The most careful arrangements for a careful fiction: a short history of Asia pictures

Abstract

Throughout the Eisenhower administration, the United States National Security Council habitually advised the American President of the ‘careful fiction’ of Hong Kong's neutrality in the Cold War. This careful fiction, maintained by the British colonial government, prevented overt propaganda efforts by both the US and China in the struggle over the spread of Communist ideology. Various covert propaganda efforts were being organized by the Central Intelligence Agency across the world in the battle against Communism, including the indirect funding of the Committee for Free Asia, later renamed as The Asia Foundation, based in San Francisco. In 1952, the Committee for Free Asia accepted a proposal from a journalist named Chang Kuo-sin to begin funding a diverse enterprise in Hong Kong to be made up of the Asia Press, the Asia Pictorial, and Asia Pictures. Asia Pictures would make nine feature-length films throughout its brief history in the 1950s, winning a number of festival awards and featuring major established stars and directors as well as emerging stars in the Hong Kong film industry. This essay details the relationship between The Asia Foundation and Asia Pictures as they attempt to carefully produce and distribute a popular screen fiction in the Cold War struggle for the hearts and minds of filmgoers in East and Southeast Asia.

Keywords:

• Hong Kong Cinema
• Cold War
• Asia Pictures

Notes

Although the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai recognized the strategic advantages of maintaining the status quo in Hong Kong, Zhou also, for example, warned the colonial government in the wake of the 1956 riots in Kowloon that the PRC had ‘a duty to protect the Chinese residents of Hong Kong’ (Mark 2004). Chang Kuo-sin assured The Committee for Free Asia of the safety of their investment, ‘The security of Hongkong should not be a worry, because the projects do not envisage acquisition of large immovable property. If the Communists come, we can bag out with only little losses’ (Chang 1951). For further discussion of the precarious position Hong Kong found itself between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang, particularly after the onset of the Korean War, see Tsang (1997).

For example, some films from the library of the United States Information Service were prohibited from being shown in Hong Kong by the colonial government due to sensitive political content.

For a more detailed account of the publishing branch of Chang Kuo-sin's operation, see Yung (2009).

Far Eastern Economic Review 12.4, 24 January 1952: 100. Quoted in Mark (2004: 19).

The Third Force Movement consisted of Hong Kong refugees including ex-Kuomintang soldiers and warlords, and for a time received covert support from the American government Truman administration (Mark 2004: 188–193).

For more on the Left–Right divide in Hong Kong film culture, see Law (1997), Wong (2001), and Wong and Lee (2009).

His acting debut was in Golden Phoenix (Jin feng) (1956), produced by Li Zuyong for Yung Hwa studios.

Chiang Jr. is Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek.

It should be noted that no suspected leftist-leaning film production companies were invited to participate in this festival, the proceedings of which consistently considered the project of a cinema to promote a ‘free’ Asia. That being said, the festival did achieve a certain prestige through the 1960s, recognizing many films now considered classics of the Chinese-language cinema, later amending its name from ‘Southeast Asia’ to ‘Asia.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charles Leary

Contact address: Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia