Several large textile mills were also favored with mob visits and a peremptory demand that they fire all pro-Red workers. Four miles west of Tsuen Wan, a Nationalist union group combined forces with a Triad gang, looted a textile factory, set fire to an automobile, stole a factory truck and withdrew after having their demands satisfied by management. Five houses and shops identified with Communist interests were invaded and wrecked.
The Tsuen Wan curfew was extended to surrounding areas and remained in force until October 16 while police and the army locked horns with the Nationalist rioters. Left-wingers were not an immediate problem, most of them having fled to the hills for their lives. But the rightist demonstrators were tough; they were disciplined fighters, ably led and guided by whistle-blast commands. Eight persons were killed, 109 seriously injured and 684 arrested before the rioters capitulated.
Long after the restoration of law and order, fear continued to keep workers away from their jobs. Full production did not resume at factories and mills in the Tsuen Wan area until early in November.
When the last of the Double Ten disorders ended, the hard-pressed colony government had a chance to assess events. Most of the property damaged by mobs belonged to Communists or their sympathizers, but Nationalist vengeance was by no means the only reason for its destruction; the longer the riots continued, the more inescapable became the conclusion that they were directed by criminals bent on manipulating patriotic emotions to enrich themselves.
The Double Ten riots did more than weaken the prestige of the Triads, whose leaders were either arrested or deported; it helped to illustrate the futility of waging a street war in Hong Kong over the Nationalist-Communist issue. Partisanship toward either side still burns strongly among the older Chinese, but it is a dwindling flame. Younger people, and many Chinese intellectuals within the colony, seem indifferent or hostile to both camps. Practically no one wants to return to Red China, and Taiwan had shown little inclination to welcome Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong until the border rush of May, 1962.
The turmoil occasioned by the Double Ten riots was succeeded by a period of comparative calm between Red China and the colony. But it ended in 1958, when the Chinese Communists clamped tight restrictions on inshore fishing by boats from Hong Kong. The Reds, perennially belligerent over the suspected invasion of their territorial limits, demanded that any boats fishing in their waters must have a Communist registration in addition to their colony registry. The registration also involved a Communist share of the fisherman’s catch, and Hong Kong boats resented the gouge. The apparent solution was to keep their craft out of Communist waters.
The Reds made the problem more complex by invading Hong Kong waters on numerous patrol swoops to seize Hong Kong junks. The first of these came in October, 1958, when Red patrol boats grabbed several junks near Po Toi Island, on the southern edge of colony waters. In December, a Communist gunboat fired on junks in colony waters, killing two fishermen and injuring several others. A month later, a Chinese gunboat crossed into colony waters and captured two fishing boats with six persons aboard. In May, 1959, an armed Communist tug pushed nine miles into Hong Kong waters to round up a pair of large fishing junks.
In self-defense, many Hong Kong fishermen abandoned inshore fishing, and ventured much farther out to sea. Without intending to, the Reds helped to stimulate the mechanization of the colony’s fishing fleet and improve its efficiency.
The colonial administration at Hong Kong carefully avoids comment on the Nationalist-Communist issue. It can, of course, initiate no foreign policy of its own, but must keep precisely to the line set down by the British government. It is expected to get along as best it can with both Red China and Taiwan, and leave the high-level thundering to London.
While the colony’s officials are well aware that the United States and other Western powers are using Hong Kong as an observation post on Red China, and that both Red China and Taiwan have their corps of spies in the colony, they take no official cognizance of such activities until they become too conspicuous. Unfortunately, they often do. Toward the end of 1961, the colony had 21 Nationalist spies in custody, including a former leader of guerrilla forces in Southeast Asia.