The Factional Struggle of the Fiery Era: The Guocui Camp, the Shehui Camp, and the Tension of "Knowing China, Caring for Society" (1970s)

⚠️ This article belongs to the unofficial-history module (14, history of student movements). It compiles the 1970s split among student-movement factions using multi-source-supported, attributed phrasing that lays out each side's position without adjudicating between them. This piece focuses on the historical factional dispute over political direction; where it touches the student-era history of specific living individuals, it states this neutrally based on public sources such as Wikipedia, offers no negative assessment, and does not extend into their present-day political positions. Deceased individuals are named as recorded in the cited sources. It does not extend to political events from 2019 onward (related external sources are listed in module 18). This article, together with A General History of Student Movements and A Deep Dive into the Chinese-Language Movement, covers a different facet of the 1960s–70s student movements.

# I. The "Fiery Era": Campus Politics at Its Peak

In the 1970s, the political atmosphere at Hong Kong's universities — including CUHK and HKU — reached an intensity without precedent, a period referred to as the "Fiery Era" of the student movement. According to the Wikipedia article "1970s Hong Kong Student Movement"^※, tertiary students of this period were broadly divided, by political stance, into three camps:

A shared left-wing background, different points of focus: According to sources, both the Guocui camp and the Shehui camp were influenced by Marxist-Leninist socialist thought — this was the backdrop of the "Fiery Era." The core disagreement between the two camps was not over whether they were left-wing, but over where their focus was directed: the Guocui camp toward "knowing/upholding China," the Shehui camp toward "reforming Hong Kong society."

# 1.1 The Guocui Camp: Based at CUHK

According to collated Wikipedia material, the Guocui camp is described as having been "based at The Chinese University of Hong Kong" — a contrast to the Shehui camp, described as centred on "the University of Hong Kong Modern Thought Society," reflecting the two universities' different positions on the 1970s student-movement spectrum. The Guocui camp was strongly influenced by Marxism and the political atmosphere on the mainland; it emphasised the "knowing China" side of "knowing China, caring for society," focusing on China-related policy, with activities tending toward more static forms of national-affairs advocacy — study groups, fact-finding trips, publications, and the like.

# 1.2 Figures Associated with the Three Camps (Student-Era History, Stated Neutrally per Sources)

According to collated Wikipedia material, each of the three camps produced, during the 1970s, a number of figures who later became active in Hong Kong politics, journalism, business, and academia — this list is itself one piece of evidence for how deeply the "Fiery Era" shaped Hong Kong's public life in the decades that followed:

• Guocui camp: Per sources, figures associated with this camp include Mr. Ng Ching-fai (吳清輝, later President of Hong Kong Baptist University), Mr. 馮紹波 (later chairman of the Hong Kong Economic Times), Mr. 鍾瑞明, Mr. Chan Man-hung (陳文鴻), Mr. Tai Hay-lap (戴希立), Mr. Yeung Yiu-chung (楊耀忠), Mr. Lau Nai-keung (劉廼強), and Mr. Ching Cheong (程翔), among others; the late Mr. Ma Lik (馬力) and the late Mr. Chan Yuk-cheung (陳毓祥) are also often listed as representative figures of this lineage.
• Shehui camp: Per sources, figures associated with this camp include Mr. Lai Chak-fan (黎則奮), Mr. Yeung Sum (楊森), Mr. Cheung Man-kwong (張文光), Mr. 王卓祺, Mr. Tsang Shu-ki (曾澍基), Mr. Anthony Cheung Bing-leung (張炳良), and Mr. Frederick Fung Kin-kee (馮檢基), among others; a number of them later became active in Hong Kong's social movements and local politics.
• Liberal camp: Relatively less influential than the other two camps, but per sources, Mr. 陳詠智 served at the time as President of the CUHK Student Union and is classified within this lineage — the one case among the three camps' figures with a directly documented, verifiable link to a CUHK Student Union office.

The factional affiliations listed above are compiled from each individual's Wikipedia entry or collated secondary sources, and describe their historical experience as students in the 1970s; they do not represent, and this entry does not comment on, the political positions these individuals may have held in their later public careers. This archive states historical facts only and offers no praise or criticism.

# 1.3 A Real Cost: Chan Yuk-cheung and the Diaoyu Islands Protection Movement

The most extreme practical expression of the Guocui camp and the "knowing China" line was arguably the Diaoyu Islands protection movement. According to the Wikipedia entry "Chan Yuk-cheung"^※, Mr. Chan Yuk-cheung (1950–1996) held a Bachelor's degree (Honours) in Social Sciences from the University of Hong Kong and a Master's degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. From 1971 he headed the student section of the Diaoyu Islands protection campaign under the Hong Kong Federation of Students, and was one of the leading figures of the Hong Kong Diaoyu Islands protection movement. In the 1991 Hong Kong Legislative Council election, he was reported to have taken part in Guocui-camp activities during his university years, and this background became one of the disputed topics of his election campaign. On 26 September 1996, while leading a group who tied ropes around their waists and leapt into the waters off the Diaoyu Islands to assert sovereignty, he became entangled in the rope and was struck by a vessel, was rendered unconscious, and could not be resuscitated; he died at the age of 45, becoming a figure emblematic of those who lost their lives in the Hong Kong Diaoyu Islands protection movement.

Chan Yuk-cheung's experience is, in one sense, an extreme case of "knowing China, caring for society" moving from campus discourse into real action — and, ultimately, a cost paid with his life. It is also a reminder that the factional dispute of the Fiery Era was never merely an abstract ideological debate; it genuinely shaped the life paths of an entire generation of participants.

# II. The Starting Point of the Split: The 1973 "Fight Corruption, Arrest Godber" Campaign

The emergence of the two camps' names is tied to a specific event. According to Wikipedia^※:

• The names "Guocui camp" and "Shehui camp" first appeared in 1973;
• In August of that year, students launched the "Fight Corruption, Arrest Godber" campaign, organising public forums and marches demanding that the government apprehend Peter Godber, the former Chief Superintendent of Police who had fled the jurisdiction;
• Following this, students held a series of discussions on issues such as "anti-imperialism"; differing views on Hong Kong's future and on the question of China led to the split into the "Guocui camp" and the "Shehui camp."

The sequence of the event itself, according to collated public sources: in 1973, Chief Superintendent Godber was found to hold assets of more than HK$4.3 million of suspicious origin; the Attorney General required him to explain their source within one week or face arrest — Godber instead fled to Britain within the deadline, provoking widespread public anger in Hong Kong. Activists and students subsequently launched the "Fight Corruption, Arrest Godber" campaign, demanding the establishment of an independent anti-corruption body. Per sources, more than 50,000 residents signed a joint petition; on 26 August 1973, residents held an unauthorised spontaneous rally, at which police arrested 21 people; two further rallies on 2 September and 16 September saw 12 and 26 people arrested respectively, and on 16 September several hundred protesters gathered outside Government House chanting "corruption is a crime, assembly is not." University students, including those from CUHK, also took part in and organised related marches. The Hong Kong colonial government subsequently announced in October 1973 that it would set up an independent body; in February 1974, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) was formally established and immediately took over the investigation of the Godber case. Godber was extradited back to Hong Kong for trial in January 1975 and was ultimately sentenced to four years in prison.

The "Fight Corruption, Arrest Godber" campaign was itself a local protest against corruption in the colonial government, and went on to directly give rise to Hong Kong's anti-corruption system that endures today (the ICAC) — yet it also unexpectedly became the catalyst for the student movement's factional split. When students went on to ask "should our fundamental concern be China or Hong Kong," the previously unified student-movement camp divided along that fault line. This is precisely the paradox of the "Fiery Era": the same movement left behind both a positive institutional legacy and the seeds of factional division.

# III. The Tension in "Knowing China, Caring for Society"

The student movement of the "Fiery Era" had a signature slogan — "renzhong guanshe" (認中關社, "knowing China, caring for society"). These eight characters were meant to run in parallel, yet they precisely concentrate the tension between the two camps:

"Knowing China" (認中): Corresponds to the Guocui camp's focus — placing knowledge of, and identification with, China first. According to Wikipedia^※, among activities on "knowing China," some strands emphasised knowing China as the primary aim.

"Caring for society" (關社): Corresponds to the Shehui camp's focus — placing the reform of Hong Kong's local society, and advocacy for the disadvantaged, first.

According to this source's account (which reflects one side's narrative perspective), a tension existed between the two: some held the view that, in emphasising knowledge of China, the "knowing China" strand devoted comparatively less effort to injustices within Hong Kong's local society. This archive records this account as sourced, but the question of relative weight between "knowing China" and "caring for society" involves multiple positions; this archive presents them side by side without adjudicating.

According to a Lingnan Scholars academic study on "The Fiery Era and the Currents of Left-Wing Radicalism in Hong Kong"^※, the "Fiery Era" was one of the peak periods of left-wing radical thought in Hong Kong, and the internal factional split was an expression of this current's complexity.

# IV. Impact on Student Politics at CUHK

CUHK students — through the various college student unions and the Hong Kong Federation of Students — were important participants in the "Fiery Era" student movement, and the Guocui camp's positioning as "based at CUHK" meant that, in a sense, the intensity of this factional dispute was felt more directly on the CUHK campus than at other institutions. The impact of this factional dispute on CUHK is chiefly reflected in the following:

• Competition for direction within student organisations: The split between the Guocui and Shehui camps was reflected in internal contests over direction within bodies such as the student unions and the Federation of Students (for the history of student organisations, see student-organisations-history.md); with the Guocui camp based at CUHK, it was naturally in a relatively more active position in the contest for voice within organisations such as the student union and the student newspaper.
• An early typology of student politics: The two orientations formed during this period — "knowing China" and "caring for society" — represent, in a sense, an early typology within the spectrum of Hong Kong student politics, with effects that continued for decades afterward. Many student-movement participants of that time (see the figures listed in the section above) later went on, respectively, into the establishment, the professions, the media, and academia, and to some degree carried their respective orientations of that period forward with them.
• Overlap with the Chinese-Language Movement: The "Fiery Era" student movement overlapped heavily, in both timing and participants, with the concurrent Chinese-Language Movement — many participants were involved both in the push for language rights and in the factional dispute; organisations recorded in the History of Student Social Participation, such as the New Asia Student Social Service Corps, were also active during the same period, representing another strand of CUHK student social participation at the time — one closer to grassroots service and less coloured by factional politics.
• The movement's ebb: According to collated sources, after the fall of the "Gang of Four" in China in 1976, the discursive basis of the Guocui camp came under pressure, and the camp gradually declined; the overall focus of the tertiary student movement subsequently shifted as Hong Kong society entered the 1980s period of debate over the territory's future.

A historical echo: The tension between "knowing China" and "caring for society" — whether the centre of concern should be placed on "China" or on "Hong Kong" — was not unique to the 1970s. It has resurfaced, in different forms, in subsequent discussions within Hong Kong society and academia about identity. The factional dispute of the Fiery Era can therefore be seen as an early source of the question of Hong Kong identity. This archive records only the historical factional split and each side's affiliations, and does not extend into commentary on contemporary issues.

Related reading: A General History of Student Movements, A Deep Dive into the Chinese-Language Movement, A History of Student Organisations, A History of Student Social Participation, Mainland Students and Cross-Border Tensions.