The 1956 riots at Lee Cheng Uk and Tsuen Wan, an example of ardent political nationalism, was started by pro-GMD sympathisers. Flags as symbols of political nationalism triggered the 1956 riots, as detailed in the official report
titled Report on the Riots in Kowloon and Tsuen Wan, October 10th to 12th, 1956.
Sticking paper flags or other decorations on the walls of the buildings was not allowed in the resettlement estates. It was a decision made at a meeting of the
Resettlement Policy Committee of the Urban Council held on 3October 1956.
Residents in most of the resettlement estates were warned about this, and representative bodies served as communication channels between the residents and the staff of the Resettlement Department. In Li Cheng Uk, which had only one block built, there was no representative body as such. At 9am on 10 October 1956, Mok Yiu-kwong, a junior officer of the Resettlement Department in charge of Li Cheng Uk Estate found small Nationalist flags and symbols stuck on the walls of the block. Mok and another officer removed some of the flags. One reason Mok removed the flags, according to the official report, was that he knew that his superior was going to visit Li Cheng Uk on the morning of 10 October. Mok‘s actions upset residents who had stuck the flags on the walls. A crowd of 300 to 400 people gathered at 11am, demanding that the flags be replaced. They did not seem hostile at the start. By 11:45am, the crowd had grown into approximately 500 people, most of whom were Nationalist sympathisers. By
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1:15pm, the crowd had increased to 2,000, although most of them were simply interested spectators. Demands were made by spokesmen of the crowd ‗such as
that 100,000 fire crackers should be provided, to hang from top to bottom of the block, that portraits of Sun Yat Sen and Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek should be erected on the block with a large Nationalist flag, and that Mr.Mok should
apologise publicly before the crowd and in Chinese newspapers‘.192 Initially,
officials and property of the Resettlement Department were the targets. That was the first phase of the riot. In the second phase, shops with connections to Communist sympathisers were looted by Triad gangs, some of them carrying Nationalist flags. In the third phase, more shops were looted. Triad gangs, as a form of extortion, threatened to assault people in cars, and made shopkeepers in Kowloon City ‗buy‘ Nationalist flags.
The incident in Tsuen Wan that took place on 1 October 1956 also started with the flag. On that day, Chinese Communist flags were put up for the celebration of National Day, at factory dormitories and other buildings in Tsuen Wan, which included left-wing labour buildings. One of these dormitories was that of the Pao Hsing Cotton Mill, which employed 110 left-wing workers. A non-Communist worker living in the same dormitory pulled down one of the Communist flags on the early morning of 1 October. This incident upset the left- wing workers in the dormitory who had put up the flag. The person who pulled down the flag was later asked to replace it and offer an apology to the left-wing workers, which ended the incident. On 9 October, right-wing workers in the same cotton mill dormitory put up Nationalist flags as well as decorations that
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included, according to the official report on the riots, the slogan ‗Long live the
Chinese Republic‘ in ‗large characters on the windows of the dormitory‘.193
A management staff member inspected the dormitory and demanded that the slogan be removed. Although the right-wing workers complied by removing all flags and decorations, the management‘s demand caused resentment among them.
News of the incident spread among right-wing workers in the area where the management had forbidden the employees to celebrate their national day. It was believed that this incident was the cause of agitation among the workers. In fact, before this incident a series of meetings between right-wing workers in the Tsuen Wan area had been held to plan celebrations on the National Day. The Tsuen Wan incident eventually turned into a clash between left-wing and right-wing workers. Left-wing workers were beaten by Nationalist sympathisers, and some of them died as a result.
The two riots in Kowloon and Tsuen Wan resulted in 440 casualties in total, of which 59 were fatal and 150 suffered minor injuries. Contrary to the events in Kowloon, which were spontaneous in nature, as reported by Governor
Grantham,194 events in Tsuen Wan were characterised by well-planned and
organised violence by right-wing workers. Grantham, in a confidential letter to J.B. Johnston of the Colonial Office, remarked that ‗the Tsuen Wan story is a bad
one; for more than two hours the rioters had it all their own way‘.195
The 1956 riots show how the CCP-GMD struggle influenced the development of nationalist sentiments in Hong Kong, and how such sentiments
193Ibid., p.31.
194 CO 1030/389, Grantham to J.B.Johnston, confidential letter of 6 December 1956. 195Ibid.
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led to violence. The initial violence in Lee Cheng Uk was triggered by pro-GMD sympathisers‘ dispute with the colonial authorities in relation to the public
display of the GMD flag. Similarly, the violence in Tsuen Wan was triggered by competing nationalisms as both pro-Communists and pro-Nationalists attempted to promote their agenda via the use of the national flag.