Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War

The story of Hong Kong’s New Asia College, from its 1949 establishment through its 1963 incorporation into The Chinese University of Hong Kong, reveals the efforts of a group of self-exiled intellectuals in establishing a Confucian-oriented higher education on the Chinese periphery. Their program of cultural education encountered both support and opposition in the communist containment agenda of American non-governmental organizations and in the educational policies of the British colonial government. By examining the cooperation and struggle between these three parties, this study sheds light on postwar Hong Kong, a divided China, British imperial ambitions in Asia, and the intersecting global dynamics of modernization, cultural identity, and the Cold War.

Grace Ai-Ling Chou, PhD (History, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2003), is Assistant Professor of History at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Her research interests are in Hong Kong and Chinese cultural, educational, and intellectual history.