Hong Kong, Hollywood, and the End of the Network

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Hong Kong film industry, which has been guided by the principle of positive non-interventionism. It describes the Shaw Brothers, which was built under the Hong Kong version of laissez-faire economic policy in the 1960s. It also discusses the flexibility and relaxed atmosphere that led studios to experiment with the Hong Kong film industry's unique need to satisfy transnational Chinese communities in East and Southeast Asia, which helped it quickly gain global currency. The chapter emphasizes Hong Kong as one of the competing media capitals due to its status as a nexus for economic and cultural flows within and between Chinese societies through the twentieth century. It explores how the unprecedented growth of the Shaw Brothers in the 1960s paralleled Hong Kong's rising status as a financial center in the region.