page_title: Socialism in Hong Kong
section_title: 1922 Seamen's strike
hierarchical_section_title: Socialism in Hong Kong / 1920s labour movements in Hong Kong / 1922 Seamen's strike
caption_attribution_description: 中共早期领导人苏兆征
context_page_description: Socialism in Hong Kong is a political trend taking root from Marxism and Leninism which was imported to Hong Kong and mainland China in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Socialist trends have taken various forms, including Marxism–Leninism, Maoism, Trotskyism, democratic socialism and liberal socialism, with the Marxism–Leninists being the most dominant faction due to the influence of the Chinese Communist Party regime in the mainland. The "traditional leftists" became the largest force representing the pro-Beijing camp in the post-war decades, which had an uneasy relationship with the colonial authorities. As the Chinese Communist Party adopted capitalist economic reforms from 1978 onwards and the pro-Beijing faction became increasingly conservative, the socialist agenda has been slowly taken up by the liberal-dominated pro-democratic camp.
context_section_description: The Seamen's strike of 1922 became the most important episode of the labour movement in China and Hong Kong. On January 13, 1922, against the backdrop of skyrocketing prices, seamen in Hong Kong launched a well-organised strike which lasted 56 days and involved 120,000 seamen at its peak. Having received organisational and financial support from Sun Yat-sen's left-leaning Kuomintang government in Guangzhou, the Chinese Seamen's Union led the Hong Kong strikers to victory.
  Although the Communists played no leadership role in the strike, some Communists in Hong Kong participated and others in the neighbouring Guangzhou made supportive speeches and published the strikers' manifesto. Su Zhaozheng and Lin Weimin, the two leaders of the seamen's strike, would later join the Communist Party. Henk Sneevliet, representative of the Comintern in China who was greatly impressed by the strike's success, concluded that the strike was "undoubtedly the most important event in the young history of the Chinese labour movement." He also held talks with Sun Yat-sen from 23rd to the 25th of December 1921 in Guilin about possible cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists. Sneevliet became more actively involved in organising the First United Front between the two parties after he saw the support given by the Kuomintang in the Hong Kong seamen's strike.
caption: Su Zhaozheng (1885–1929), leader of the labour movement in Hong Kong who went on to become a leader of the Communist Party of China.
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