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ID:
189536
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| Summary/Abstract |
At the dawn of the 1970s, Hong Kong was one of the world’s most notorious cities. While the British Crown colony was no longer a modest entrepôt but an export powerhouse, it still suffered from an unflattering image as a seedy, lawless frontier. It stood at the nexus of a heroin pipeline that stretched across Asia, North America, Western Europe, and Australia. Its population of addicts was estimated to be the highest in the world on a per capita basis.1 Critics everywhere assailed the colonial government for failing to clean up the city. In the United States, newspapers and politicians blasted the colony as the world’s heroin supplier just as President Richard Nixon launched his administration’s “war on drugs” and Congress threatened to impose economic sanctions. In Hong Kong, Chinese residents bemoaned official impotence in the face of runaway crime and uncontrolled trafficking. Articulating a widespread anxiety, one journalist lamented: “The residents of Hong Kong know that the city is flooded with narcotics, with many people forfeiting their futures and many good families torn apart because of drugs.”
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| 2 |
ID:
155924
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the ambiguous role of coastal smuggling during the first decade and a half of Communist rule (1949–65). Fearing that the illicit flow of commodities siphoned critical revenues and undermined foreign policy, Communist China repurposed and expanded Nationalist China's war on smuggling while employing novel tactics of mobilization. Yet smuggling was not just a threat; it was also a lifeline that alleviated widespread material shortages and supplied the everyday needs of individuals and firms during the tumultuous transition to central planning. Businesses from ‘underground factories’ to state-owned enterprises relied on black markets to meet ambitious production targets and circumvent bottlenecks in official supply channels. Smuggling was thus more than just ‘corruption’ practised by officials—it was also a ‘creative accommodation’ employed by broad swaths of social actors coping with the enormous changes. This article argues that the nascent command economy and the vibrant underground economy existed symbiotically rather than antagonistically. Exploration into this complex relationship reveals many cross-border connections between Communist China and the capitalist world that both complemented and undermined domestic state consolidation.
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