ARCI, the United Nations, and the Politicization of Hong Kong Refugees

This essay explores the role of Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc. (ARCI) and the United Nations in the international debate over the status of Chinese refugees in Hong Kong after 1949.  Two issues were heavily debated in the colony in the years immediately after the founding of the People’s Republic of China: the first was whether Chinese migrants fleeing the mainland could truly be called “refugees,” and the second was who was responsible for aiding them.  The UN vacillated over both points, caught between its own continued recognition of the Republic of China and the decision of Britain to recognize the PRC.  Complicating the debate over terminology were differences in the character of earlier and later waves of migrants; while the earliest arrivals were fleeing the new communist government, later crossings were driven by economic conditions.  While the UN debated its role in the humanitarian crisis, ARCI came in as essentially an extension of U.S. government policy and interests.  Although technically a “nongovernmental organization,” ARCI was founded by a U.S. Congressman from Minnesota, Walter Judd, and it maintained very close ties to both the United States and Republic of China governments during the entire period of its operation.  As a result, the successes and failures of ARCI impacted Chinese perceptions of the United States, and the question of how to characterize and aid new Chinese migrants to Hong Kong became increasingly tied to policies directed at escapees and defectors in Europe.  For both organizations, efforts to work on behalf of refugees became heavily politicized, engulfed by cross-straits tensions, Sino-American relations, and Cold War considerations.  This paper relies on extensive archival research in the PRC, ROC (Taiwan), United States, and Great Britain.