‘A World of Grey Men’: The Rise of the CCP, 1938–1946

Abstract

Between 1938 and 1946, the CCP entrenched itself in Hong Kong. Mirroring the broader Cold War with the Soviet Union, British authorities suspended their pre-war repression of communism and collaborated with the Chinese communists in the war against their common enemy, the Japanese. With the defeat of Japan in 1945, however, the CCP found itself in a favourable position within the war-torn colony to organize its external affairs particularly regarding the impending resumption of the Chinese Civil War and the rise in increasingly violent, often communist-led anti-colonial movements in East Asia, especially in French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, and British Malaya.