The Route Dispute of the "Firebrand Era": the Nationalist Faction, the Social Faction, and "Know China, Care About Society" (1970s)

⚠️ This entry belongs to the wild-history module on the history of student movements (module 14). It compiles the multiply-sourced route split among 1970s student activists, presenting each side's position in attributed form without adjudicating between them. This entry focuses on the historical factional route dispute; where it touches the student-era experience of specific living individuals, it states matters neutrally on the basis of public sources such as Wikipedia, offers no negative evaluation, and does not extend into present-day political positions. Deceased individuals are named where the sources do so. This entry does not extend to the 2019 events and after (related external sources are listed in module 18). It shares the 1960s–70s student-movement period with A General History of the Student Movement and A Deep Dive into the Chinese Language Movement, covering a different facet of the same era.

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# I. The "Firebrand Era": Campus Politics at a Boil

In the 1970s, the political atmosphere at Hong Kong's universities (including CUHK and HKU) reached unprecedented intensity, a period known as the student movement's "Firebrand Era". According to Wikipedia, "1970s Hong Kong Student Movement"^※, tertiary students of this period can be roughly divided, by political orientation, into three broad factions:

A shared leftist undertone, different points of focus: per sources, both the Nationalist Faction and the Social Faction were influenced by Marxist-Leninist socialist currents — this was the background colour of the "Firebrand Era". The two factions' core disagreement was not over "how left", but over "where to aim": the Nationalist Faction toward "knowing/upholding China", the Social Faction toward "reforming Hong Kong society".

# 1.1 The Nationalist Faction: With CUHK as its Base

Drawing on Wikipedia sources, the Nationalist Faction is described as having "CUHK as its base" — which contrasts with the Social Faction's being "centred on HKU's Modern Trends of Thought Society", reflecting the two universities' differing positions on the student-movement spectrum during the 1970s. The Nationalist Faction was strongly influenced by Marxism and the political atmosphere on the mainland, emphasising the "know China" side of "know China, care about society", with China-policy concerns at its centre; its activities tended toward static forms of national-affairs advocacy (study groups, fact-finding trips, journal essays, and the like). According to a CUHK Student Press feature^※, one representative Nationalist Faction activity was organising "homeland tour groups" for students, "travelling to a number of provinces in China, giving classmates the chance to experience the condition of the motherland firsthand" — such field trips were the concrete vehicle by which the "know China" line was distinguished from purely written advocacy.

# 1.2 A Group Portrait of the Three Factions (student-era historical experience, stated neutrally per sources)

Drawing on Wikipedia sources, all three factions produced individuals who later went on to be active in Hong Kong politics, journalism, business, and academia — this list is itself, in part, evidence of how deeply the "Firebrand Era" shaped Hong Kong's public life for decades afterward:

• Nationalist Faction: per sources, figures associated with this faction include Ng Ching-fai (吳清輝, later President of Hong Kong Baptist University), Fung Siu-por (馮紹波, later Chairman of the Hong Kong Economic Times), Chung Sui-ming (鍾瑞明), Chan Man-hung (陳文鴻), Tai Hay-lap (戴希立), Yeung Yiu-chung (楊耀忠), Lau Nai-keung (劉迺強), and Ching Cheong (程翔); the late Ma Lik (馬力) and the late Chan Yuk-cheung (陳毓祥) are also often listed as representative figures of this lineage.
• Social Faction: per sources, figures associated with this faction include Lai Chak-fan (黎則奮), Yeung Sum (楊森), Cheung Man-kwong (張文光), Wong Cheuk-kei (王卓祺), Tsang Shu-ki (曾澍基), Cheung Bing-leung (張炳良), and Frederick Fung Kin-kee (馮檢基), many of whom later remained active in Hong Kong social movements and local politics.
• Liberal Faction: relatively less influential than the other two, but per sources, Chan Wing-chi (陳詠智) served as CUHK Student Union president at the time and is placed in this lineage — among the three factions' figures, this is the one case directly and verifiably tied to a CUHK Student Union office.

The factional affiliations above are compiled from each individual's Wikipedia entry or from secondary sources generally, and describe their historical experience as students in the 1970s; they do not represent, and this entry does not comment on, the political positions of their subsequent 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 Movement

The most extreme practice of the Nationalist Faction and the "know China" line was the Diaoyu Islands movement. According to Wikipedia, "Chan Yuk-cheung"^※, Chan Yuk-cheung (1950–1996) held a Bachelor of Social Sciences (Honours) from the University of Hong Kong and a Master's degree from CUHK, and from 1971 headed the student section of the Hong Kong Federation of Students' Diaoyu Islands movement, becoming one of the important leaders of Hong Kong's Diaoyu Islands movement. In the 1991 Legislative Council election, he was said to have taken part in Nationalist Faction activities during his university years, and this background became a subject of controversy during his 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 died despite rescue efforts, aged 45 — becoming a representative figure among those who lost their lives in Hong Kong's Diaoyu Islands movement.

Chan Yuk-cheung's experience is, in a sense, an extreme case of "know China, care about society" moving from campus discourse to real action, even to the cost of a life — and it also reminds readers that the "Firebrand Era" route dispute was never merely an abstract ideological debate, but genuinely shaped the life paths of an entire generation of participants.

# 1.4 A Comparison with HKU: The Nationalist Faction Was Not Unique to CUHK

Although the Nationalist Faction is described in sources as having "CUHK as its base", HKU's campus during the same period had its own Nationalist Faction lineage, which offers a point of comparison. According to Wikipedia, "Antony Leung Kam-chung"^※, Antony Leung Kam-chung (梁錦松, graduated with a Bachelor of Social Sciences from HKU in 1973) "was one of the representative figures of the 'Nationalist Faction' within the HKU Student Union, and had actively taken part in the Diaoyu Islands movement and the Chinese language movement"; sources further record that, as a student, he took part in "know China, care about society" activities, travelled to Jinggangshan on a study trip, and read closely from the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, later applying the methodology of "On Contradiction" and "On Practice" to his subsequent management practice. Antony Leung Kam-chung later served as Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong SAR Government, making his case the most widely known and the widest in span between "Nationalist Faction" student-era experience and subsequent public career — this entry records, on the basis of sources, only his factional alignment as a university student, and does not comment on the political positions of his subsequent public career.

The Nationalist Faction lineages at HKU and CUHK, though both moved by the "know China, care about society" current, were, per sources, organisationally independent of each other: the CUHK lineage relied largely on a network of college- and student-press-based study groups, while the HKU lineage was anchored in the HKU Student Union. Where the two schools' Nationalist Faction students later intersected was chiefly through the cross-institutional platform of the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS).

# 1.5 The Divide Between New Asia and United College: "Weeping for New Asia," 1971

Although the Nationalist Faction/Social Faction split was not formally named until 1973, differences among the colleges in their response to the Diaoyu Islands movement had already surfaced within CUHK as early as 1971. According to a Pulse HK News column by Cheung Chan-fai^※, in September 1971, the New Asia Student Press published an open letter titled "To the Head and Teachers of New Asia College," signed "fellow student Lau Mei-mei" — later referred to as "Weeping for New Asia." Per the source, the letter recorded that during the Diaoyu Islands protests of the time, some students had been arrested and beaten by police, and even clergy (such as Bishop Hui Shing-bun) had spoken out publicly in support — yet New Asia College's administration remained silent throughout; students' application to use the college's Cheng Ming Hall for a public forum on the Diaoyu Islands issue was also refused by the administration — while United College, which likewise took the transmission of Chinese culture as its mission, was willing to lend its hall. Lau Mei-mei's letter invoked the precepts of New Asia's founders Ch'ien Mu and T'ang Chun-i and the lyrics of the college anthem, questioning why the college had failed to live up to its founding ideal of "cultivating students to become upstanding Chinese and responsible world citizens."

A protest genre passed down: per the same source, the 2005 "Weeping for CUHK" incident's (see A General History of the Student Movement, section 7) open letter "Weeping for CUHK" follows the same genre and rhetorical appeal to founding ideals as the 1971 "Weeping for New Asia" — 34 years apart, the two occasions on which CUHK campus produced a "weeping"-titled open letter invoking a college's or the university's founding spirit are themselves a quiet thread running through CUHK's student political culture. This archive records this genre lineage per sources and does not comment further on any present-day political comparison.

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# II. The Point of Split: "Anti-Corruption, Arrest Godber," 1973

The two factions' names arose in connection with a specific event. According to Wikipedia^※:

• The names "Nationalist Faction" and "Social Faction" first appeared in 1973;
• In August of that year, students launched the "Anti-Corruption, Arrest Godber" movement, organising public forums and marches demanding that the government apprehend the fugitive former Chief Superintendent, Peter Godber;
• Following this, students held a series of discussions on issues such as "anti-imperialism"; differing views on Hong Kong's future and on China led to the split between the "Nationalist Faction" and the "Social Faction".

The event's own course, per public sources generally: in 1973, Chief Superintendent Peter Godber was found to hold suspicious assets exceeding HK$4.3 million; the Attorney General required him to account for their origin within a week, failing which he would be arrested — Godber instead fled to Britain within the deadline, provoking widespread outrage in Hong Kong society. Social activists and students accordingly launched the "Anti-Corruption, Arrest Godber" movement, demanding the establishment of an independent anti-corruption body; per sources, more than 50,000 residents signed a petition, and on 26 August 1973, residents held an unauthorised spontaneous assembly, at which police arrested 21 people; two further assemblies 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 CUHK students) also took part in and organised related marches. The colonial Hong Kong government subsequently announced in October 1973 that it would set up an independent body; the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) was formally established in February 1974, immediately taking over the Godber investigation; Godber was extradited back to Hong Kong for trial in January 1975 and was ultimately sentenced to four years' imprisonment.

The "Anti-Corruption, Arrest Godber" movement was itself a local protest against colonial-government corruption, and went on to directly give rise to the anti-corruption institution — the ICAC — that Hong Kong retains to this day; yet it also, unexpectedly, became the catalyst for the student movement's route split — as students pressed further into the question of "should our fundamental concern be China or Hong Kong," the previously unified student-movement camp split along that fault line. This is precisely the paradox of the "Firebrand Era": the same movement left behind both an institutional, positive legacy and the seeds of a route split.

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# III. The Tension in "Know China, Care About Society"

The "Firebrand Era" student movement had one signature slogan — "know China, care about society" (认中关社). These eight characters were meant to run in parallel, yet they precisely condense the tension between the two factions:

"Know China" (认中): corresponds to the Nationalist Faction's centre of gravity — placing knowledge of and identification with China first. According to Wikipedia^※, within "know China" activities, one current placed particular emphasis on knowing China above all.

"Care about society" (关社): corresponds to the Social Faction's centre of gravity — placing the reform of Hong Kong's local society and advocacy for the disadvantaged first.

Per the same source's account (which reflects one side's narrative perspective), tension existed between the two: some held the view that the "know China" lineage, in its emphasis on knowing China, gave comparatively little attention to injustices within Hong Kong society itself. This archive records this narrative per the source, but the weighting between "know China" and "care about society" touches on multiple positions, and this archive presents them side by side without adjudicating.

According to Lingnan Scholars academic research on "the Firebrand Era and Hong Kong's leftist radical thought"^※, the "Firebrand Era" was one of the peaks of Hong Kong's leftist radical thought, and its internal route split is an expression of the complexity of that current.

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# IV. The Nationalist Faction's Peak and Decline: from "Look Outward, Know China, Care About Society, Fight for Rights" to the Golden Jubilee Incident

One-line summary: the Nationalist-Faction-led direction of the student movement reached its peak in 1975, when the HKFS put forward "look outward, know China, care about society, fight for rights", but rapidly lost its discursive footing after the fall of the "Gang of Four" on the mainland in 1976; the Social Faction, meanwhile, used the 1977–78 Golden Jubilee Incident to translate "care about society" from campus discourse into genuine cross-institutional social action, with participation from both CUHK and HKU students.

# 4.1 "Look Outward, Know China, Care About Society, Fight for Rights": the 1975 Peak of the HKFS's Direction

According to a CUHK Student Press feature, "So That's What the Student Movement Was Really About"^※, in 1975, the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) put forward "look outward, know China, care about society, fight for rights" (放、认、关、争) as the direction of the student movement — that is, "look outward to the world, know China, care about society, fight for rights". This slogan formally placed "know China" and "care about society" side by side as the movement's official platform, and was, in a sense, the moment at which the Nationalist Faction's discourse was adopted to the greatest degree at the HKFS level; but per the same source, the Social Faction did not accept this, holding that in practice "knowing China" crowded out the emphasis that "caring about society" ought to receive.

# 4.2 A Specific Social Faction Criticism: the 1974 Anti-Fare-Hike Movement

Per the same source, the Social Faction's criticism of the Nationalist Faction was not merely general but had specific, documented instances: during the 1974 anti-fare-hike movement (opposing utility-fare increases), a "inflation exhibition" put on as part of Nationalist-Faction-led publicity activities was said to have "dwelt too much on Chinese socialism" rather than focusing on the fare-hike pressures Hong Kong residents were directly facing — on this basis the Social Faction criticised the Nationalist Faction for "using the name of knowing China while, in practice, neglecting local livelihood issues." This specific exhibition controversy is one documented instance in which the "know China"/"care about society" tension moved from an abstract slogan down to the level of actual publicity practice.

# 4.3 Decline After 1976 and the Social Faction's Continuation: the Golden Jubilee Incident

Per the same source, after the fall of the "Gang of Four" on the mainland in 1976, the discursive foundation the Nationalist Faction had relied on (a positive image of mainland political direction) was directly undermined, and the faction rapidly lost its pull on campus and went into decline; thereafter, the dominant voice in the student movement shifted more toward the local social issues emphasised by the Social Faction lineage.

This shift found concrete expression in the 1977–1978 Golden Jubilee Incident. According to Wikipedia, "Golden Jubilee Incident"^※ and a ThinkHK article^※, Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Secondary School in Kowloon City was found to have financial mismanagement (including profiteering from the sale of school supplies to students and the misuse of government grants); then-chairman of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union (PTU), Szeto Wah, accompanied three teachers in reporting the matter to the ICAC; teachers and students subsequently petitioned outside Government House and the Catholic Diocese in May 1977, and staged a three-day sit-in. The colonial Hong Kong government at one point announced the school's dissolution; after the PTU petitioned the Governor, then-Governor Murray MacLehose rescinded the dissolution order and instead set up a new school, Ng Yuk Secondary School, to take in the affected staff and students. Per sources, some 400 students in Secondary 2 to Secondary 4 attended "make-up classes" at HKU and CUHK during the transitional period before transferring schools — making the CUHK campus, in this way, directly a site of this cross-institutional solidarity action; a solidarity rally was held at Victoria Park on 28 May 1978, drawing a crowd of some 20,000. Per sources, the Golden Jubilee Incident was also the key episode that cemented the PTU's standing in society just four years after its founding, after which the PTU remained actively engaged in education and social issues over the long term.

The Golden Jubilee Incident is itself a discrete secondary-school governance controversy and is not the core subject of this entry; it is included here only for its point of connection to the "Firebrand Era" route dispute: a cohort of tertiary students who had been strongly influenced by the Social Faction's "care about society" discourse, at a moment when the Nationalist Faction was declining and "know China" discourse was receding, turned their attention concretely toward grassroots inequities in secondary education — the establishment of a make-up-class site at CUHK is one concrete mark this "care about society" path left on the CUHK campus. The full course of the Golden Jubilee Incident lies beyond the scope of this entry and is not further elaborated here.

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# V. Impact on CUHK Student Politics

CUHK students (through the various college student unions and the Hong Kong Federation of Students) were significant participants in the "Firebrand Era" student movement, and the Nationalist Faction's positioning as having "CUHK as its base" meant that, in a sense, the intensity of this route dispute on the CUHK campus was more direct than at other institutions. The impact of this route dispute on CUHK is chiefly reflected in the following:

• Competition over direction within student organisations: the split between the Nationalist Faction and the Social Faction was reflected in internal route competition within organisations such as student unions and the HKFS (for the history of student organisations, see student-organisations-history.md); with CUHK as its base, the Nationalist Faction naturally also occupied a relatively active position in the contest for voice within bodies such as the student union and the student press.
• An early typology of student politics: the two orientations formed in this period, "know China" and "care about society", are, in a sense, an early typology within the spectrum of Hong Kong student politics, with influence extending over the following decades — many participants in the student movement of the time (see the group portrait above) went on to careers in the establishment, the professions, the media, and academia respectively, to some extent carrying forward the route orientations of their student years; the case of Antony Leung Kam-chung on the HKU side (see §1.4) shows that this typology was not unique to CUHK.
• Connection with the Chinese language movement: the Firebrand Era student movement overlapped heavily in time and participants with the contemporaneous Chinese language movement — many participants were involved both in the fight for language rights and in the route dispute; the New Asia Student Social Service Corps and other organisations recorded in A History of Student Social Engagement were also active in the same period, representing another strand of CUHK students' social engagement at the time — one closer to grassroots service and less coloured by factional route.
• The movement's ebb and reorientation: the concrete course of the Nationalist Faction's decline after 1976 and the Social Faction's continuation of the "care about society" path through the Golden Jubilee Incident are detailed in §4 above; thereafter, the overall centre of gravity of tertiary student movements also shifted somewhat as Hong Kong society entered the 1980s discussion of "the future question."

A historical echo: the tension between "know China" and "care about society" — whether to centre concern on "China" or on "Hong Kong" — was not unique to the 1970s. It has recurred, in various forms, in later discussions of identity within Hong Kong society and academia. The Firebrand Era route dispute can, in this sense, be viewed as an early source of Hong Kong's identity-politics question. This archive records only the historical route split and the affiliations of each side, and does not extend into commentary on present-day issues.

# Related Reading

• A General History of the Student Movement — CUHK's full student-movement timeline, covering the Diaoyu Islands movement, the Chinese language movement, June Fourth, the Umbrella Movement, and the evolution of student unions/student press
• A Deep Dive into the Chinese Language Movement — a language-rights movement contemporaneous with, and involving heavily overlapping participants with, the "Firebrand Era"
• A History of Student Organisations — a rise-and-fall timeline organised around the student union, college student unions, student media, and other threads
• A History of Student Social Engagement — a contemporaneous strand, closer to grassroots service and less coloured by factional route, including the New Asia Student Social Service Corps and similar organisations
• Mainland Students and Cross-Strait Tensions — how the "know China" question has continued in present-day campus life

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