Print, Politics, and Translating Solidarity: Worlding a Leftist Asian Literary Repertoire in 1970s Hong Kong

This chapter examines the translation of Asian literature in Hong Kong’s communist periodicals during the 1970s regarding how these publications constructed an alternative model of world literature rooted in socialist realism and Third World solidarity. A close analysis of Ocean Literature and related publications reveals the strategic use of translation to promote ideological affinity with anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements across Asia. Featuring translated works from countries like Japan, Thailand, and India, these periodicals curated a politically resonant literary repertoire that aligned with the Chinese Communist Party’s broader Cold War agenda. This chapter highlights the role of key translators and clarifies the aesthetic and political rationales behind the selection of specific texts in the context of Hong Kong, a unique geopolitical site where communist literary activity navigated censorship and leveraged diaspora networks within a colonial framework to reach Sinophone readers in Southeast Asia. This study applies theories of world literature and postcolonialism to argue that these translation practices sought to construct a unified Asian and Third World community, thereby recasting Hong Kong’s Cold-War-era communist periodicals as significant agents in the global history of literary translation, minor transnationalism, and the formation of a socialist vision of Asian solidarity through literature.