Supporting Impactful Research: MOE AcRF Tier 1 Grant Awarded to Assoc. Prof. Hee Wai Siam

Associate Professor Hee Wai Siam has been awarded the MOE AcRF Tier 1 Grant for his research project The Cultural Cold War of the Asia Foundation in Global South: The case of the Union Press and the Third Force.

Congratulations, Prof Hee!

Abstract:

This project investigates how the CIA, working through the Asia Foundation (TAF), covertly funded Hong Kong’s Union Press (UP) and its affiliate, the Union Research Institute (URI), to advance a cultural Cold War across the Global South, including Southeast Asia. Using archival materials from TAF, the CIA, UP, and URI, the study examines the extent of American financial intervention and its influence on UP’s publishing programmes, anti-Communist research, literature, and cultural programs in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. It addresses three central questions: whether UP and URI leaders’ long-standing claims of operational independence align with archival evidence; how TAF’s substantial funding shaped their work over two decades; and how exiled Chinese intellectuals used this support to transform themselves into influential Cold War entrepreneurs. These issues ultimately converge on a broader reassessment of the democratic, economically equitable, and culturally free China that these actors publicly advocated, especially when their memoirs diverge from archival records. By contrasting personal memoirs with official government records, the study reveals how CIA backing helped shape the public vision of a democratic, culturally free alternative to Communist China, highlighting the complex ways financial support influenced ideology and public memory across the Global South.