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Under British Law: Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong (1931-33)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Geoffrey Gunn
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Abstract

This article draws on material from Geoffrey Gunn's Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong: Anti-Colonial Networks, Extradition and the Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 13 , July 2022 , e1
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2022

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References

Notes

1 Anon. “Notable Trial Ends,” South China Morning Post, August 9, 1931.

2 Public Record Office (PRO) CO129/539/2 Governor William Peel, Government House, Hong Kong to Sir P. Cunliffe-Lister, Foreign Office, London, January 31, 1933. As he further lamented, by deporting Ho Chi Minh in the direction of Vladivostok, he was actually obliged to help him to return to the fold of his Russian “principals.”

3 Dennis J. Duncanson, “‘Ho-chi-Minh in Hong Kong, 1931–32,” China Quarterly, 57 (1974), 85.

4 Oliver Crawford, “The Political Thought of Tan Malaka” (unpublished PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2019), 112.

5 Geoffrey C. Gunn, Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam: The Great Famine and the Viet Minh Road to Power (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), chapters 6, 7 and 8.

6 See Philippe Devilliers, Histoire du Viêt-nam de 1940 à 1952 (Paris: Seuil, 1952); Stein Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). Both books discuss the timing of the Chinese withdrawal and how it paved the way for the Franco-Vietnamese outbreak of war. Also see Geoffrey C. Gunn, “Prelude to the First Indochina War: New Light on the Fontainebleau Conference of July–September 1946 and Aftermath,” Tonan Ajia Kenkyu Nenpo, 54 (2013), 19–51.

7 On Phan Boi Chau's early contacts with Cuong De, first visit to Japan and the Dong Du Movement see David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885–1925 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), chapters 5 and 6.

8 In making the case for extradition of the rebels, on October 3, 1915, the French consul in Hong Kong cited Article II of the Treaty of July 13, 1854, between Portugal and France relating to the extradition of “common criminals.” See Geoffrey C. Gunn, “Clandestinity and Control: The Macau Congress of the Indochina Communist Party (March 27–31, 1935),” Review of Culture (Macau), 45 (2014), 47.

9 See Christopher Munn, “‘Our Best Trump Card’: A Brief History of Deportation in Hong Kong, 1857–1955,” in Michael H. K. Ng and John D. Wong (eds.), Civil Unrest and Governance in Hong Kong: Law and Order from Historical and Cultural Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2017), 35–6.

10 Glen Peterson, “Forced Migration, Refugees and China's Entry into the ‘Family of Nations’, 1861–1949,” Journal of Refugee Studies, 31: 3 (2018), 275–6.

11 Anon. “Extradition Law,” China Mail, October 8, 1927, 1.

12 For this author's admission that he had taken part in such procedures himself, presumably during the period when he served in the Malayan Civil Service, see Duncanson, “Ho-chi-Minh in Hong Kong,” 90, 90n.

13 PRO CO 12/526/4 China: Deportation of Political Refugees from Hong Kong, 1930. Marginal note J.H. Kemp, Attorney General.

14 PRO CO 12/526/4 China: Deportation of Political Refugees from Hong Kong, 1930 Consul Moss H. M. Consulate, Canton, to Sir Miles Lamson, December 9, 1929.

15 PRO CO 12/526/4 China: Deportation of Political Refugees from Hong Kong, 1930 Colonial Office marginal note, illegible, [May 29, 1930] echoing opinion expressed by Walter D. Ellis, Colonial Office, “We may regard Moss's suggested announcement by the HK. Govt. as one which is quite unthinkable.” June 11, 1930.

16 PRO CO 129/508/1 China: Treatment of Refugees, Southorn, Government House, Hong Kong, May 25, 1928.

17 PRO CO 129/530/9 Deportation Amendment Order 1931. J. H. Kemp, Chief Justice, June 10. 1931; Telegram from the Governor of Hong Kong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, June 15, 1931; Li Hong Mi v. Attorney General of Hong Kong (1920) AC.

18 Christopher Munn, “Margins of Justice in Colonial Hong Kong: Extrajudicial Power, Solicitors' Clerks, and the Case of Li Hong Mi, 1917–1920,” Law and Humanities, 11: 1 (2017), 120.

19 PRO CO 129/537/3 Deportation Order, 1932.

20 Randy Wirayudha, “Tan Malaka di Hong Kong,” HistoriA, June 15, 2019.