Conflict and Conciliation: Industrial Relations in an industrialising Hong Kong, circa 1946-1960

To what extent did authoritarian regimes in Asia repress labour activism during a period of catch-up industrialisation? This article addresses this question by examining the case study of Hong Kong, an unreformed colonial polity that experienced rapid export-orientated industrialisation in the 1950s. It shows that the colonial administration in Hong Kong was not monolithic. Governors were politically-authoritarian and unsympathetic in attitude to working-class people but there were also officials responsible for the labour policy who were pluralistic in their views and operational procedures. Consequently, the colonial administration’s industrial relations strategy mixed paternalism, most notably the use of voluntary conciliation, and repression, including the ad hoc suppression of workplace violence, the systemic monitoring of radicals and the ad hoc use of compulsory arbitration. The article traces how this pragmatic hybrid strategy evolved in response to local Chinese labour activism and two transnational influences: the changing attitude of Chinese political movements towards the use of strikes and nudges by British governments.