Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema

Mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong entertainment business has attracted increasing attention from scholars in recent years because of its importance in the cultural development of the city. It was a time during which the film industry was dominated by Mandarin-language production. Cantonese-language filmmaking was in steady decline. With new archival materials recently available, this essay argues that the “Mandarization” of Hong Kong film culture has to be understood in the volatile context of Cold War politics in Asia. Hong Kong was a covert battleground of the global competition between the United States and its enemies. The battle for the allegiance of Free China (Taiwan) and Communist China was the defining characteristics of Cold War culture in Hong Kong, and the ideologically divided film industry was a significant but understudied part of this cultural war.