Covert colonialism: Governance, surveillance and political culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966-97 [Paperback]

This book fills the long-standing void in the existing scholarship by constructing an empirical study of colonial governance and political culture in Hong Kong from 1966 to 1997.Using under-exploited archival and unofficial data in London and Hong Kong, it overcomes the limitations in the existing literature which has been written mainly by political scientists and sociologists, and has been primarily theoretically driven. It addresses a highly contested and timely agenda, one in which colonial historians have made major interventions: the nature of colonial governance and autonomy of the colonial polity. This book focusing on colonialism and the Chinese society in Hong Kong in a pivotal period will generate meaningful discussions and heated debates on comparisons between colonialism in different space and time: between Hong Kong and other former British colonies; and between colonial and post-colonial Hong Kong.GBFlorence Mok is a Nanyang Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeThis book is the first comprehensive archive-based study to explore governance, surveillance, political culture and public policymaking in colonial Hong Kong from 1966 to 1997, using newly released archival documents in London and Hong Kong. Using historical discipline, it provides a thorough understanding of state-society relations in Hong Kong.

This book examines state-society relations in one of Britains last strategically important colonial dependencies  Hong Kong. Using under-exploited archival evidence, it explores how a reformist colonial administration investigated Chinese political culture, and how activism by social movements in Hong Kong impacted on policymaking.
Covert colonialismis framed around the organisational capacity of the colonial state to monitor public opinion, notably through covert polling exercises Town Talk and MOOD. People in Hong Kong had extremely limited democratic rights, but polling exercises constructed p