Town Talk: Enhancing the 'eyes and ears' of the colonial state in British Hong Kong, 1950s-1975
This article offers a longer perspective on the origins and effectiveness of reforms of colonial governance in Hong Kong. It shows that the colonial state shifted from increasingly ineffective indirect rule to using a covert bureaucratic opinion poll, Town Talk, to assess public opinion. The article...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University Press
2022
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| Online Access: | View Fulltext in Publisher |
| Summary: | This article offers a longer perspective on the origins and effectiveness of reforms of colonial governance in Hong Kong. It shows that the colonial state shifted from increasingly ineffective indirect rule to using a covert bureaucratic opinion poll, Town Talk, to assess public opinion. The article argues that this bureaucratic device increased the organizational capacity of the colonial state and, in so doing, enabled a constructed form of 'public opinion' to influence policy formulation in a state-controlled manner without democratization. This mechanism was used as an imperfect substitute for representative democracy. These reforms enhanced a 'non-political' sense of citizenship among the Hong Kong Chinese but failed to bridge a communication gap between an unelected government and the people over whom it ruled. © 2022 The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research. |
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| ISBN: | 09503471 (ISSN) |
| DOI: | 10.1093/hisres/htab039 |