Cold War Prevention: The Discourse of Hong Kong Flu and Its Controversies, 1968-1972

1968 is often hailed as the year that “rocked the world.” However, this historical moment is barely evaluated from the realm of medicine. “Hong Kong Flu” pandemic, one of the three worldwide flu pandemics breakout in the last century, was caused by the virus H3N2 and had infected 15 percent of the whole population in 1968. Although its death rate was relatively low, it promoted a medical competition and negotiation between different institutions, from Hong Kong, Japan to the United States. Its breakout also changed the mentality of the world towards unexpected severe diseases. With a study of this case, this paper aims to answer three questions in medical history: 1. How to define “colonial” medicine in a homogenous decolonized era? 2. What could this Asian experience contribute to cold war medicine? 3. When and how did international health transform to global health? Based mainly on articles from English and Chinese newspapers and government reports, this paper argues that a new mode of public health governance and the adoption of preventive medicine had emerged from a new civic discourse in 1968. The paper also seeks to outline an underlying ideological campaign, just after the riots in 1967, which relied on the metaphor of disease to segregate the communist community from its capitalist counterpart. As the flu epidemic spread around the world, the structure of the Cold War was stabilized. And finally, this paper will demonstrate a rise in local consciousness as Hong Kong became a frontier in the Cold War.