Hong Kong's Little Taiwan
Winding the Clock Back One Last Time
China In Arms BOOKSTORE and GIFT SHOP!
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23 July 2023 (Sunday)
Hong Kong's Little Taiwan
Winding the Clock Back One Last Time
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - 30 years ago plans began in Hong Kong to raze “Little Taiwan” before the 1997 turnover to China.
The shanty-town was unique.
These were the remnants of the KMT Army pushed out of China at the end of the Chinese Civil War against the Chinese Communist Party in 1949.
Hong Kong was not unique.
At the end of the civil war, elements of the KMT Army were pushed into northern regions of Burma, Thailand and Vietnam.
Some made a last stand at Hainan, but were later wiped out.
Taiwan and a few of the islands along the coast of China were the only strongholds remaining.
Many of you know that I keep an exhaustive clip file of stories from the Cold War regarding China. Now that I am reaching the final years of my career covering military affairs, with a special interest in espionage, I am culling my files.
But am also willing to pull a few tidbits of interest that have been lost with the transition from hardcopy newspapers to the Internet.
Something I have learned personally, as many of my earlier articles from 1990s have vanished; no doubt gathering dust and turning yellow in binders that are becoming more like vaults than libraries.
The below articles are from the English-language publications in Taiwan: China News (now Taiwan News) and China Post (now defunct).
During the Cold War, Hong Kong was spy central with cloak-and-dagger stories of intrigue. Much of this was captured in a popular spy fiction novel by John le Carré - Honourable Schoolboy (1977).
One of the most famous incidents was the assassination attempt on Zhou Enlai when a KMT agent placed a bomb aboard an Air India aircraft at Kowloon Airport. The airplane was believed at the time to be transporting the Premier to the 1955 Bandung Conference. See I Was a CIA Agent in India.
During much of the Cold War, China was a mystery, hidden behind the “bamboo curtain” with only refugee interviews in Hong Kong providing glimpses inside the insanity of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.
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KEYWORDS: Canada, CHIANG Kai-shek, CHOW Kan-keung, Democratic Progressive Party, DPP, Hubei, JAW Shau-kong, KMT, Kuomintang, LIN Yang-kang, New Party, New Territories, Rennie’s Mill (Albert Rennie), SUN Yatsen, TAI Sik-kwan.
Interesting
I also had an extensive articles clip collection, however, since I have left Europe two decades ago - I threw most of them away. I've spent soooo much time curating them back then ... sad