergence of a new, local-born generation challenged and reshaped the Cold War networks of migr cultural production, contributing to the gradual decline of Hong Kong's cultural Cold War. Through untapped archival materials, contemporary sources, and numerous interviews with filmmakers, magazine editors, and student activists, Dr. Po-Shek Fu explores how global conflicts were localized and intertwined with myriad local historical experiences and cultural formation.