East by Southeast: Hong Kong in the Decolonising Pacific

This essay seeks to complicate Hong Kong's seemingly common-sensical geographical identity as an East Asian—specifically, Chinese—metropolis through a contrapuntal mapping of its historical connections with Southeast Asia. It takes seriously the role that this supposedly hinterland region played in catalysing urban transformations in the colony-turned-SAR. Building on work that theorises Hong Kong as a “non-sovereign” site for the everyday workings of US empire, I explore how the colony's relationship with Southeast Asia was reshaped by the central role that it played in securing the transcolonial logistics of the Vietnam War. Through a close reading of the archival record, I show how the US military-industrial complex used Hong Kong as an offshore hub for supporting the logistics of soldiering life. In addition to hosting US soldiers on rest and recuperation (R&R) leave, Hong Kong helped secure the financial logistics of counterinsurgency. These logistical entanglements remained important in the afterwar moment, when Hong Kong experienced a mass arrival of refugees from Vietnam. Saddled with the logistical burden of caring for these refugees, colonial officials gradually leveraged this “surplus population” to address labour shortages around the city. When read together, these contrapuntal mappings of logistical power clarify how Hong Kong's relationship with Southeast Asia has always been shaped by asymmetrical infrastructures of outsourced industrial production, racialised indenture, and economic unfreedom.