Florence Mok's Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c.1966–97 is a pathbreaking study of British Hong Kong's political culture during the thirty years before the resumption of Chinese sovereignty. Utilizing fresh archival sources, Mok shows sophistication in both breaking down Hong Kong public opinion into a range of disparate and often competing interests and in showing how the colonial government sought input to guide its policies without conceding significant democratization. As a pioneering work in this genre, Covert Colonialism will set the terms of debate for many years to come, but it is not beyond criticism. Mok could have provided a more balanced choice of case studies, finer consideration of the line between overt protest vs. covert colonialism, a greater focus on the role of the press, and more attention to how public opinion in British Hong Kong was expressed through evolving (though limited) institutions like the Urban Council.

Mok sets out to examine the evolution of state-society relations in British Hong Kong from 1966 to 1997. Mok sets her eye firmly on political culture which she defines as “political attitudes and political orientations” and wishes to see “how these attitudes and orientations influenced political actions” (2). To Mok, the way in which the nondemocratic colonial state measured and interpreted public opinion was through the aegis of “covert colonialism” which consisted both of state surveillance and consultation with public opinion (sometimes expressed through social movements). The most innovative feature of her analysis is her use of secret polling and feedback loops established by the colonial regime. The key development was the creation of City District Officer (CDO) scheme in 1968. Established to “bridge the communications gap between the colonial state and Chinese society,” the CDO reform led to two state-funded polling efforts entitled Town Talk and Movement of Opinion Direction (MOOD) (24). These archival sources have not been used at length before and Mok is masterful in analyzing how the methods evolved, which groups they were trying to reach and how they served as a “substitute for representative democracy” in British Hong Kong (47). She shows how both Town Talk and MOOD became increasingly more scientific and how much attention colonial bureaucrats and decisions makers gave to this input. To do so Mok uses a wide variety of sources in addition to the polls (including files from the UK National Archives such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Hong Kong Public Record Office, which include government reports, Green Papers, official correspondence, and Hong Kong Hansard). In addition, she consulted the papers of the well-known Hong Kong activist Elise Elliott (Tu) and a range of both Chinese and English newspapers.

To prove her point on how covert colonialism both influenced decision-making and served as a legitimacy device for the colonial regime, Mok has organized Covert Colonialism around six case studies, each of which was a controversial issue that led to significant expression of public opinion. These studies include the movement to make Chinese an official language, the fight against corruption, the campaign against increasing telephone rate charges, the struggle to reopen a controversial secondary school, as well as debates over immigration policy and the passing of the British Nationality Act. While most of these issues are wide ranging and are perfect vehicles for Mok to show how covert colonialism operated, others are less successful. Whereas issues affecting language, corruption, immigration, and post-handover citizenship rights seem galvanizing, longstanding, and affecting a broad range of Hong Kong society, the other two issues seem a bit narrow. It might have been better grist for her study to have examined broader issues in the 1966–97 period instead such as the building and funding of the mass transit MTR network, the massive expansion of public housing or efforts to increase social spending on health and education. Within her case studies, the line between overt protest as a vehicle of public opinion and covert colonialism might have been better defined. The Chinese language and anti-corruption movements were often public and expressive, so that while covert polling and information gathering may well have produced a more nuanced picture to the government, it was more of a complementary than a singular source. Mok does show how a process arose where polling might set the scene for public inquiries, reports, and finally action (subject to the whims of both China and the UK). Nevertheless, nondemocratic political culture in British Hong Kong still had the government interacting with social movements through advisory committees and inquiries, which is more overt than covert.

The role of the press is also something that could have been expanded on. Mok makes much of the impact of the China Mail for the anti-corruption campaign, but it was a short lived and limited circulation paper. She gives some attention to other newspapers and their readerships throughout her book, but this could have been extended into a separate and more thorough section or chapter. Though British Hong Kong never had a press as free or uncensored as that of the UK, there was a wide range of expression of public opinion through the over seventy newspapers as well as over four hundred periodicals by the mid-1980s with many different audiences and political orientations. Finally, the role of existing (though limited) institutions such as the Urban Council could have been better examined. Mok does reference Elise Elliott (Tu) several times as a key activist who served as a lightning rod for numerous protests (especially anti-corruption). What is not analyzed sufficiently is that throughout this period she was an elected member of the Urban Council. Though having a limited electorate and officially focused a narrow range of issues such as sanitation, food hygiene, public leisure libraries, and museums, the Urban Council was another part of the part of the matrix of the political culture of colonial Hong Kong. It also evolved and became slightly more democratic during this period.

Mok's use of covert colonialism is a particularly important addition to understanding the political culture of British Hong Kong. She has definitively proved that British Hong Kong while nondemocratic was not a politically apathetic place, nor did it have a uniform public opinion on any given issue. She has also made excellent use of previously unknown secret government polls. Covert Colonialism is groundbreaking and deserves to be widely read though there are several ways it could have been even better.