Humanitarian Assistance and Propaganda War: Repatriation and Relief of the Nationalist Refugees in...

Journal of Chinese Overseas 10 (2014) 165-196

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Humanitarian Assistance and Propaganda War: Repatriation and Relief of the Nationalist Refugees in Hong Kong’s Rennie’s Mill Camp, 1950-1955

人道救援與宣傳戰爭: 香港調景嶺國民黨難民之接運與救濟, 1950-1955 年

Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang 楊孟軒

Institute for Historical Studies, University of Texas at Austin dominicyang@hotmail.com

Abstract

In 1949, the world witnessed a tidal wave of involuntary migration out of China when the Chinese Communists came to power. Among this vast sea of human misery were tens of thousands of exiled Nationalist supporters in Hong Kong — common soldiers, low-ranking civil servants, and their families. In June 1950, a minor clash occurred between the Nationalist refugees and the pro-ccp elements in the colony. To prevent further political upheaval, the British authorities transported the former to a remote location called “Rennie’s Mill” or Tiu Keng Leng and built a temporary internment camp to house them. The initial plan was to gather the Nationalist supporters in the colony and shipped them to Taiwan as soon as possible. Yet Chiang Kai-shek’s government was reluctant to receive these people for both economic and security reasons. As the repa-triation process dragged on, the Nationalists used the refugee camp as an international showcase in their propaganda war against the People’s Republic of China (prc) much to the chagrin of the British. Consequently, a considerable number of the Nationalist refugees were stranded in Hong Kong. They became victims of their own government under the pretense of humanitarian assistance. This paper examines the early history of Rennie’s Mill community with an emphasis on the interplay between humanitarian relief, propaganda war, and international politics. It sheds light on the actual lived

* Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang is a Postdoctoral Fellow.

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experiences of Rennie’s Mill refugees against the conflicting ideological constructions and humanitarian discourse surrounding them.

Keywords

Humanitarian Relief – Propaganda War – Cold War – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr) – Kuomintang (kmt) – Chinese Civil War – Free China Relief Association (fcra)

关键词

人道救濟 – 宣傳戰爭 – 冷戰 – 聯合國難民事務高級專員公署 – 國民黨 – 國共內戰 – 中國大陸災胞救濟總會

Rennie’s Mill Refugee Camp is where our loyal refugees congregated. The anti-communist spirit is very strong here. It is the nexus that holds our two million refugee compatriots in Hong Kong together. The place thus earned its reputation as a spiritual bastion of anti-communism (fcra 1970: 17-18). — the official kmt discourse on Rennie’s Mill

They were a nuisance, and a costly one, as well as being a source of embarrass-ment to us in our relations with the Chinese government, especially as some of them engaged in anti-Peking activities. Any caught at this were deported to Formosa (Grantham 1965: 141). — Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Alexander Grantham on the Nationalist refugees

[L]iving in Rennie’s Mill is like living inside the iron curtain in mainland China. We didn’t have freedom of speech on the mainland. We were forced to participate in mass rallies, sign petitions for peace, and shout long live Chairman Mao. Yet in Rennie’s Mill, we are equally afraid to speak out. We are also forced to sign a pledge of loyalty [to the kmt], and shout long live President Chiang (Zhongguo zhisheng 2(6) 1952: 11). — writing of a Rennie’s Mill refugee

Introduction

Foreign tourists visiting Hong Kong before the 1990s sometimes took notice of a peculiar settlement built on the rocky hillside east of Kowloon facing the Junk Bay. This sleepy and quaint little town seemed to be locked in a time

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capsule, detached from the thriving metropolis nearby. There were no shin-ning skyscrapers, malls, or high-rise apartments, only small bungalows and wooden shacks bunched together neatly like matchboxes against steep sea-side slopes. Mandarin was the preferred language in daily conversations as opposed to Cantonese, especially among the older residents. Visitors enter-ing the community for the first time were often baffled by a sea of Nationalist flags and billboards filled with pro-Nationalist slogans, a scene that seemed strangely out of place in a British colony. Rennie’s Mill or Tiu Keng Leng (C: 調景嶺) is the name of the town.1 People in Hong Kong dubbed the place “Little Taiwan” because of the residents’ open display of affinity towards the roc (the Republic of China) in Taiwan. Today, traces of the town can no longer be found. When the retrocession back to the prc approached, the entire settle-ment was razed to the ground and its existence obliterated forever from public memory. Thousands of remaining inhabitants were forcibly dispersed to other government housing estates with reparations from the Hong Kong authorities. The final clearance of Rennie’s Mill Village took place in 1996. The operation proceeded in the midst of a vehement protest by recalcitrant residents, who had launched a legal battle and collective action against the colonial govern-ment since the early 1990s in a futile effort to preserve their community (Wang 2008: 108-128).

There has hitherto been little research on this distinctive enclave, which was originally established by the British colonial authorities in June 1950 as a refugee internment camp for the exiled kmt2 (國民黨, or Nationalist) sup-porters in the wake of the Chinese civil war. Even in Hong Kong and Taiwan, there are only a handful of monographs (Corcuff 1996; Liu and Guan 1998; Liang 2000) and a few graduate theses (Yu 1997; Lan 2006; Lin 2009). This paper examines the early history of Tiu Keng Leng with an emphasis on the interplay between humanitarian relief, propaganda war, and international pol-itics. It explains how the community was formed in the first place. It brings to light the actual lived experiences of Rennie’s Mill refugees against the conflict-ing ideological constructions and humanitarian discourse surrounding them. For the Chinese Communists, the Rennie’s Mill refugees were “Nationalist

1 The English name Rennie’s Mill is no longer in use after 1997. Nowadays, the place is simply referred to as Tiu Keng Leng. The site is located at the eastern terminal station of the mtr Kwun Tong (C: 觀塘) Line under the same name. It is part of the Tseung Kwan O New Town in the Sai Kung District of New Territories.

2 The Romanization of Chinese characters in this essay follows the Hanyu Pinyin system with two exceptions — the place names in Hong Kong which are in Cantonese and the widely recognized historical figures and political parties, such as Chiang Kai-shek and Kuomintang (the kmt).

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agents” — dangerous elements who should never be allowed back in China. For the British administrators in Hong Kong, they were “squatters,” “inmates,” and “parasites” — unwanted people and a constant “nuisance” for the colonial government’s uneasy relationship with Beijing. For the Nationalists in Taiwan, they were glorified anti-communist fighters — “loyal and righteous people” — refugees who deserved to be saved and helped. Yet despite the rhetoric, Chiang Kai-shek’s government was reluctant to receive all of their exiled supporters in Hong Kong. Besides financial and security considerations, the existence of this refugee community in the British colony served a particular purpose for the Nationalist regime-in-exile.

The following narrative illustrates the political calculus behind the relief and repatriation of Chiang Kai-shek’s exiled supporters in Hong Kong involv-ing mainly the British colonial administrators and the Nationalist authori-ties in Taiwan. The story reveals in particular the critical role played by the kmt in using Rennie’s Mill Refugee Camp as an international showcase for the plight of mainland Chinese escaping the prc. A considerable number of people were stranded in Hong Kong as a result of the Nationalist policy. This paper argues that the refugees at Rennie’s Mill became victims of Cold War politics, and more specifically, victims of their own government under the pre-tense of humanitarian relief. It exposes the gap between rhetoric and reality when human misery was exploited for political gain, when the newly minted humanitarian principles following World War Two were used as a weapon for propaganda war. Looking beyond conflicting ideological constructions, the paper also aims to explore the agency and historicity of this little known refugee population, which have been obfuscated by the battle for the hearts and minds.

Humanitarian assistance constituted a quintessential element in the Cold War ideological struggle as First World countries led by the United States attempted to capitalize on the mass exodus out of communist states — “people voting with their feet”3 (Keely 2001). Nonetheless, the international politics behind Hong Kong’s postwar refugee crisis, or in the phraseology of British colonial administrators, “problem of people”, were not carefully

3 The idea of “foot voting” or “people voting with their feet” was a common expression used to describe massive population movements crossing the borders between the capitalist nations and the socialist states during the Cold War. The term was politically charged and was mainly used by the Western countries to portray mass exodus from the communist regimes. The idea is that, despite state propaganda about the superiority of the socialist system, people made choices based on reality. The most well-known instance of people voting with their feet was the mass departure from the communist-controlled East Berlin to West Berlin, which led to construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

examined by historians until recent years (Mark 2007; Peterson 2008). The new studies reveal tension and conflict of interest among the Cold War allies. The controversy over the legal status of the Chinese exodus — whether they fell under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr) and viable solutions to the “problem” — was entangled in a web of political calculations among Great Britain, the United States, and the unhcr. Yet, how decisions made by power holders in the international negotiations actually influenced the lives of refugee communities in Hong Kong remains relatively obscure. In a recently published anthology on the Cold War in Asia, Michael Szonyi and Hong Liu opine that: “There is still far too little research on the social dimensions of the Cold War, on how the Cold War was experienced by individuals and communities, on how it shaped social relations” (Szonyi and Liu 2010: 10).

This study examines the effect of repatriation and relief policy on a dis-placed population. It demonstrates how the Nationalist refugees in Hong Kong struggled to survive and improve their lives under trying circumstances; the vary circumstances created by failure in international negotiations due to Cold War machinations. Displaced populations are not faceless victims or mind-less chess pieces of international politics. They are not people without history and they are certainly not people without agency. Anthropologist Liisa Malkki suggests that refugees become “speechless emissaries” when their specific his-torical experience and predicament are universalized into an abstract notion of victimhood by the international humanitarian discourse and practices (Malkki 1996: 378). Malkki criticizes what she terms “functionalist” and “essen-tialist” tendencies of current scholarship on refugees that consider them as “a problem for development” (Malkki 1995: 507-512). Richard Black also points to the lack of critical self-reflection associated with many policy-oriented stud-ies sponsored by nation-states and international bureaucracies (Black 2001). Rather than trying to understand displacement from the perspective of the refugees, these studies aim at resolving the immediate crises created by dis-placed populations, or they focus solely on analyzing the international politics behind a particular policy. The following narrative goes beyond the confines of conventional refugee studies.

By exploring the agency and historicity of Rennie’s Mill refugees, this study not only illuminates Hong Kong’s nuanced historical past from the bottom up (Ngo 1999), but also underscores a key aspect in the Chinese refugee con-troversy long overlooked by historians. The aspect is the role played by the Nationalists in shaping the refugee issue in Hong Kong during the 1950s. The Rennie’s Mill story shows that the kmt contributed significantly to the unhcr refugee survey mission in Hong Kong in 1954 and helped set the tone for the ideological warfare against communism in East Asia. Michael Szonyi and

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Hong Liu argue that it is important to see how local actors, working with their specific national interests and regional concerns in mind, became important contributors to pivotal historical transformations, and that “developments in the Third World were not simply a sideshow to the main event, but central to the Cold War itself” (Szonyi and Liu 2010: 1). This work places Asian actors at the center stage — both the Rennie’s Mill refugees and Chiang Kai-shek’s regime-in-exile, and the story begins with the great exodus in the wake of the Chinese civil war.

The Making of Unwanted People: Cold War Rivalry and the Failure of British Repatriation

In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, the world witnessed a massive wave of involuntary migration out of China when the Chinese Communists came to power. Approximately one million military personnel, civil servants, and war refugees followed Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated regime across the sea to Taiwan (Li 1969: 217-219). At the same time, more than one million people entered the tiny British colony of Hong Kong though about 200,000 eventually returned to China after 1950 (Hambro 1955: 144, Table iv). The influx of a large number of people in a relative short period of time, many with only the clothes on their backs, put incredible strain on the colony’s war-torn infrastructure and meager financial resources. During this time, American-led embargo on the prc stifled the entrepôt trade, which was the pipeline that fueled the colony’s economy. The mainland exodus contributed to severe housing shortage, mass depriva-tion, disease outbreaks, and recurring squatter fires. The extent of the human misery is illustrated by the sheer size of the exodus population in relation to the number of local residents. According to Edvard Hambro, the head of the United Nations’ fact-finding mission on the Chinese refugees in Hong Kong, 40% of the colony’s population — approximately 900,000 people — arrived after World War Two (Hambro 1957: 72). Sympathetic to the plight of the main-land refugees yet careful not to irritate his British hosts, who viewed the un mission as a result of Cold War machinations and an infringement upon their political authority, Hambro acknowledged that “the local authorities have done the best they could under trying circumstances”. Nevertheless, he wrote: “To the Western observer, such conditions and the lack of services are appall-ing and defy description” (Hambro 1957: 74).

Hong Kong’s postwar refugee crisis or the so-called “problem of people” not only led to the Hambro mission, but also featured prominently in the World Refugee Year Campaign (1959-1960) sponsored by the un and many First

World countries. Yet, at the very beginning, the colonial authorities in Hong Kong could find neither the political will nor the financial resources to allevi-ate the situation. Other than their discriminatory and condescending attitudes towards the Chinese refugees (Peterson 2012), making the colony economi-cally self-sufficient and thus avoiding unwanted interference from London was an important contributing factor to the colonial officials’ lack of sympathy towards the refugees (Mark 2007: 1149). Moreover, based on past experiences, the British administrators in Hong Kong viewed the Chinese exodus as a tran-sient population who would eventually return to the mainland when the dust settled. This line of thinking was best illustrated by the Colonial Governor Sir Alexander Grantham’s reflections on the situation:

Refugees were nothing new in the history of Hong Kong. Whenever there was civil war or similar commotion in South China, as not infrequently happened up to the thirties, refugees would come streaming in from the neighboring provinces of China. Whilst in Hong Kong, they would be taken care of by their relatives and friends or by charitable institu-tions. The government neither fed or housed them, for it did not want to encourage any more of China’s 400 millions (the pre-war population) to come begging for free lodging and free food (Grantham 1965: 153).

As a matter of fact, the colonial authorities in the early 1950s avoided using the word “refugees” when describing the Chinese population in public announce-ments. The term was reserved for the European exiles from the prc. Instead, the official term repeatedly referred to the hundreds of thousands of mainland exodus in Hong Kong as “squatters.”

It was not until the mid-1950s, when the British authorities realized that most of the Chinese migrants were here to stay, and when the colonial gov-ernment came under heavy pressure, both from home and from the interna-tional community, for its lack of response to the plight of mainland refugees, that the Governor and his administrators started to implement resettlement projects to assist the victims of squatter fires. The devastating inferno at Shek Kip Mei (C: 石硤尾) on Christmas Day of 1953, which left about 58,000 people homeless and with two deaths, is still regarded as a watershed event (Smart 2006: 2; 95). Though, in recent years, historians have begun to pay more atten-tion to the continuity in the colonial housing policy, which can be traced back to the effort to contain tuberculosis in the 1920s (Jones 2003), as well as the importance of seeing Hong Kong’s postwar public housing/welfare policy as an incremental and multi-faceted process involving a broad range of legal, inter-national, public health, and economic issues (Smart 2006).

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Among the mainland exodus in Hong Kong were tens of thousands of impoverished kmt supporters — routed Nationalist soldiers, low-ranking civil servants, and their families. These people later formed the basis for the Rennie’s Mill community. Whereas the British colonial authorities showed little concern for the Chinese “squatters” in the early 1950s, Grantham and his officials paid a lot of attention to the Nationalist refugees. Though their number was relatively small, these people were believed to be a potential threat to the interests of the colony. Governor Grantham’s disparaging remark aptly summed up the view of the colonial government: “They were a nuisance, and a costly one, as well as being a source of embarrassment to us in our relations with the Chinese government, especially as some of them engaged in anti-Peking activities. Any caught at this were deported to Formosa” (Grantham 1965: 141).

Great Britain was among the first few Western countries that formally rec-ognized the prc in 1950 and the main reason behind the recognition was to maintain its position in Hong Kong for as long as possible. According to Chi-Kwan Mark, who argues that the American commitment to help defend Hong Kong was a “reward” for the British support in other international negotiations during the Cold War, and none of the Anglo-American strategists and policy-makers at this time considered a full scale invasion from the prc imminent. What they were worried about was political upheavals in the colony which would provoke Beijing and gave the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) an excuse to take action and exacerbate the situation (Mark 2000). The kmt loyalists in Hong Kong could become a potential problem in this regard.

Due to the suddenness of the Nationalist collapse and the chaotic mass flight at the end of the civil war, a considerable number of the kmt refugees arrived in Hong Kong with virtually nothing, though there were also those who did possess gold and jewelry. Like the peasant population from Guangdong, who formed a majority of the civil war exiles in the colony, the Nationalist refugees who arrived with only the clothes on their backs took up temporary abode on the streets and eked out a living by begging. However, unlike rest of the mainland exodus, a considerable number of the Nationalist refugees hailed from the northern provinces. They could not speak Cantonese. They also lacked the indigenous communal and familial networks, which Governor Grantham considered important social safety nets in assisting newcomers in Hong Kong. Many wanted to depart for Taiwan. Yet, except for a selected few, most of the refugees had neither the financial means nor the political connec-tions to do so. Thousands of people were literally starving and in desperate need of assistance.

On 11 November 1949, the Hong Kong Police directed 148 starving and exhausted Nationalist soldiers and their families to seek medical attention in Tung Wah Hospital (C: 東華醫院), the largest charitable organization run by

the Chinese business elites in Hong Kong (Xian and Liu 2006). The Hospital was located on the busy streets of Hong Kong Island’s Central and Western District, at the heart of the colonial metropolis. News traveled fast amongst a desperate community. Upon hearing that the staff at Tung Wah was taking care of the kmt refugees, people swarmed into the Hospital from different corners of the colony. Tung Wah’s facilities, which were not spacious to begin with, were soon overflowing with refugees. Latecomers camped out in the vicinity of the Hospital in order to receive food and relief supplies distributed by its staffs. By the end of November, the ranks of the refugees swelled to 1,800, and by the end of 1949, around 3,000. The number continued to grow in the next few months, reaching approximately 4,000 to 5,000 in early 1950. Before long the Hospital had to contact the colonial government for assistance. (hkrs 156/1/2876: 1: 1-1: 2).

Despite their unwillingness to get involved at first, the colonial officials had observed the growing crowd gathering outside the Tung Wah Hospital with considerable anxiety. In early 1950, the Social Welfare Office (swo)4 began to lend support to the Hospital. On 28 March 1950, with assistance and trans-portation offered by the Hong Kong Police, the swo moved the Nationalist refugees to Jubilee Fort on Mount Davis (C: 摩星嶺), a British military strong-hold on the western end of Hong Kong Island. The Fort had been vacant since the days of the Japanese Occupation. On the surface, the Hospital still provided the refugees with daily rations and medical assistance. The Tung Wah staff also continued to arrange for the transportation of these people to Taiwan or the Hainan Island whenever possible. Although Hainan was still controlled by the Nationalist forces in early 1950, behind the scene, the colo-nial government worked quietly to investigate the situation and shouldered most of the expenses by reimbursing the Hospital (co 1023/126: 44; hkrs 41/1/ 5240: 1-18).

According to the swo records, there were about 4,000 to 5,000 Nationalist squatters living on Mount Davis and receiving daily rations from the govern-ment via the Tung Wah Hospital. Nonetheless, there is evidence to show that the actual number was a lot higher. The same set of records indicate that the Hospital stopped registering latecomers after the refugees were moved to Mount Davis at the behest of the swo in order to put a lid on the expenses (hkrs 156/1/2876: 1: 1-1: 2). Personal testimonies given at a later date suggest

4 The Social Welfare Office (swo) was the precursor of the Social Welfare Department in con-temporary Hong Kong. The Office was established in 1948 under the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs. The swo was the division in the colonial administration that dealt directly with man-aging and assisting Chinese population in postwar Hong Kong.

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that there were probably close to 10,000 people making camp on Mount Davis at this time (Hu et al. 1997).

For the colonial administrators, the famished Nationalist refugees amassed on top of Mount Davis, despite their small number and disadvantaged position, were a “nuisance” and a delicate matter that needed to be handled with consid-erable political finesse. On the one hand, the British did not want to provoke Beijing by giving the impression that they were helping exiled Nationalist civil servants and military personnel in Hong Kong. On the other hand, leaving these people to their fate ran the risk of some refugees actually starving to death, or worse — starting riots and engaging in “anti-Peking activities.” Desperate people had nothing to lose. Both scenarios would be detrimental to the inter-est of the colony. However, if the colonial government was going to offer assis-tance, as it did eventually, it had to do so in a covert manner. Consequently, the colonial authorities chose to keep a philanthropic organization, namely, the Tung Wah Hospital, as the face of the relief effort while reimbursing the Hospital for most of the costs incurred thereafter. Though the gathering of these people had caused considerable apprehension, once they were all in one place, the best scenario for the British, in Governor Grantham’s own words, was that “the whole lot” could be shipped to Formosa as soon as possible (Grantham 1965: 141).

However, much to the chagrin of the British, the transportation of the Nationalist refugees out of the colony did not go as smoothly as expected. As Kenneth Lan points out, the reluctance of the kmt in Taiwan to receive their own exiled supporters — especially a large number of former soldiers who sustained serious injuries during the civil war, people who needed long-term medical care — contributed to the failure of the British deportation scheme in early 1950 (Lan 2006: 82-83). The swo records show that the Tung Wah Hospital sent about 2,600 individuals to Taiwan and the Hainan Island between January and February 1950. Despite a promising start, the deporta-tion process quickly came to a halt in March when the number trickled down to just a few hundred (hkrs 156/1/2876, 1: 1). As an alternative, the British also tried to negotiate with the prc to see if a small number of the Nationalist refu-gees, those who showed some willingness to return to the mainland, could be shipped to the ports in north China. Yet, they got only a lukewarm response from Beijing. After some time, the colonial authorities decided to stop waiting for a formal reply and take matters into their own hands. They attempted to send a small group back via the border checkpoints at Lo Wu (C: 羅湖), but the effort failed. The ccp bluntly rejected the returnees on grounds that they were “Nationalist agents” (Lan 2006: 84-86).

Caught between two bitter rivals in the Cold War, Governor Grantham became frustrated. He directed most of the anger towards the Nationalists

nonetheless because these people were supporters of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. Grantham wrote in his memoir:

It might be thought that the whole lot would have been shipped there [Taiwan], and even welcomed, for after all they had been fighting for Chiang Kai-shek. But his government refused to accept them on the excuse that some might be fifth columnists. Considering that Formosa already had plenty of these gentry, I thought this pretty thin. The real reason is that by leaving them in Hong Kong the Nationalist government was spared the expense of maintaining them. George Yeh, the Nationalist Foreign Minister, admitted as much to me when I happened to meet him in New York where he was attending a session of the United Nations (Grantham 1965: 141).

The Governor’s criticism of the kmt sounded reasonable, though the same could be said about the economic calculus of his own administration in han-dling the larger issue of Chinese refugees in Hong Kong. After all, the British refused to acknowledge that they had a “refugee crisis” on their hands and kept insisting that the mainland exodus consisted of “squatters” in order to avoid the financial burden of providing housing and relief. In his report, the head of the un refugee survey mission Edvard Hambro recognized the fiscal constraint faced by the Nationalists. Security concerns aside, the island’s depressed econ-omy during the 1950s made it impossible for Taiwan to accommodate a large number of refugees from Hong Kong (Hambro 1955: 73-74).

The economic and security considerations, though significant, were not the only considerations for the Nationalists. To put things in perspective, Taiwan did receive approximately 15,000 immigrants from Hong Kong and Macao dur-ing the first half of the 1950s (Hambro 1955: 72), and, as we shall see later, thousands of these immigrants hailed from the Mount Davis group — the same group of people the British later placed in the Rennie’s Mill Refugee Camp (fcra 1960: 18-20). Yet the Nationalists had a tough screening process for repatriation to exclude those whom they thought might pose a threat to their rule — “fifth columnists” in the words of Grantham. Consequently, a con-siderable number of their followers were left stranded in Hong Kong, including the disabled veterans who really needed assistance. Though one could argue that Chiang Kai-shek’s government did not deliberately delay the transporting of refugees at first — there were real difficulties for Taiwan to receive these people in the early 1950s and the authorities in Taipei treated their expatri-ates in Hong Kong no differently than how they treated other exiled communi-ties in places like Vietnam and Burma — what the Nationalists did politically to exploit the situation was apparent and undeniable. The next section will

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illustrate the kmt’s attempt to turn the Hong Kong refugee issue into an ideo-logical battle against the ccp internationally and the Rennie’s Mill refugees stood at the forefront of this propaganda war.

Humanitarian Assistance and Propaganda War: The fcra and the Rennie’s Mill Refugee Camp

The conventional narrative portrays Chiang Kai-shek’s regime in Taiwan as a proxy of American Cold War to combat the spread of communism in Asia. The anti-communist bastion later became a developmental state that followed a guided path to modernization and democracy. This study argues for the impor-tance of seeing America’s Cold War partners in Asia as active historical agents instead of voiceless subordinates. The Nationalists had decided to exploit the human misery in Hong Kong before the arrival of the American aid and the us advisors in Taiwan. The move brought the Chinese refugee issue in Hong Kong to the attention of the international community and shaped how ideo-logical battle against the prc was fought. The main vehicle for the Nationalist humanitarian assistance/propaganda war was Free China Relief Association (中國大陸災胞救濟總會, fcra). The fcra had a profound influence on the development of the Rennie’s Mill community.

The fcra was founded in Taiwan in April 1950 when Chiang Kai-shek re-emerged as the undisputed leader of the kmt following the collapse of the Nationalist regime in China. As part of his propaganda war against the newly established prc, the unyielding and headstrong Nationalist dictator called upon the people in Taiwan and the overseas Chinese to donate food and money in order to “save the starving people on the mainland who suffered under communist tyranny” (fcra 1960: 1). By providing relief and assistance to those who “voted with their feet”, the Generalissimo intended to launch a global smear campaign against Mao’s New China. His target audience was not only the international community but also the millions of overseas Chinese. Ostensibly, the fcra was established as a non-governmental charitable orga-nization. However, it actually received a monthly subsidy from the roc’s Ministry of the Interior (內政部). A majority of its initial thirty-five member staff team were civil servants who were ordered by the government to work part-time at the Association (fcra 1951: 42-43). Except at the very beginning, charitable donations accounted for only a fraction of the organization’s annual income during the 1950s. Most of the relief money, food, and supplies gathered by the fcra were actually paid for by a special government excise tax on the ticket sales for movies and Chinese opera performances in Taiwan (fcra 1960:

69-70; Jiuji nianbao 1957: 37-45). Moreover, the Association’s executive board members were all prominent officials or senior kmt members. For example, the president Gu Zhenggang (谷正綱, 1901-1993) and the general secretary Fang Zhi (方治, 1896-1989) were higher-ranking Nationalist Party leaders and Chiang’s trusted advisors on issues regarding social welfare and overseas Chinese (Li 1991; Fang 1986). In short, the frca was an organ of the Nationalist government disguised as a charitable humanitarian agency. Rather than con-centrating on relief, the organization’s main objectives were discrediting the prc internationally and winning the support of Chinese overseas. Providing assistance to the mainland Chinese exiles in Hong Kong, Macao, and Southeast Asia for propaganda purposes was the most important task of the fcra during the 1950s and the 1960s.5

While the Nationalist officials and aid workers were organizing the fcra in Taiwan, the British were busy looking for an alternative site to place the refu-gees on Mount Davis. The decision for relocation was said to be triggered by a minor clash between the ccp supporters in Hong Kong and the Nationalist refugees, which came to be known as the Rice Sprout Song Dance Incident or the 618 Incident. On Sunday 18 June 1950, a group of pro-communist students and trade unionists arrived at Mount Davis with great fanfare. They beat gongs and drums, and began to perform the so-called “Rice Sprout Song Dance”6 (秧歌舞) in front of the refugees. The Dance was a well-known symbol of the Chinese Communist victory and this blatant act of provocation infuri-ated the Nationalist exiles who were knee-deep in their misery. The dancers were taunted and attacked by the refugees before they could even finish the performance. When they retaliated in return, the whole thing turned into a melee within minutes. The Hong Kong Police arrived at the scene immediately to separate the two sides. Forty-five dancers and fourteen Mount Davis refu-gees were injured. Luckily, there was no loss of life (Hu et al. 1997: 17-18; Lan 2006: 97-98). One week after the incident, the British loaded the Nationalist refugees on ships and ferried them across the Victoria Harbor to a remote

5 The end of the Cold War and improved cross-Strait relations contributed to severe budget cuts for the fcra in recent decades. In the 1990s, the fcra restructured and reestablished itself as “Chinese Association for Relief and Ensuing Services” (中華救助總會, cares). Unlike its predecessor, cares is a genuine non-governmental organization and a public charity.

6 The Rice Sprout Song Dance was a colorful and animated popular festival in rural China that had a long history stretching back to the imperial dynasties. From their base in Yan’an north Shaanxi Province, the ccp propagandists turned the Dance into an effective propaganda tool in mobilizing the peasantry nationally. After the founding of the prc, the Dance became an important symbol of the Chinese Communist victory.

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location away from the urban center. The site was called Rennie’s Mill. It was located at the western side of Tseung Kwan O (C: 將軍澳) or Junk Bay in New Territories adjacent to Kowloon. The place would become home to many of the Nationalist refugees in Hong Kong for decades.

The Rice Sprout Song Dance Incident featured prominently in the Nationalist historiography and the fcra publications. It became the “founding myth” of the Rennie’s Mill community.7 Lin Zhiyan alludes to the significance of the narrative in the development of the official Nationalist discourse on the Chinese refugees in Hong Kong. The Mount Davis refugees were depicted as “loyal and righteous people” (忠貞義民) against a treacherous horde of leftwing agitators sponsored by the ccp (Lin 2009: 23-25). This interpretation was later expanded by the kmt propagandists, as tens of thousands of main-land residents continued to flee across the border and enter the British colony during the 1950s and the 1960s. The Nationalist propaganda came to portray Hong Kong as a gigantic refugee camp. The Mount Davis/Rennie’s Mill refugees served as the role model of this anti-communist exodus and the refugee camp became the spiritual center of the anti-communist crusade.

Despite the symbolic meaning of the Rice Sprout Song Dance Incident and the fact that it foreshadowed larger turmoil like the Double Ten Riot (雙十暴動) in 1956, the event did not appear to have a significant influence on the decision of the colonial authorities to move the Nationalist refugees to a more isolated location in 1950. The swo files clearly show that the decision was made in an administrative meeting on 18 April 1950, two months before the skirmish at Mount Davis. The initial site chosen was Silver Mine Bay on Lantau Island (大嶼山). The transportation and relocation plan was drawn up even earlier on 12 March by the deputy head of the swo, James Wakefield. This happened right around the same time when the deportation to Taiwan came to a halt (hkrs 156/1/2876: 2-3; 5). The reason why the site was changed from Lantau Island to Rennie’s Mill was rather simple. The landowners and farmers of Silver Mine Bay protested strongly against setting up a refugee camp near their properties. When searching for an alternative site, a large piece of land owned by the government caught Wakefield’s attention. The estate was an abandoned flour mill that went bankrupt at the turn of the 20th century.

The old Chinese name for Rennie’s Mill was Tiu Keng Leng (C: 吊頸嶺), which meant “suicide ridge” or “hang-by-the-neck ridge”. In 1908, a retired

7 For example, in Moxingling zhiyi or “The Battle of Mount Davis,” one of the earliest accounts of the Incident published by the Nationalist military bureaucracy in early 1951, the minor skirmish in June 1950 was written into an epic historical saga embellished with tales of mass suffering, dauntless courage, and selfless sacrifices. See (Bai 1964).

colonial civil servant from Canada named Alfred Herbert Rennie committed suicide near a flour mill factory he built on the spot after squandering his entire life savings on a failed business (Hu et al. 1997: 3-9). Rennie’s properties were auctioned off by the bank and the land was confiscated by the colonial government. Due to its remote location, Rennie’s Mill had been an epidemic quarantine zone for the colony until the facility was abandoned completely in 1935. During the Pacific War, the site became an execution ground for the Japanese occupying forces. Before moving the refugees from Mount Davis to Rennie’s Mill, Wakefield’s Chinese lieutenant Li Jienong (李孑農) changed the name to “Pleasant View Ridge” (調景嶺), a homonym in Cantonese. Li knew the old Chinese name was inauspicious. By changing the name, he wanted to extend the goodwill of the colonial government and put the mind of the refu-gees at ease (Hu et al. 1997: 19).

On 26 June 1950, the swo took over the responsibility of taking care of the kmt refugees from Tung Wah Hospital, and shipped close to 6,0008 refugees across the Harbor to Rennie’s Mill. In order to maintain the appearance of a civilian-led operation, the colonial officials oversaw the estab-lishment of the Hong Kong Rennie’s Mill Refugee Camp Relief Committee (港九各界救濟調景嶺難民委員會, the hkrmrcrc). The Committee was formed by major philanthropy groups in Hong Kong and supported by wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs in the colony with the specific task of assisting the Nationalist refugees at Rennie’s Mill. The hkrmrcrc later became affili-ated with the fcra. During the Cold War, the British put restrictions on the entrance of the kmt personnel in the colony, fearing that they might engage in espionage or political activities (co 1023/101: 35-41). Consequently, the fcra needed a local partner to carry out the actual relief work and distribute the money and goods to the refugees. The hkrmrcrc would manage the distri-bution of the fcra’s aid in Rennie’s Mill and help organize the Association’s cultural and educational activities in Hong Kong for the next three decades.

Four months after the refugees settled down, on 8 November 1950, Wakefield, Li, members of the hkrmrcrc, and a special envoy from the fcra named Chen Songping (陳頌平) formed a joint delegate to visit the refugees.

8 Past studies have provided different figures on the number of people the swo transported from Mount Davis to Rennie’s Mill. After a careful examination of the existing primary and secondary sources, two conclusions can be reached. First, the official operation lasted for one day on 26 June 1950. Only about 5,900 of the previously registered refugees on Mount Davis were loaded on to ships and moved. Second, in the following days, another few thousand non-registered refugees who also made camp on Mount Davis arrived at Rennie’s Mill on their own.

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The group was taken on a guided tour of the Camp and welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd of thousands with great fanfare and festivities (Yingbao 1950: 3). In a public speech that followed, Chen, the representative from the fcra, gave the assurance that everyone would be transported to Taiwan eventually, and when the kmt recovered the mainland, be able to return to their hometowns in China (Yingbao 1950: 4). The speech was very well-received. The jubilant refugees organized a dance performed by school children to celebrate the occasion. Notwithstanding the festive mood at the moment, many of the Rennie’s Mill refugees would find their high hopes sorely disappointed by the mid-1950s.

Life was extremely hard during the early years of the Camp. When the Mount Davis refugees arrived at “Pleasant View Ridge,” they were greeted by a barren and rocky wasteland in the middle of nowhere. In the early 1950s, there were no connecting roads to the outside world. The site was only accessible via ferry, which the colonial government used to transport food and supplies. Besides the remnants of Alfred Rennie’s mill factory and a few isolated cabins built by the Norwegian Lutheran and Catholic missionaries who had previ-ously joined the relief effort on Mount Davis, there was little shelter (Yingbao 1950: 7, 12). Prior to moving the refugees, the swo constructed a temporary administrative office, a rudimentary dormitory for the construction work-ers, a cookhouse, a ration store, and a large water tank in order to provide the most basic conditions for survival (hkrs 156/1/2876: 9-19). With the money raised by the hkrmrcrc, the swo also erected approximately 1,000 units of makeshift housing with bamboo sticks, wooden boards, and oil paper (Yingbao 1950: 7). The refugees dubbed these dwellings “A-tent” (A 字棚) due to their shape and shoddiness (Hu et al. 1997: 35). During the first winter, thousands of people, including a large number of small children, shivered and huddled together inside these flimsy lodgings against the freezing sea wind. As a result, the hkrmrcrc made the task of providing warm coats and blankets to the refugees its first priority (Yingbao 1950: 3).

The most pressing problem faced by the swo officials was the swelling ranks of non-registered squatters gathering outside of the Camp. The colonial admin-istration barely had enough resources to take care of the thousands registered residents living inside the Camp area, let alone the newcomers. According to the files kept by the swo, there were about 6,800 “inmates” (hkrs 160/3/39: 4-5) listed in the official registry in 1950. A majority of these individuals and families had their names recorded by the swo officials before leaving Mount Davis and boarding the government ships to Rennie’s Mill. On the other hand, the British authorities speculated that there were between 7,500 to 9,000

non-registered “hangers” — or in the more insulting language of the swo head John McDouall, “unrecognized parasites”, — squatting in the surrounding area (hkrs 160/3/39: 2-4). Declassified kmt internal documents also illustrate a steady growth of the shantytown just outside the perimeter of the Camp between 1950 and 1951. The figures reported by the Nationalist agents were much higher, however. According to the Nationalist sources, the size of the non-registered population reached approximately 13,000 to 18,000 in August 1951 (Lin 2009: 29-30). The newcomers came from different corners of the colony. They arrived unassisted and against the wishes the colonial authori-ties. These people came with the hope of getting on one of the boats to Taiwan when the repatriation process resumed under the auspices of the fcra. They survived by begging from the registered refugees or selling labor and services on site. The newcomers set up their own tents and huts in vacant spots on the surrounding hills with whatever pieces of materials they could scavenge. Here, we can observe the complex origins of Rennie’s Mill community.

The British saw the Rennie’s Mill Camp as a temporary arrangement, not a long-term resettlement program. Therefore, the colonial government was determined to keep the Camp’s expenditure in check. The swo limited its daily provisions, as well as the medical and school services, only to the registered residents who arrived from Mount Davis in June 1950. The Camp administra-tion office issued daily meal tickets to these people and their families every month. Rennie’s Mill’s remote location along with its hilly and infertile terrain meant that the people living here depended entirely upon the swo, the fcra/hkrmrcrc, and the foreign missionaries to supply food, clothing, and other daily necessities. There was prevailing hardship, especially among the tens of thousands of latecomers and “hangers”.

Nonetheless, the Rennie’s Mill refugees showed incredible camaraderie in assisting each other and sharing their meager resources together. They demon-strated astute survival skills in improving their situations by travelling long dis-tances to find jobs and starting small businesses in the Camp (Yingbao 1950: 7; Hu et al. 1997: 66-67; 176-181). The refugees also organized various task forces to provide a broad range of communal services. These included a porter team, a garbage collection/sanitation team, a construction team, a police team, a cater-ing team, a water supply team, a clerical team, and a medical team. In building their community and improving the living conditions for everyone, the refu-gees demonstrated incredible vitality and resilience in the face of scarcity and hardship. In just a few months after the founding of the Camp, a consider-able number of wooden cabins were erected for various services, including a temporary medical clinic. A rudimentary drainage system was dug and small

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roads connecting different zones in Rennie’s Mill were also constructed. The teams performed their assigned tasks diligently and impressively under trying circumstances (Yingbao 1950: 9-10).

While the refugees worked hard together to make life more tolerable, the repatriation process, which was carried out by the fcra at this point, proceeded at a snail’s pace. The frca documents published in 1960 showed that less than 2,000 of the refugees at Rennie’s Mill were transported to Taiwan in 1951. Each repatriation arrangement consisted of only hundreds of people or even less. By early 1953 that number only increased slightly and reached approximately 3,000 (fcra 1960: 20). During the same period, the fcra consistently made donations via the hkrmrcrc to help build infrastructure in the Camp. From June 1950 to May 1952, the fcra contributed just over 700,000 Hong Kong Dollars (hkd) to the relief effort at Rennie’s Mill. The money from Taiwan was spent mainly on the construction of buildings, dike, reservoirs, schools, clinics, public washrooms, libraries, and improving the pier (fcra 1960: 20). With a large number of impoverished and needy people on site, it was easy to find cheap labor for these projects. The monetary contributions from the kmt at this time paled in comparison with the financial burden shouldered by the colonial government. The latter had already spent about 3.7 million hkd (hkrs 160/3/39: 4) on the Nationalist refugees up to this point. Yet the way in which the fcra’s money was spent clearly illustrated the intention of the kmt. The Nationalists wanted to turn Rennie’s Mill into a permanent settlement.

For the Nationalist officials and the fcra administrators in Taiwan, repa-triation was not the most important task. What really mattered was taking this opportunity to set up an international showcase for the plight of anti- communist refugees in Hong Kong. As early as November 1951, the roc raised the Hong Kong refugee issue in the sixth un General Assembly meeting at Paris, arguing that the mainland exodus in the British colony were victims of com-munist tyranny and should be part of the unhcr’s relief effort in Asia. Then, in the seventh General Assembly meeting held in New York between October 1952 and August 1953, the roc delegate, supported by the pro-Nationalist us Congressman Walter H. Judd — the man who played a key role in the founding of Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc. (arci)9 — denounced the unhcr

9 arci was a non-profit organization established in the early 1950s by anti-communist American politicians, religious leaders, entrepreneurs, media tycoons, with the participa-tion of prominent exiled Chinese intellectuals in the United States. Though some of the initial funds were collected from private donors, the organization’s biggest sponsor was the us State Department. Thus, arci served as an instrument of America’s ideological war against communism in East Asia. Working in concert with the fcra and a number of exiled Christian missions from China operating in Hong Kong, arci provided financial assistance

for its racist outlook, turning a blind eye to a much larger humanitarian crisis on hand while assisting the smaller European exodus from China (fcra 1960: 56-57). The roc was still a member of the un Security Council at the time and had the backing of the United States on the Chinese refugee issue. These initiatives put tremendous pressure on the unhcr and the British authorities which eventually led to the refugee survey mission headed by Edvard Hambro a year later.

Hambro was taken on a tour of the Rennie’s Mill Camp in the summer of 1954 while conducting his investigation in Hong Kong, and was, according to the recollections of Norwegian missionary Annie Skau Berntsen who accom-panied him, “horrified by its dilapidated, overcrowded cubicles, which looked more like chicken coops than the dwelling places of human beings” (Gleason 1966: 139). The commissioner was especially appalled by the dreadful condi-tions in which one thousand disabled Nationalist veterans lived. These hap-less folks were crammed into a ramshackle two-story wooden building. They received little care and were barely surviving. Hambro was so disturbed by the scene that he raised this particular issue with Chiang Kai-shek when the un refugee mission visited Taiwan shortly afterwards. It was only after this meet-ing that these former soldiers who were mutilated and disfigured during the civil war could finally be transported to Taiwan, much to the relief of the colo-nial government, which was still paying for their miserable existence at that point (Berntsen and Shang 1985: 20). In the next two years, the fcra oversaw the resettlement, rehabilitation, as well as the vocational training of these dis-abled veterans in Taiwan. The us Far East Refugee Assistance Program spon-sored by the State Department actually paid for most of the expenses ( Jiuji nianbao 1957: 30-31).

Hambro was by no means the only prominent foreign visitors to the Camp in the early 1950s. The stellar list provided by the fcra includes American Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman, the Commander of the us Pacific Fleet Admiral Arthur William Radford, New York State Governor Thomas Edmund Dewey, California Republican State Senator William F Knowland, Lord Louis Mountbatten, and so on (Hu et al. 1997: 225-226). Many of these individuals were sympathizers of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime-in-exile. The colonial authori-ties frowned upon these visits and did everything in their power to forestall them. If the British had to accept these visits for the sake of maintaining good relationships with the United States and other Cold War allies, they would

to tens of thousands of refugee Chinese intellectuals in the British colony during the 1950s. It later arranged for their immigration to Taiwan. When the scheme faced obstruction from the Nationalist authorities, a selected group of intellectuals were allowed to migrate to the United States. For more, see (Zhao 1997).

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make sure that the tours were carefully planned and monitored by the swo offi-cials on site. Nonetheless, there was no effective way of stopping reporters and curious observers from entering the Camp and taking photos. No fences were erected around the perimeter as the British did not have enough personnel to patrol the area. The refugees were happy that someone from the outside world wanted to learn more about their plight. They would neither keep the visitors out nor would they refuse a chance to be photographed. In May 1951, after being informed of another uninvited stopover by three unnamed Americans, one of whom was suspected to be a reporter because he brought a camera and took some pictures, the swo head John McDouall wrote to the colonial govern-ment’s Public Relations Office and complained that he was “getting very sick of these unauthorised and upsetting visits” (hkrs 160/3/39: 2).

The fcra was rather candid about Taiwan’s intention in maintaining the Rennie’s Mill Refugee Camp in its pamphlets and publications. The Association proclaimed that the Camp served as a “probing station of popular sentiment” (人心測候所) and an “international propaganda station” (國際宣傳站) for the roc in its crusade against communism. It also considered Rennie’s Mill a “site for the recruitment of personnel” (人才儲藏庫). Finally, the fcra argued that the refugee community at Rennie’s Mill epitomized the suffering of the mainland exodus in the British colony. Their loyalty and perseverance in the face of incredible hardship represented the anti-communist spirit of the millions of Chinese refugees in Hong Kong (Hu et al. 1997: 225-228). For these reasons, the kmt would continue to pump vast amount of resources via the hkrmrcrc into sustaining the Rennie’s Mill Camp even after the colonial government stopped providing relief altogether in early 1953 due to fiscal con-straint. Liang Jialin has argued that the Nationalist government would have saved a lot more money if it had transported all of the Rennie’s Mill refugees to Taiwan once and for all and let the colonial authorities closed down the site (Liang 2000: 44-45). However, for the Nationalists, winning the war against the Chinese Communists superseded all other considerations and they spared no expense. Unfortunately for many of the refugees, this meant their stay in Hong Kong would become permanent.

From Unwanted People to “Double Refugees”: Life in the Camp, 1950-1955

In the early 1950s, the refugees living in the Rennie’s Mill Camp had little understanding of the political calculations and maneuvers in the inter-national negotiations surrounding them. What they experienced was an

increasingly intolerant political atmosphere as a result of the growing influ-ence of the Nationalist agents in the Camp and a tough screening process for repatriation that eventually forced a considerable number of disappointed residents to leave by 1953, when the British stopped providing food and services altogether. Many felt they became “double refugees” — victims of the Chinese Communist Revolution and victims of their own government’s strict admission policy. This final section looks into the lived experiences of the Rennie’s Mill refugees through their own writings and testimonies. It demon-strates how Cold War politics and propaganda war turned humanitarian relief against the refugees themselves.

When the colonial authorities founded Rennie’s Mill, they envisioned a tightly run internment camp. This idea was illustrated by the administrative language of the swo which described the residents as “inmates” — a popu-lation that needed to be confined, controlled, and supervised. Unfortunately, the swo did not have enough personnel to manage a settlement with tens of thousands of people. The Office could only afford to station a few of its officers in the Camp to watch over the distribution of food and aid materials (Wang 2008: 26), hence the chief officer McDouall’s complaint about his inability to stop outside visitors. Consequently, the British set up a self-governing system, making the refugees responsible for their own security and social services. The swo divided Rennie’s Mill into five different zones, each governed by a rep-resentative committee elected by the zone’s inhabitants. This self-governing scheme came to be known as the Rennie’s Mill baojia (保甲) system (Wang 1960: 23-26). The representative committees from the five zones coalesced into the residents’ Self-governing Office (自治辦公室, the sgo). The “native place associations” or tongxianghui (同鄉會) — mutual assistance groups formed by the refugees along the provincial lines — also played a major role in the establishment of the sgo. Each native place association elected two of its members to sit on the advisory board of the Office. Besides providing mutual assistance and performing administrative duties, the native place asso-ciations in Rennie’s Mill also served another important function — getting in touch with their fellow provincial associations in Taiwan and helping the resi-dents to apply for entrance permits to the island (Wang 1960: 40-41). Because establishing ties with Taiwan was important for the refugees, the Nationalist agents were able to infiltrate and gain control of the sgo quickly.

The infiltration of Nationalist agents in the Rennie’s Mill Camp started at the very beginning. A confidential document from the Colonial Office indi-cates that Rennie’s Mill became one of the operating sites for the kmt’s “Anti-communist Resist Russia Youth League” (反共抗俄青年團), an organi-zation that was responsible for inciting several small scale anti-leftist riots in

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Hong Kong during this time (co 1023/101: 77-82). Lin Zhiyan has demonstrated that some members of the sgo not only built up close ties with Taiwan, but also received and implemented directives from Taipei. As a result, the elec-tions for the zone representatives and baojia heads were closely monitored by the Nationalist agents. The kmt also strengthened its foothold in the Camp by recruiting agents among members of the native place associations, alma mater societies, and school teachers (Lin 2009: 40-51).

Personal testimonies given by early Camp residents illustrate a commu-nity living under increasing surveillance and bombarded with a heavy dose of ideological indoctrination. The greatest irony is that while the Nationalist propaganda touted the Rennie’s Mill refugees as a paragon of anti-communist exiles — “loyal and righteous people” — in real life, the residents were con-stantly asked to “prove” their allegiance to the regime-in-exile and the kmt leadership. Those whose devotion and commitment came under even an inkling of suspicion would be denied their entrance to Taiwan and ostracized from the community. Consequently, ritualistic observances and political festi-vals such as the flag raising ceremony, the singing of the roc national anthem, the celebration of the Double Ten, the annual gala commemorating Chiang Kai-shek’s birthday, and so on, became regular fixtures in Rennie’s Mill. When asked who organized the very first celebration of Chiang Kai-shek’s birthday in 1950, Camp resident Zhang Hansong stated:

The Self-governing Office was in charge of planning. However, the native place associations, the military school alma mater societies, as well as the elementary schools and middle schools all came forward to participate. There was no need for mobilization. At night, there were many programs and theatrical performances. We had a blast. These early events were much livelier than those held during later periods. There was really noth-ing much to do at the time. Everybody came out. It was “people moun-tain people sea” (人山人海). Of course, not everyone was interested. Nevertheless, they had to participate because they were deeply afraid that others would doubt their commitment to the anti-communist cause and question their loyalty (Hu et al. 1997: 42).

Describing his own situation, Zhang went on:

We had a bad phenomenon (不好的現象) at the time. A number of our agencies, such as the Intelligence Bureau, the Investigation Bureau, and the Mainland Taskforce Group, were all building their local branches

there. Some undisciplined people would label others indiscriminately (亂戴帽子) for personal gains. I believe that nine out of ten such cases were not true. I was wrongfully accused of being a member of the Third Force. I put in my application for an entrance permit to Taiwan quite early. My wife had many relatives in Taiwan [who could vouch for us]. We could have gone there pretty soon. Yet our application was denied (Hu et al. 1997: 42-43).

The Third Force in Hong Kong (香港第三勢力) consisted of a motley group of anti-communist exiles and intellectuals who supported neither the kmt nor the ccp. These included Neo-Confucian scholars, liberals, socialists, anar-chists, dethroned warlords, and so on. There was no central command, no party apparatus, and no guiding ideology. Many intellectuals and statesmen who identified themselves as members of the Third Force actually stayed in China and worked with the prc. Others left the mainland and joined the kmt in Taiwan. In the meantime, a considerable number of the Third Force mem-bers went into exile in Hong Kong, and tried to build political support against both the kmt and the ccp. Some of the Third Force groups received finan-cial assistance from the United States during the 1950s. They published books and journal articles to promote their political views (Yang 1992; Chen 2008). According to Lin Zhiyan, the struggle between the kmt and the Third Force in Hong Kong — an internal strife among the anti-communist camp — created an air of suspicion hanging over the Rennie’s Mill Camp (Lin 2009: 81-85).

Zhang Hansong’s experience was by no means an isolated story. The jour-nal magazines produced by the Third Force in Hong Kong in the early 1950s contained a large number of personal accounts written by refugees who were expelled from Rennie’s Mill during this time. Many of the authors used pseud-onyms to avoid getting into trouble afterwards, though there were others who listed their real names. These individual stories offer illuminating insights into the oppressive political atmosphere in the Camp and the circumstances under which many were forced to depart. Some might argue that these narratives should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, they were published by members of the Third Force, who were, at the time, locked in a rhetorical battle with the kmt for American support and for the hearts and minds of the overseas Chinese, including the Chinese population in Hong Kong. However, it is not hard to see how these accounts written over sixty years ago correspond neatly with and testimonies given by Rennie’s Mill residents in recent decades, such as the story told by Zhang Hansong, though Zhang never left the Camp.

In April 1951, one refugee summed up the situation rather succinctly:

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The Social Welfare Office of Hong Kong government provides the refu-gees at Rennie’s Mill with means to survive. However, the agents from “Free China” controlled the thoughts and actions of the refugees. The instances of disappearance, snitching, banishment, and unjust accusa-tion. . . . are like dark clouds hovering over the entire Rennie’s Mill (Ziyou zhenxian 1951 9(6): 18).

An early expellee from the Camp who called himself a “double refugee” of both the ccp and the kmt wrote the following passage in February 1952:

Ever since we, the refugees, requested to enter Taiwan and appealed to all sides for support, Taiwan has treated us like criminals (as opposed to treating us like loyal supporters). At first, they sent agents to spy on us. Then, they hired a small number of refugees to collect information about us. Moreover, they asked everyone to demonstrate firm support for Chiang [Kai-shek]. As a result, various organizations were formed among the refugees. Every organization had informants. In order to demonstrate their loyalty, these informants would report on so-and-so have not been entirely trustworthy one day, and then report on so-and-so was once a supporter of the Third Force the other day. A reported on B, B reported on C, and C then reported on A. The accusations were based on hearsays and innuendos. These people did not know that the agents were actually playing them against each other. Everyone was suspicious towards the others in the end (Zhongguo zhisheng 1952 2(9): back cover).

Besides the stifling political environment, many of the refugees became resent-ful of the unfair selection process for repatriation — a process that hinged largely upon connections and personal relationships. No matter how hard the refugees tried to demonstrate their loyalty, the chances of being admitted to Taiwan were rather small if they neither belonged to certain political cliques in the kmt nor had powerful friends in Taiwan. In a letter of protest published in November 1951, refugee Xu Ziqian (徐子謙) lashed out against the Nationalist authorities:

After arriving in Rennie’s Mill, I wrote letters to all my friends in Taiwan. A number of self-proclaimed representatives from Taiwan also came to the Camp, took our pictures, and asked us to fill out forms. However, dur-ing the past year, it was like a rock falling into the bottom of the ocean (石沉大海). We heard nothing at all. In the meantime, I saw those with

personal connections in Taiwan, despite their questionable political his-tory, were admitted rather quickly. In contrast, I am an untainted and truthful anti-communist person. Why should I suffer in exile on this desolate mountain by the sea? (Zhongguo zhisheng 1951 1(8): back cover)

A former lieutenant colonel in the kmt army from Shandong Province named Song Zhicheng (宋志成) pointed to factionalism in Nationalist military as a major obstacle for his repatriation. He wrote in December 1951:

There were about three to four thousand refugees in Rennie’s Mill who were former Nationalist soldiers. Those who had close affiliations with Mr. Chen’s [Chen Cheng 陳誠] 18th Army all went to Taiwan, even the cooks. People who had no connections, regardless of their merits and deeds and regardless of their abilities, were abandoned (Zhongguo zhisheng 1951 1(8): back cover).

Though the fcra and the kmt would continue to defend their selection pro-cess in the name of national security, those who were denied entry due to lack of connections came to view the Nationalist security concerns as a pretext for willful negligence and blatant nepotism; a stark contrast to the regime’s dis-course on humanitarian relief and anti-communist solidarity.

The growing discontent among the refugees against political control and unfair repatriation policy led to mass departures from the Camp, in particular after the British terminated all services provided by the swo in February 1953; with the exception of the assistance to the disabled soldiers and senile inhab-itants who had difficulty taking care of themselves.10 As mentioned, these people were later shipped to Taiwan with American assistance upon the request of the un refugee commissioner, one of the few positive outcomes of the Hambro mission from the humanitarian standpoint. In November 1952, a Camp refugee and his family were expelled from their native place association. This meant that they would never be granted a passage to Taiwan and had to

10 Two months after the founding of the Rennie’s Mill Camp, the swo made an attempt to retrieve the meal tickets for all Camp residents from Guangdong Province, assuming that they possessed the language skill and local networks to survive in Hong Kong. The refu-gees protested vehemently against the decision. They went on a hunger strike until the policy was dropped (fcra 1960: 19-20; Wang 2008: 30). However, due to repatriation and people constantly leaving the Camp, the number of registered refugees had decreased gradually since late 1951. According to the swo records, the number of registered refugees went from about 6,800 down to about 3,500 by September 1952 (hkrs 160-3-39: 4).

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leave Rennie’s Mill. This individual published his story on one of the Third Force magazines. As it turns out, he was penalized for accepting the swo’s proposal to exchange his family’s meal tickets for a lump sum amount of money to start a small business elsewhere (Ziyou zhenxian 1952 12(4): 16). By late 1952, the colo-nial authorities could no longer justify spending a disproportionate amount of the swo’s meager annual budget on supporting a small number of Nationalist refugees at Rennie’s Mill when there were hundreds of thousands of mainland exodus in other parts of Hong Kong who also required the government’s imme-diate assistance. The British had given repatriation at least another try but the fcra’s performance was rather disappointing. Moreover, the kmt’s intention of keeping the refugees in Hong Kong in order to sustain a base for their anti-communist crusade perturbed the British. If the roc refused to accept all of those who claimed to be their loyal supporters, the colonial government would stop providing relief in the hope that these people would disperse on their own. Buying back meal tickets from registered Camp residents constituted one of the methods adopted by the swo in breaking up the settlement during this time.

According to the account written by this particular refugee, there were another 1,000 residents like him who had also accepted the Hong Kong gov-ernment’s proposal and decided to take the money and seek employment in the city. Their decision incurred the wrath of the kmt authorities when the event was reported back to Taiwan. The Secretary General of the fcra Fang Zhi wrote a four thousand word open letter criticizing those who had submit-ted their meal tickets to the swo. Fang also instructed the sgo to post their names on the Camp’s bulletin and newspaper in order to expose and humiliate these people. Consequently, these individuals and their families were cast out of their respective native place associations and barred from entering Taiwan forever. Believing that he was making the right choice for his family, this refu-gee wrote:

During the past three years of our exile in Hong Kong, did the [kmt] gov-ernment offer anything other than sending two official envoys to tour the Camp? Nice words cannot fill the stomach. . . . To be honest, I don’t really feel sorry that we were expelled by our native place association, and as a result, can never go to Taiwan. I know if the government was sincere about receiving us, it had plenty of opportunities during the past three years. We didn’t have to wait until today (Ziyou zhenxian 1952 12(4): 16).

Mass departures from the Camp in late 1952 and early 1953 were a combined result of the residents’ disillusionment with the foot-dragging of the fcra

in repatriation and the end of relief provided by the colonial government. The departures created a problem for the Nationalists. In order to salvage the situation and sustain the refugee showcase, the fcra launched a fund-raising campaign in Taiwan and Hong Kong called “Chinese saving Chinese” (中國人救中國人) in the hope that they could gather enough financial resources to provide the thousands of “truly loyal” followers, who still remained on site with a monthly stipend, so people would not disperse further. A sub-stantial amount of money was accumulated during this campaign. However, the fcra’s “rice pension” (米代金) system was not implemented until March 1956, three years after the initial crisis. The pension benefited a small number of people — approximately 1,000 to 2,000 individuals. Only elderly residents, children, and widows were eligible to apply (fcra 1960: 20-21). In the mean-time, the fcra, for the first time since 1950, began to speed up the repatriation process. In 1953, a record-setting number (5,021) of the Rennie’s Mill refugees were shipped to Taiwan. Yet this was followed by a sharp drop to just a few hundreds in the following year (Lin 2009: 217). It is fair to say that the kmt was merely clearing the backlog instead of relaxing the entrance policy. Those who did not pass the litmus test of loyalty according to the Nationalist authorities would still have to remain in Hong Kong in perpetuity.

Despite all of this, many of the refugees did remain on site. They settled down and built a unique and vibrant enclave that was only demolished on the eve of 1997 out of political necessity and in the name of economic develop-ment. A situational report produced by James Wakefield in 1958 indicated that there were still 7,500 people living in the Camp area. Most had stable employ-ment and were raising their own families (hkrs 934/4/46: 1: 1-1: 3). In lieu of the swo, Western churches working in concert with the fcra had stepped in to offer relief, education, health care, and other social services (Liang 2000). While the continuation of humanitarian aid definitely provided an incen-tive for people to stay, the camaraderie developed among the refugees was what really sustained the community. Years of common experience in exile, shaped by profound feelings of victimhood and abandonment, have forged a strong sense of communal solidarity. This was a bond that could not be easily broken, a bond that became the enduring spirit and legacy of the Rennie’s Mill community.

Concluding Remarks

In 1961, the colonial administration decided to turn the Rennie’s Mill Refugee Camp into a normal resettlement estate like other public housing areas in

192 Yang

Hong Kong in order to further dilute the influence of the kmt and the fcra. By this time, Rennie’s Mill was developing into a cultural and educational cen-ter for the roc. The elementary schools and middle schools sponsored by the fcra and the Western churches offered low tuition and high quality education to many of the poor mainland refugee families, and with this, a chance for both upward social mobility and transnational migration. Meanwhile, the kmt propaganda continued to promote the idea of “loyal and righteous people” throughout the Cold War. Nonetheless, there was a subtle shift from an empha-sis on “people” in the 1950s towards an emphasis on the “locality” of Rennie’s Mill as a spiritual bastion of anti-communism in the 1960s and the 1970s. The British administrators had stopped calling the Nationalist refugees “inmates” or “parasites” after the resettlement estate was established. In attempting to integrate the pro-Nationalist enclave, the people who were once called a “nui-sance” by the colonial governor were referred to in the official language as the “residents” or “inhabitants” of the newly created Rennie’s Mill Village. The prc was spared the trouble of dealing with the community as the entire town was bulldozed to make way for the new mtr station and apartment complex in the reclamation of the Junk Bay area shortly before the retrocession.

The early history of this long-forgotten exiled community illustrates the multiplicity of refugee experience in Hong Kong, which is sometimes over-looked in the current historiography that focuses more on immigration sta-tus, welfare policy, and international politics. The Rennie’s Mill story not only underscores the close ties between humanitarian relief and ideological battle during the Cold War, but also illuminates the significant role played by an Asian state, namely, the Nationalist regime on Taiwan, in contributing to regional developments, albeit under American hegemony. The Rennie’s Mill refugees were not “Nationalist agents”, they were not “inmates” and “parasites,” and they were certainly not “loyal and righteous people”. These conflicting ideological constructions forged by bitter Cold War rivalry and political calculations were simplistic and one-sided.

It is interesting to note that in the decades that followed, the Rennie’s Mill residents employed “the loyal and righteous people” discourse when they appealed to Taiwan and the fcra for financial assistance. In contrast, the anti-communist discourse was downplayed considerably and the inhabitants’ legal rights in Hong Kong were emphasized, when the residents were pleading their case to the colonial authorities. The Rennie’s Mill refugees were victims of Cold War politics, and their resources and choices were rather limited. Nevertheless, they were shrewd and active historical agents who knew how to play the right cards to make the most of out of their difficult situations.

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