ABSTRACT
Against the state secret system and surveillance discussed in Chapter 2, this chapter analyzes the partnerships between the labor NGOs in mainland China and Hong Kong through the prism of secrecy. The chapter describes secrecy as performed by a range of techniques of concealment and revelation that these NGOs adopt in their collaboration. The chapter shows how these NGOs perceive and evaluate their performance of secrecy, which gives a vivid picture of how they censor themselves by trying to gauge the permissible boundaries of state tolerance and behave accordingly. Although the performance of secrecy is commonly talked about as a way to evade state surveillance, the chapter argues that the performance of secrecy is not so much about negotiating their relationship with the Chinese state as it is about managing the relationships among the NGOs. Secrecy is productive in the sense that it is utilized to foster sociality, solidarity, and, most important of all, trust among these NGOs.
